Courses

What Makes Writing Good?

English 882/Education 737

The increased and ever-growing emphasis on assessing writing, particularly in the form of high-stakes writing tests, suggests the need to consider some of the larger issues surrounding the question of what makes writing good. What, for example, can we learn from the reception of literary works? How /do aesthetic considerations applied by critics inform the way we do or might think about the quality of student writing? What can we learn from the ways that literature shapes and is shaped by social, economic and cultural forces? How do the material conditions that determine which literary works are available (or not) contribute to considerations of quality? Looking at the question from another angle, what ideologies can we discern in the various conditions of textual production—including impromptu, extended, or portfolio—and the several approaches to evaluation—holistic, primary trait, criterion-based and so on—used in the assessment of student writing? And how do or might such ideologies inform questions of quality in writing? From still another direction, how might we think about the increasing use of machines to make decisions about the quality of writing? What can we learn from discussions about the agency of non-human forces or what Jane Bennett calls “vibrant matter”?

This seminar will consider questions like these through examination of spcific cases, and students will develop cases of their own to foster further exploration. We will, for example, consider the reception of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Alice Sophia Callahan’sWynema. We will examine the writing portion of multiple standardized tests in the context of the evolving history of assessing student writing. And we will consider AES systems along with ANTCONC or another tool of corpus linguistics as examples of ways that machines participate in decisions about quality.

The last part of the course will be devoted to the development of individual seminar projects that emerge from the preceding discussions as well as from individual interests and workshop activity.

Introduction to Composition Studies

English 570/Education 621

This course is designed to do the impossible--to provide an introduction to the field of composition studies in a single semester. Although we cannot cover all aspects of the field, we will begin by considering genre and the various ways—both theoretical and practical—it appears in the field. We will take a brief look at history and then turn to theory. We will do some analysis of textbooks and examine various approaches to research in the field. We will also consider some of the effects of new media on the field and ponder the various meanings and implications of difference. Woven into this range of topics will be opportunities for regular writing, examination of digital resources, and sustained work on a topic that is of special interest to you. In addition to class resources, we will take advantage of the Sweetland speaker series.

Our discussions will undoubtedly raise as many questions as answers, and I do not presume that we will arrive at a settled view on any of the topics under consideration. Because we are all teachers, the classroom will never be far from our considerations. We will return again and again to questions about how teachers can facilitate student writing and what makes writing good.

Perspectives on Literacy

English 630/Education 621

This course considers literacy as a cultural practice in the United States, ranging from the Colonial period to the present. It begins from the assumption that literacy is a dynamic term, continually shifting as its sponsors and participants negotiate with and contribute to its multiple meanings. Among the questions to be considered are these: How has literacy’s role in marking the difference between “savage” and “civilized” contributed to and complicated nation building? What can we learn from gendered differences in access to literacy? What significance can we attach to the frequent juxtaposition of literacy and crisis? What are the meanings and implications of illiteracy? How did the alphabetic emphasis of literacy in American culture evolve, and what is its significance? How do we understand the relationship between literacy and schooling? How do shifts in the technologies for creating, distributing and preserving information—from quill pen to web 2.0—contribute to the meanings we assign to literacy?