College Writing Program

David Ackley: Part of being a good reader is being able to recognize the ways in which the author is trying to persuade us. What does the author assume about the reader's background? How does she try to earn the reader's trust? Does she try toappear objective by sticking to the facts, or does she emphasize her own personal experience? Through essays by Montaigne, Emerson and Nietzsche, poems by Frost, Bishop and Graves, and other related writings, we will explore the ways authors go about practicing the art of argument and persuasion. We will also look at contemporary examples like journalism, legal writing and academic papers, paying special attention to the ways different writers try to persuade us in different media, and how we, in turn, may make their techniques work for us. Written work will consist of four to five short response papers, two five page papers, and a ten to twelve page final research paper, with an emphasis on revision. Class work will focus on critical reading through class discussion and peer review. CRN 64167, MWF 1300-1350; CRN 64214, MW 1525-1640.

Jomarie Alano: Our theme for reading and discussion will be "Mozart on Love and Marriage." Opera provides an ideal vehicle for the study of characterization, plot, argument, audience, performance, and context. Through the medium of two of Mozart's operas, Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Così fan tutte (1790), we will use the theme of love and marriage to explore issues of class and gender; relationships between servant and master; and ideas regarding power, sexuality, fidelity, and inequality. In what ways do these operas reflect eighteenth-century society and Enlightenment values? How does Mozart's music reinforce his ideas? How do composer and librettist collaborate to construct an argument? To answer these questions and others, we will analyze and discuss several texts and performances, including the play by Beaumarchais entitled The Marriage of Figaro and excerpts from Mozart and the Enlightenment by Nicholas Till. This course requires that you write and revise three essays and a research paper, keep a written listening journal, and review the work of your peers. Throughout the course, we will strive to meet our writing goals: composing clear, competent prose; relating content and style; developing convincing arguments; and conducting effective research. An ability to read music is not required! CRN 64260, TR 1230-1345.

Tanya Bakhmetyeva: "There is no royal path to good writing: and such paths that exist ... lead through ... the jungles of self, the world, and craft." (Jessamyn West). As this citation suggests, writing is an active process, a journey, and not simply a product of momentary inspiration. We will begin our journey by asking ourselves questions: How do we write? Why do we succeed and why do we fail in our attempts at writing? What is successful writing? It is by answering these questions that we will move along our path to the ultimate goal of this course: "better writing," defined in the academic context. On our road we will inevitably stumble upon and discuss such problematic issues as audience and its effect on the style, content and organization of our papers; argument and how to construct it in order effectively to persuade the reader. We will explore many aspects of the writing process: invention, composition, revision, developing our skills as writers by employing our theoretical knowledge in various practical exercises, such as in-class writing assignments, peer evaluations, position papers and critical essays. We will have an opportunity to integrate all we have learned by producing a final research paper.

Since every traveler needs good companions for an enjoyable trip, we will be making our journey in the formidable company of Russian literary masterpieces. Our critical reading and analysis of short stories by famous Russian authors will stimulate class discussions and writing assignments. Reading selections may include stories by Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Gogol. Additional interdisciplinary readings related to the topics of Russian history, literature and culture will expose us to the rhetorical conventions of the academy and provide and opportunity to exercise our critical reading and writing skills on non-fictional texts. CRN 64285, TR 1230-1345; CRN 64366, TR 1400-1515.

Koren Bakkegard: Organized around the concept "The Individual and Social Responsibility," this course will focus on writing in the context of each writer's individual and social obligations. The course will conceive of writing as an essentially social function, interconnected with reading, thinking, and conversing. Consequently, students will examine how writing involves and represents one's negotiation with her or his social environment, and how attention to language enhances one's understanding of his or her place in society. Students will consider what motivates individual writers, how invitingly they present their ideas, and the consequences of their choices. Such examinations will pertain equally to the assigned texts and to essays written by fellow students. Classroom meetings will consist of seminar discussions and peer-review writing workshops. Assessment will be based upon a portfolio system that emphasizes process, revision, and self-evaluation. Our readings will likely include, among others, works by Cardinal Newman, Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Martin Luther King, Jr, Stephen Jay Gould, Barbara Tuchman, and Isak Dinesen, as well as Sophocles's Antigone. CRN 64103, MWF 0900-0950; CRN 64130, MWF 1300-1350.

