Instr:                 Min-Zhan Lu
Office:              CRT 394,     229-3505
e-mail:              mlu@uwm.edu
Office hours:     T, R   11:30-12:00  and by appointment.
 

Course Information:                      MW  2:05-3:20pm   CRT 466

Course Description
 

This course explores methods of revision at different points of the writing process in the interest of generating new thoughts and approaches concerning a specific topic.  We will read texts by authors such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Stephen Mailloux, David Bartholomae, James Slevin, and Toni Morrison to examine their positions on the nature of language and writing.  And we explore the implication of each position on how readers/writers best go about doing revision.  More specifically, we consider questions such as the following: given each of these positions, what should readers/writers do (or not do) when revising a paper at different point of the writing process?  How and why might such methods of revision be useful for a reader/writer such as oneself, and/or for particular situations?  Accordingly, which of one’s existing habits of reading/writing need to be changed or further developed?  How?  Why?  At the same time, students will test out their thoughts concerning these questions by producing a paper on four assigned texts (a short story, a film, two critical essays) and three revisions of that paper, each responding to different constraints, over the course of the term.  To help students articulate a working process of revision for their future work, students will also keep a journal where they log in their experience when writing and revising these papers and reflect on the strengths and limitations of the actions they have (and have not) taken when writing and revising.