Senior English: WRiting & Research

This is not a llama.

Welcome to the website for Senior English: Writing & Research.

In 1950, Alan Turing wrote an article called "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" which began with the following line: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" This article is very important to your life because much of what we now know about computers, which include the phones in your pockets, is based on what Turing described there. But, before we can talk about those computers, those iPhones and Androids, those laptops and grade book programs, websites and tweets and TikToks and snapped chats, we need to answer a more fundamental question.

In this class, I propose to consider the question, 'Am I human?' and invite you to join me in that task.

Although you think this may be an easy question and, therefore, an easy class, be careful! This class will require you to think about yourself and your life in ways you have hitherto not even considered.

As your teacher for this course, I will be here to guide you in answering this question. I will be providing you with information and rhetorical strategies that will help you to answer the question, but please be aware that I will not be providing you with the answer. That is your job.

In addition to this philosophical task, we will also spend the semester practicing for the main task associated with being a functioning adult in society: critical thinking. Critical thinking allows people to work through problems and envision possible futures and how to work toward them. Critical thinking is what defines us a adults, rather than children who not only can't always think through situations in advance, but often don't even consider planning or considering options.

There are several ways in which people think critically, but two of the most important are through reading and writing. For most of our history since we developed the technology of writing, it has been used to communicate—to oneself, to people in the writer's present, and to people who would come later, outside the time of the writer. (Writing is often about talking to the future as much as it is about talking about the past.)

In grade school, you were taught "how to write" by being drilled on your alphabet and being taught structures like words, sentences, paragraphs, and, eventually, essays (although you probably called them "reports" back in the day). In middle school and high school, these book reports turned into "literary analysis" or "DBQs" in your history classes. But the task essentially remained the same: you were being tasked with producing writing to show, or prove, that you have done something or understood something. Occasionally, some of you may have been asked to form an argument, but rarely about something that you care about.

The end result was that you have learned that the product of your writing was more important that the labor of producing the product. The final draft got the grade, not the work you put into making that draft.

This class will be radically different.

Along the way, you will also be learning to 

• become a better writer, student, and citizen

• complete college-level writing assignments

• understand how to evaluate and assess your own reading and writing

• approach your education and work in an ethical, thoughtful, mature manner.

These constitute the "Instructional Outcomes" of the course; they are your "I will" statements...