101. Writing

Required of all first-year students except those who have passed the Advanced Placement examination with a 4 or 5 or have passed the Wheaton exemption examination, which is given by invitation. The focus for the writing and reading varies from section to section, permitting students to follow special interests and explore new material. All sections introduce students to some college-level literacy practices. The topic for each of the sections will be announced before the date of course selections and sent to all entering students during the summer. Recent topics have included popular culture, London, multicultural lives, the environment, and rebellion and authority.

At least one short paper each week or a longer paper biweekly is required. Focus is on understanding invention, composing, revising and editing processes and using them. Students are encouraged to engage in conferences outside of class with their professors and to seek the help of Wheaton's student writing tutors, who have completed a one-semester peer tutoring course that is jointly offered by the English and education departments.

You will be asked to do a lot of writing at Wheaton, and this course will help you to do it well. You will work with the instructor and your classmates on different kinds of writing assignments, and you'll become more comfortable with writing while you improve your skills. Most sections include both formal and informal writing, and you will confer with the instructor about individual drafts and, at times, read and respond to other students' writing in a workshop setting.

(see also Spring Semester sections)

Fall Semester 2008

Section A01 Writing about Reality and Risk

Note: To take this course, you must also enroll in First-Year Seminar A01.
Writing about Reality and Risk will focus on the ease with which we use the term "reality" and will seek to discover the many levels of its meaning by examining what is "real" in the essays, fiction, poetry, and occasional play that will comprise our weekly reading. These works will cover such authors as Emma Goldman, Joan Didion, Arthur Miller, Sophocles, Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, William Blake, Flannery O'Connor, James Joyce and many others. The level of attention we apply to each reading will uncover the risk each author has taken to say something real; we, in turn, will come as close as we can to engaging in the reality each author presents, taking something of a risk ourselves by doing so. This course is writing and reading intensive and includes the keeping of an academic journal, active participation in class discussions, and engagement with each other's written work through the on-going process of peer review and workshops. (Constance Campana)

Section A02 Writing about Knowing and Not Knowing

Note: To take this course, you must also enroll in First-Year Seminar A02.
We are going to explore and explode systems of knowledge building--and their surrounding myths--in a variety of contexts that challenge class and cultural assumptions about what is important to know. Authors ranging from Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglas to Jamaica Kincaid and Joan Didion have taken up this subject with wildly different ideas in mind. Together, we will engage a variety of writings, at least one film, a radical encyclopedia, and likely a play in production to begin to shape a critical approach to what we study and why. All of this will be taken up with the goal of creating a dynamic environment for your rhetorical writing to grow. Writing and re-writing will be our mantra, as well as peer critiques, intellectual rigor, and stimulating conversation. Be prepared to share your brilliance, generosity, and enthusiasm for the luxurious life of the mind and the responsibility that comes with it. (Charlotte Meehan)

Section A03 Writing about Chocolate, Dragons and Other Problems

Note: To take this course, you must also enroll in First-Year Seminar A03.
The course will be conducted as a workshop, with students completing assignments tailored to their individual writing needs and conferring frequently with the instructor. Most assignments will be analytic essays of the sort expected in other college courses (e.g., comparison and contrast, deductive essay, book review, and literary or quantitative analysis), yet the topics will often allow for creativity(e.g., dragon fighting, eating chocolates, and personal experiences). (Beverly Lyon Clark)

Section A04 Writing about Environmental Arguments

Note: To take this course, you must also enroll in First-Year Seminar A04.
Nature. We worship it, battle it, defend it, preserve it, buy it, sell it, define it against our art, our enemies, ourselves. So what is it? And what are the current conversations surrounding it? How do various texts form and inform these conversations, and how do we enter the exchange? Finally, how do our own relationships, histories and experiences with nature filter these arguments? Through reading, discussing, researching and writing about arguments suggested by authors as diverse as Ursula LeGuin and Robert Bullard, we will engage the kinds of critical reading and writing needed to participate in college life. Writing will unfold as a means of self-reflection, self-expression and communication with others. Peer reviews, in-class workshops, and conferences with the professor will help you to hone and understand your literacy processes. The course culminates with the submission and presentation of an electronic final portfolio that will be due on the last day of classes. (Lisa Lebduska)