Robert Barrick: As the course title may suggest, this particular version of CAS 105 is concerned with introducing (or strengthening) various aspects of writing and thinking. We will primarily address slippery questions about the interactions of individuals and audience: the overlapping concerns of argument and ideas, effective presentation, persuasion, and the like. There will be a lot of discussion, so be prepared to talk about your ideas and your writing. These discussions will be one way to shape and articulate your arguments, and, just as importantly, they will also expose you to some diverse feedback ---some of the interpretations and expectations of that amorphous thing called "the audience." Our overall goal is to establish a strong foundation for your understanding and continuing work with composition of all sorts, providing techniques useful for the future demands of academia, but also applicable to a wide variety of situations beyond the classroom. You'll be expected to lead at least one class discussion in addition to a significant deal of writing and revision: several short papers, one longer paper and a final research project. Grades will be determined by three main criteria: a portfolio of your work throughout the semester (collected twice), a separate grade for your research paper, and class participation. We'll be using a variety of texts: Albert Camus, The Fall, Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and Art Spiegelman, Maus I. We'll also be reading essays and excerpts of works (either photocopied or on reserve in the library), including works by Sven Birkerts, Angela Carter, Nadine Gordimer, Homer, James Joyce, Carl Jung, Martin Luther King Jr, George Orwell, Plutarch, Salman Rushdie, and a few others . CRN 64292, TR 1230-1345; CRN 64354, TR 1400-1525.

Marty Boyden: Through a number of writing opportunities, this course will develop students' understanding of language as the principal medium between self and world. Ultimately, students should recognize their writing as a freedom and power to exercise some effect upon the world, or at least to have some say as writers on their position in it. This course will particularly focus on the experience of the university and the modes of writing the university fosters. Beginning with a variety of perspectives on the university from such writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich and Soren Kierkegaard, members of the class will spend the first weeks of the semester developing a written articulation of their own positions as students within the university as they have experienced it so far. From these positions, students will then explore through a variety of written exercises the stylistic and research concerns they will face for the remainder of their university years. CRN 64112, MWF 1300-1350; CRN 64182, MW 1525-1640.

Jacalyn Eddy: This course explores various uses of written language around the broadly defined topic of American education. Readings will engage both historical and current debates about such issues as the function of education in democratic society, literacy, the role of public schools as cultural institutions, the use of electronic media in the classroom, grading, and teacher preparation. Using this loosely defined subject area, the course examines writing from several perspectives, including audience, intention, and readership. Written responses to assigned readings provide you with opportunities to reflect on and to improve your own writing. Course activities will focus on critical reading skills to identify crucial arguments in the texts, writing strategies that coherently and effectively respond to those arguments, and ongoing evaluation of your writing process. The anticipated outcome of this course is to prepare you not only for a more successful academic experience, but for participation in a culture which expects these skills to be part of an employment portfolio. Four shorter papers will prepare you to write a longer research paper, and a significant part of these assignments will include the opportunity for revision based on instructor and peer feedback. While this is not a course in research methods, some attention will also be devoted to effective use of library/research resources. Readings will include work by John Dewey, Malcolm Cowley, Carl Kaestle, Allan Bloom, Sven Birkerts, Jonathan Kozol, Michael Apple, Francine Prose, Herbert Kliebard and others. CRN 64237, MW 1525-1640; CRN XXXXX, MW 1400-1515.

Stefan (Steve) Forrester: Primarily, this course will be focused on improving the quality and increasing the quantity of each individual student's college writing. Qualitatively, we will examine the many different aspects of the writing process, such as generating ideas, composing effective thesis statements, revising papers for clarity and style, and learning how to best incorporate argumentation and evidence from outside texts into a college essay. After discussing these ideas and techniques in class, the student will then have the tools to better their own writing. Naturally, our exploration of the writing process will take place in an academic context. This means that all the papers written for this course will be academic papers, i.e., they will be directed at an academic audience, based on critical reading of academic texts, and held to the standards of academic prose. The two most important academic conventions we will cover are the ability to handle the arguments of other writers fairly and effectively, and the ability to incorporate the writing of others into your own writing by using proper research citation techniques, e.g. MLA format, APA format, etc. The readings for this course will be drawn from various sources, including the textbook. We will be discussing issues such as: obedience to authority and its role in social psychology, the concept of civil disobedience, the place of science in contemporary society, and the nature of college education and the university. CRN 64391, TR 1400-1515.

Joanna Grant: How does language work? When we speak of ourselves and our institutions, to what extent are our words reflecting what already exists? Or are we perhaps creating our worlds as we describe them? In this class, we shall examine writings by an array of writers from Joyce Carol Oates and Amy Tan to Charles Darwin and Marvin Minsky that will provoke us to reexamine the shifting ideological forces at play beneath the surface of American life. We will use the collection edited by Columbo, Cullen, and Lisle entitled Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing, and in our discussions about the readings we will pay special attention to issues of audience, identity, and argument. Regardless of a student's individual and professional interests, the development of reasoning and writing skills is essential for success both at the college level and in later life. With luck and luck, this can be an entertaining as well as an educational experience. CRN 64175, MWF 1300-1350; CRN 64223, MW 1525-1640.

Sean Guerin: Throughout workshops, teacher-student conferences, and frequent revision of drafts, this course attempts to provide students with the tools they will need to write coherent and forceful prose for the various academic departments that offer undergraduate classes here at the University of Rochester. The departments themselves have different standards and expectations for their respective undergraduate writing requirements, but this course will have succeeded if students who take it are able by the end of the term to adapt themselves readily from one discipline to the next. My own discipline is history, and the texts that we read (all of them xeroxed hand-outs) will be historical ones, primary sources mainly, built around a theme that I loosely define as "Cultural Criticism in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s." We will delve into the writings of a motley crew of characters from that period, most of them deeply dissatisfied. The cast of characters will include icons of the Beat Generation, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, conservatives like Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr., 60s counter-cultural theorists like Theodore Roszak and Charles Reich, and prophets of "positive thinking" like Norman Vincent Peale. Other participants will include Malcolm X, Betty Friedan, Norman Mailer, Paul Goodman, William Whyte, David Riesman, and Michael Harrington. These writers are nothing if not provocative and will hopefully provoke students into developing strong positions around which they will construct compelling and logical arguments in the long research paper and various shorter papers that they compose and revise over the course of the term with the help of their classmates and teacher. CRN 64318, TR 1230-1345; CRN 64363, TR 1400-1515.

Mary Henold: In this section of CAS 105, the readings will reflect the theme of "Founding Fathers to Unwed Mothers: Writing about Gender and American Culture." You will practice writing and reasoning skills as you try to answer the following two questions: How have Americans created what it means to be male and female in this culture, and how have these ideas of gender influenced American history? Learning to use gender as an analytical tool is a good way to help you think about texts critically, and it's a valuable skill that crosses disciplines. [Note: Gender means women and men. We will study both in this class]. In order to strengthen your critical reading and thinking skills, you will analyze secondary sources to learn how historians and other scholars write about gender. You will also study and write about a variety of primary sources. These will range from letters, diaries and sex education manuals to popular magazines, advertisements and films. For several essays, you will be able to choose the primary sources you write about. We will approach writing as a process that is unique to each person. In this course you will explore your own writing process as you gain the skills you will need to write effectively for an academic community. You will learn that the writing process includes determining purpose and audience, generating ideas, formulating arguments, establishing form and style as well as careful attention to grammar. You will also learn that re-writing is a critical and inevitable part of writing — so in this class you will gain the necessary tools to assess your own work and reapproach it. Participating in peer editing workshops will help you see your own work and the work of others critically. Assignments will include informal in-class writing and 3 formal short papers (3-5 pgs). You will also write a research paper (9-10 pgs) based on primary source analysis. CRN 64271, TR 1230-1345; CRN 64389, TR 1400-1515.

