Course Purpose

In this course you will engage in a serious inquiry into an educational prejudice concerning the role reading plays in our becoming and developing as writers. Simply stated, we all "know" that reading more, and reading more complex and sophisticated texts, will lead to being a better reader and better writer. However, there is a bit more to this simple maxim than meets the eye.
To begin the inquiry of the course, I suggest that we look carefully at the moment we encounter a new reading situation. More often than not, we approach new texts with a handicap: we are limited in terms of the possible roles we might play as a reader. That is, we think we already know how to read. And so, when we encounter a text exhibiting complexity and sophistication beyond what we are accustomed to read, we might, in discouragement, greatly simplify the text. Or perhaps we will completely reject it as worthless. Rarely do we identify ourselves as the source of our resistance and then allow ourselves to then invent new ways to approach the text. This is a core issue of this course, and it will take you having something at stake for yourself as a reader and writer to support you in breaking through to new levels of reading and writing. Having something at stake for yourself requires you to take on a commitment that will call on you to be "bigger" than the way you wound up being the reader and writer you find yourself currently being.
An important question: what is the relationship between the roles we have learned to play as readers and the possibilities we have available as writers? To get at how each of us is situated in this relationship, we need to examine our reading practices and distinguish two things about them: 
1) what they grant us, and 
2) what limitations they impose. 
This examination promises to open us up to developing new readerly roles and reading practices that go with these roles. The question of the course then comes into play: if you succeed in distinguishing and developing new roles for yourself to play as a reader, how does this development impact you as a writer?
Recurring themes of our inquiry will be: 
What are the "always already" role(s) you play as a reader? That is, what consistent, customary, "default" role or roles do you play when approaching a given text? 

What constraints do these roles impose on you?

How might it be possible to invent and develop new roles to play as readers?

How do these new roles impact your writing?
If you succeed in developing new roles for yourself to play as a reader, how does this development impact you as a writer?

Learning Outcomes and Objectives

The promised outcome of this course is for each student to move beyond mere comprehension of a given text, which can be challenging in itself, and to begin to master rhetorical and craft-based issues at work in any narrative with the appreciative and critical eyes of a writer. 

The power to see greater levels of sophistication and complexity at work in a given text--a view granted by the appreciative and critical eyes of a writer--emerges when we attend to concerns of structure, genre, intertextuality, and audience,  and so these concerns will comprise the theoretical methods you will study and practice.

​You will use these methods to question the initial perspective given by the "rhetorical stance" (what we will call your "reading for," or what you "read for") that you bring into each reading event, and you will also use these methods to deepen your critical engagement with the choices writers make. The fundamental principle at work here is that if you can think through and articulate the choices other writers have grappled with, then you can think through and articulate similar choices in your own writing efforts.
Learning objectives for achieving this outcome include having students:
  • Practice identifying, bracketing, and critically engaging with generic expectations that limit how complex and sophisticated writing may be comprehended and appreciated;
  • Develop a variety of theoretical vocabularies with which to meaningfully discuss methods of reading as writers (for example: structure, register, genre, and intertextuality);
  • Learn to collaborate in meaningful and productive small group discussions to produce meaningful responses to your reading experiences;
  • Learn to reflect on your own growth and development as a writer reading and to articulate this growth and development in writing.

Topical Outline of the Three Units of the Course

Students of the course will work through three units. 
In the first unit students will create an inventory of past readings and reading practices, which will assist me in placing you into reading groups of four students each.

Once you are set up in a given reading group, you will work with your group to generate and then propose at least one narrative for the class to vote to include in our readings for the semester. ​Your reading group must provide a good reason for the class to vote for reading that book. The class will rank vote for three books.
Simultaneously, during this first unit, as a class, we will read and write about a single book using the methods of the course (structure, genre, intertextuality, audience), which will then prepare you to practice these methods in the second unit, wherein we will read the remaining three books voted on by the class.
In the second unit students will proceed to read through their approved reading list of three books. Each student is required to:
Lead the collaborative composition of one reading per method using theories learned during the course (each group member will provide at least one significant reading for each book);
Each student is to participate in the composition of each reading through in-class discussion and by providing contributions to the Google Doc.
In the third and final unit, each student will reflect on and share their growth and development as a writer reading, drawing from readings from the course, class discussions, the collaboratively composed readings, and most importantly, from what you have discovered for yourself throughout the semester. 
Methodological topics taught within each unit include:
  • Understanding how to summarize narratives through focusing on the interplay of its conflicting values;
  • Confronting the limits of one's customary rhetorical stances when beginning to read such that new readerly roles may be created;
  • Working to comprehend complex and sophisticated texts through identifying and reflecting on the rhetorical and craft-based choices writers make;
  • Discerning and analyzing the complex rhetorical relationships between writers and the various audiences writers address and invoke in their writing;
  • Distinguishing and analyzing the variety of registers writers employ;
  • Distinguishing and critically examining the generic and intertextual features present in different forms of writing, and how those features call for different approaches.

Evaluation

Students will be evaluated based on a final portfolio, which will include all the writing done during the semester: