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:
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:
|
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 ObjectivesThe 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:
|
Topical Outline of the Three Units of the CourseStudents of the course will work through three units.
|
Methodological topics taught within each unit include:
|
EvaluationStudents will be evaluated based on a final portfolio, which will include all the writing done during the semester:
|