William Jay Lavigne: This class is intended to introduce you to writing at the college level, particularly those forms of critical and analytical writing which are most important to academic projects. The challenge is, as I see it, to engender a critical approach to writing. Fundamental to this are strong critical reading skills. After all, if you can not look critically at (and articulate) the problems of a given piece of writing, how can you gauge the effectiveness of your own writing? To this end, we will read established 'masters' of argument in an attempt to discern not only 'what' is said, but 'how' it is said, and why it works. Often we will read as companion pieces twentieth-century works that speak to the conventions of these earlier arguments. Readings will include excerpts from the writings of Malcolm X, Abraham Lincoln, Garrison Keillor, Benjamin Franklin, and John Cage among others. Students will also be given several opportunities to incorporate readings pertinent to their particular field(s) of interest. Assignments and exercises are intended to be challenging, but also fun. They are designed to allow you to explore various strategies for revision (including small group discussions and peer reviews) while also providing the time and intellectual space to refine your arguments and their written expression. Through out the semester you will be asked to write multiple drafts of a few short essays that will in turn prepare you to write two drafts of a longer research project on a topic of your choice. CRN 64320, TR 1230-1345; CRN 64347, TR 1400-1515.

Todd Long: This course is designed to promote effective writing at the college level. Although students write for a variety of purposes and disciplines during their college careers, general skills that promote critical reading and writing may be applied to a wide rangeT of writing assignments. The aim of this course will be to develop those general skills. Since almost all college writing involves reasoning, assignments for this course are intended to enhance your ability to identify, interpret, and assess the reasoning involved in various texts, as well as to construct your own well-formed arguments. Writing effectively also requires considering what you want to write and how you want to write in light of your purpose and your audience. All the writing exercises in this course will encourage you to develop a philosophy of writing that effective college writers share: writing is a process. Accordingly, this course will emphasize the importance of prewriting, revising, and editing in constructing effective college prose. As our texts for this course, we will use writings from philosophers and non-fiction essayists with a literary bent. For the philosophers our selections for reading and discussion will include Plato, Rene Descartes, and George Berkeley, and essayists will include C. S. Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, and Leo Tolstoy. You do not need to have any prior knowledge of these writers to perform well in this course, but an interest in philosophy or literary/cultural criticism will greatly enhance your enjoyment of this course. CRN 64258, MW 1815-1930.

Dan Mittag: This course is designed to introduce you to analytical and critical writing, forms of writing which you will be expected to be able to produce at the University of Rochester. We will spend time critically reading articles on a variety of issues (including, but not limited to, justice and the theory of knowledge) and by a variety of writers like Martin Luther King, Plato, Thoreau, Gandhi, and Bertrand Russell. Our goal is to understand both how the author uses argument and evidence in an effort to establish his thesis and how these articles work as a whole. As a result, we will carefully look at the variety and forms of argumentation, and we also will practice locating, extracting and analyzing the arguments presented in these articles. Our primary interest in reading and discussing these articles will be to understand how evidence and argument work so that you can then apply these techniques in your own writing. Writing is a process, and revision is a substantial and vital part of this process. As a result, you will be asked to write a series of critical papers of varying lengths, and these papers and the ideas presented in them will be under constant revision. CRN 64129, MWF 1300-1350.

Kara Mitzel: The goal of this course is to provide you with the tools to be your own best critic and editor so that you can independently improve your own writing for any occasion. Having said that, the writing assignments in this course are intended to specifically prepare you for academic writing. We will work towards developing cogent theses, constructing and evaluating arguments, and mastering writing mechanics. We will also examine writing as a highly social phenomenon. There will be a strong emphasis on workshops, peer review, and revision in this course. Your grade will predominantly be based on a portfolio of your work. This means that all your work will be subject to revision and will only receive a grade at the semester's end. Because library research will be a large component of your studies at the university, you will also be expected to produce a research paper of approximately ten pages in length. Part of being a good writer is being a good reader. We will approach reading assignments as opportunities to analyze texts for their strengths and weaknesses by discussing such rhetorical strategies as audience, occasion, and style. The reading assignments for this course are best described as eclectic. Among others, we will analyze and evaluate a 19th-century slave narrative, a variety of 20th-century political speeches, a recent documentary, two 16th-century pamphlets on gender, and a variety of essays by scholars and historical figures. In order to bring us truly into the twenty-first century, we will also discuss the pros and cons of hypertext, focusing on methods to evaluate web sites. In all of these instances, we will discuss what makes an argument effective, what strategies the author employs, and what the piece can tell us about how language shapes our perception of the world. CRN 64305, TR 1230-1345; CRN 64372, TR 1400-1515.

