r6: Favorites

As a way of celebrating the work we’ve done this semester, I’d like you to you to showcase two passages written by your classmates that you particularly admire.

Here are the rules: You may pick your favorites from any piece that any of your classmates has written over the course of the semester. However, the two passages must come from two different essays, written by two different authors in this class. While you may talk about broad issues of structure or tone, you must anchor your discussion in a 25-150 word quotation from each essay.  But you should also feel free to point to brief moments in a piece that others might overlook but that you find somehow moving, apt, funny, or stylish. Whatever passages you choose, tell us what you want us to notice about them.

Please post your response by 5:00 PM on Monday, 4/19, and try to read the other responses by class on Tues, 4/20.

d5

Here are the groups for your last workshop!

Group 3 (same as before)

Caroline
Kaveh
Christina
Lucy

Group 7 (new)

Angela
Ashley B
Renata
Yang

Group 8 (new)

Ashley R
Nina
James

Please post your draft to your Group by 11:00 AM on Mon, 4/12, and read and comment on the other drafts by class on Tuesday evening.

d4

Draft Four is due next Monday, 3/22, at 11:00 AM. Please post your piece to Google Groups.

I would like to vary the groups for this one workshop. They will be:

Group 4

Wanda

Renata

Kaveh

Ashley B

Group 5

Angela

Caroline

Nina

Ashley R

Group 6

Christina

Yang

James

Lucy

r3: Reading Cultural Criticism

In  class next week, I’d like us to talk about what goes into writing essays that are both critical and personal.  To prepare for this discussion, please read the pieces that the editors of The Fourth Genre list under “Cultural Criticism/Literary Journalism” (xii-xiii). To get started thinking about these pieces, consider the following questions:

• What sort of point or edge does this essay have? What does the writer want us to think or believe or see differently?
• How would you describe the kind  of person you hear in this essay? How does the writer try to earn your trust or confidence as a reader?

In writing your response, I’d like you to contrast two essays—one whose writer wins you over as a reader, and another whose writer doesn’t. See if you can use the two essays to point to some strategies for creating a winning or authoritative persona as a writer.

Please post your response to the blog by 5:00 pm on Mon, 2/22. I’m eager to see what you make of this slightly different form of writing. Or perhaps you’ll find it not so different after all?

~jh

r2: Rendering Experience

For our class next week, please read the pieces that the editors of The Fourth Genre list under “Memoir” (xi). As you read, please think about the two issues that I posed for our writing groups this evening:

• What is the center of this essay? What experience or event anchors what the writer has to say? How does the writer evoke those experiences, make them real for us as readers?
• Where is this essay headed? What insight or idea does the writer draw from this experience? What does the writer do to link interpretation to experience?

In writing your second response, then, please focus on one essay that you feel has both a strong center and sense of direction. Try to point to specific moments in the text where the writer achieves these qualities. See if you can identify writing moves or strategies you might use in your work.

Please post your response to the blog by 5:00 pm on Mon, 2/08. I look forward to finding out what strikes you about these pieces.

~jh

Draft One (d1)

For next week I’d like you to get started on a draft of one of your two main essays for this course. I need to ask you to submit this draft by 11:00 am on Mon, 2/01—or otherwise I may not be able to comment on all 12 drafts by the next evening.

You’ll want to write something that is long enough so your readers get a sense of what your piece is about and where you’re headed, so I’d aim for at least 1,200 words (or four or so typed pages). But the main thing now is to get off to a good start—not to produce a finished and polished essay right off the start. So while I’ll expect you to proofread your work, I don’t expect you to shine every sentence to perfection, yet.

If you find it useful to add a note or two to your readers describing where your piece is headed, or offering some context for your writing, or filling in some blanks—then feel free to do so.

Please use the following formula to title your document

• firstname_cc_draft.docx  (for cultural critiques), or
• firstname_pe_draft.docx (for personal essays.

And so, for example, if Kaveh starts work on a personal essay, he’d title his document:

• kaveh_pe_d1.docx

My apologies if this seems a little OCD, but since we will be trading a lot of documents over the semester, I think it will be useful to follow a consistent system for naming and tracking them.

Please read the post on Writing Groups for more on how we will share and respond to these drafts. I look forward to reading your work!

~jh

Responses to Readings

You are required to write six brief responses over the course of this semester to the essays collected in The Fourth Genre. We’ll use these responses to start and frame our talk in class about these essays, so your writing needs to be pointed, concise (about 500 words) thoughtful, and on time.

Please post your responses to this blog by Monday at 11:00 am. This early deadline is to allow us all time to scan the full set of responses by our class meeting on Tuesday evening, when I will expect you to be ready to talk about not only the essays from The Fourth Genre but also about what your classmates have had to say about them.

I’ll post a specific prompt for each of the six responses in the coming weeks. What I can tell you now, though, is that I hope you will think of these responses not as mini-critical-essays, but rather as opportunities to open up possible lines of conversation about the essays we are reading—to ask questions, pose problems, or suggest ways in which these pieces might serve as models for our own work as writers.

While informal, your responses should not seem careless or hurried. I advise you to compose and edit your work in Word before posting it to the blog. I will comment briefly on your responses and grade them on a check system.

Good luck! I look forward to reading what you have to say!

~jh