Carmen Reyes: How do you write? This is the first of many questions about the writing process that we will consider. Of course, how we write and the various roles we take on as writers change according to the demands we encounter at the time of writing. This course is designed to help you develop and practice various strategies for meeting the demands you will encounter as a writer at the college and beyond. In addition to various in-class writing assignments, you will be expected to write and revise approximately 5 short papers, ranging from 2 to 5 pages, and a research paper of 8-10 pages. In order to explore different strategies for dealing with the changing demands we face as writers, we will read a variety of essays from a wide range of academic journals and magazines, such as The New York Review of Books, Science, Doubletake, and The American Scholar, all of which demonstrate varying approaches to (and contexts for) writing. Moreover, you will find that many of the essays explore the ways in which language can be used to reveal and conceal meaning, an issue we will return to when we read Jamaica Kincaid's book-length essay A Small Place. As much as the readings will provide us with insight into how particular writers view themselves and their relationships with language in light of the demands they encounter throughout the writing process, the written and spoken contributions of the students in this course (including you) will be our most important resource. CRN 64148, MWF 1300-1350; CRN 64194, MWF 0900-0950.

Ann Robinson: Learning how to write well is a long and arduous process, requiring discipline and practice. Our goal here is not to turn each and every one of you into a publishable author; rather, it is to acquaint you with skills which will prove invaluable to you as you complete (successfully, of course) your academic career. Writing involves much more than putting pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. It involves reading closely and critically, learning effective pre-writing strategies (such as developing a thesis and collecting evidence), drafting and revising, and only finally putting together a clear, concise and polished version of your work. This course focuses on recognizing and developing an argument, organizing your writing effectively, identifying and applying various rhetorical strategies, learning how to discern and write for a specific audience, and starting you on your way to developing your own academic voice or style. This course is not a literature course (or, don't panic if you're in Engineering). It is an applied writing skills course. That is, its purpose is to familiarize you with academic writing in a variety of disciplines We will be using as our primary text an anthology of short writings, Patterns of Exposition, edited by Decker and Schwegler (Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1998), which includes writing strategies such as 'Using Patterns for Argument' and 'Reasoning by Use of Induction and Deduction' and organizes the writings according to various themes or issues ('Men and Women' and 'Culture and Customs,' for example). The readings are interesting and designed to get you thinking about the writing process. You will also be provided with several handouts on the nuts and bolts of academic writing. CRN 64209, MW 1525-1640; CRN 64246, MW 1815-1930.

Steven Thalheimer: How do Americans view themselves and their country? When people speak of the American family, what do they mean and what are they using as a model? How should people in a democracy be educated? Is a nation truly a democracy if some citizens are not afforded equal status? What are the promises and contradictions of the American Dream? This section of CAS 105 is structured thematically around these questions, among others, not to formulate definitive answers, but rather to investigate what other people and we ourselves believe about the American Ideal, the American Dream. We will look at various writings on family, education, economics, gender, and equality throughout America's evolution, as found in the collection Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing, and we will analyze what people have claimed about this country and its culture, what they have suggested to raise awareness of the nation's shortcomings, and what they envision for improving America. Students will identify, interpret, and evaluate reasoning in what they read as well as when formulating their own positions on these issues. With emphasis on audience, argument, thesis formation, and style, this course will stress the entire writing process from prewriting and drafting through revision and final editing. Peer revision and conferences with the instructor will be critical to this process. The purpose of this course is not only to help students become more critical of what they read, but, more importantly, to encourage them to become critical of their own thinking and writing as they develop, revise, and edit arguments. CRN 64099, MWF 0900-0950; CRN 64156, MW 1300-1350.