Section A05 Writing about Los Angeles

Los Angeles: the City of Angels. How has a city burdened with such divine hope come to symbolize all that is most sinfully and hopelessly human about American culture? Why does it continue to attract those whose sense of the American dream is tinged with golden hues, those who read in the tale of Icarus not a cautionary narrative but rather an achievable desire? Is it the possible commodification of LA as the utopian realization of the American dream? In Los Angeles, Morrow Mayo has said: "Los Angeles, it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be advertised and sold to the people of the United States like automobiles, cigarettes and mouth wash." This course will examine how writing about the city has both contributed to and critiqued the commodification of LA and the glorification of the Californian dream. How does writing continue to construct the metaphorical cityscape, while effectively arguing for a reconsideration of the LA story? We will attempt to uncover and map the pluralities of life in LA, from alienation to segregation, through a number of different discourses: detective fiction, essays, films, sociopolitical history, and drama. We will be reading work from writers such as Mike Davis, Joan Didion, Raymond Chandler, John Dunne, Anna Deavere Smith, and others. (James Patrick Byrne)

Section A06 Writing about the Journalistic Tradition

Powerful imagery, moving stories and unforgettable quotes all make for great journalism. But the craft of writing news and criticism for the popular press grows as much from a "readerly" approach to writing as it does from the other stand-bys of the craft: skilled observation, rigorous reporting and critical thinking. This course is about reading to write. We will revisit Civil War hospitals and battle fields with Walt Whitman; enter New York City's immigrant ghettos with Jacob Riis; go to war with John Hersey, Mary MacCarrthy and Neil Sheehan; immerse ourselves in the counterculture with Hunter S. Thompson; and revisit the revolutionary spirit in the Third World with Raymond Bonner. With these pieces of writing as our companions and guides, we will learn to read deeply, excavating the reporting methodologies, expressive devices and storytelling techniques that have allowed great reporters and critics to confront their objects of study and analysis. At the same time, we will learn the limiting dynamics of "objective" reporting and the persistent questions that continue to preoccupy contemporary critics: the nature of modernity and postmodernity; and the relationship between politics and aesthetics. Through in-class reading and writing workshops as well as student presentations, this course will teach you to read like a writer and write like a critic. (Talitha Espiritu)

Section A07 Writing about Image and Reality

When we speak of reality--reality TV, say, or narrative realism--whose reality do we mean? What does an accurate representation of reality look like, and is there such a thing as objective reality? Is lived experience harmonious (as reflected in naturalistic drama) or chaotic (where the narrative arc is less of a rainbow and more of a downward spiral)? We will analyze the ways various artists/writers/filmmakers explore and share their versions of reality.

We'll discover common threads and asymmetries in our own perceptions as we look at constructions of meaning, truth in fiction, and illusions behind certain truths. We'll start by exploring the line between fiction and nonfiction; fact and opinion; image (imaginary) and evidence. When we read something, we know words can mean lots of different things, but in such an objective genre as photography, is truth easily visible? Then we'll look at films by Antonioni, Herzog, and Zana Briski (the documentary dilemma) as we explore the power of images to define--not merely record reality.

We'll discuss the relationship of the frame to the image, the image to reality, and reality to the scripted environments of image-making (celebrity and presidential politics). What is the impact of constant-stream video recordings (YouTube) on the current political landscape? Is the spontaneous slip more real than the well-crafted speech? And what do we make of the raging tide of schadenfreude that drives the pervasive coverage of meltdowns and mishaps? We¢â¡Áll braid critical theory, creativity and persuasion, research, analysis and critical thinking.

Assignments criss-cross the dividing line between what's believable and what's not, between fantasy and reality and include a self-portrait, a photo essay, an interview, field and library research, and essays of every stripe. Cross-genre readings include a play (Edward Albee), a novel (fiction contextualized in real events and images), poetry, essays, short stories, mock memoirs (Moll Flanders to mockumentary), art, photographs, movies, and letters (to the editor, and A-Z). (Sherry Mason)

Section A08 Writing about Public Health

What power does writing have in the face of world hunger, AIDS, malaria, gang violence, and hurricanes? What role can writing play in medicine, scientific research, community healing and international aid work? How do writers define "public health" implicitly and explicitly for various audiences? In this class, we will look at powerful examples of public health writing, and we will develop narrative, persuasive and research techniques for writing about current global health issues. (Sarah E. Green)

Section A09 Writing about Los Angeles

Section A10 Writing about Our World

What is the role of reading and writing in a world that has film and television, iPods and YouTube? We will use this question to guide us through this intensive introduction to the reading and writing skills necessary for critical argumentation at the college level. We will read a series of contemporary essays that explore and debate many of the most pressing cultural and political topics of our modern world. The readings will ask us to consider a wide range of issues, including the aftermath of the Vietnam War (and what it might say about our current military conflicts), the cultural politics of being a "global citizen," and examinations of what fashion trends can tell us about human behavior, to name a few of the course¢â¡Ás topics. Each of these investigations will be linked by our attention to the ways that critical thinking allows us to understand and respond to such issues. The course will end with a focus on the way that reading and writing happen in another part of the world among a different culture by examining Azar Nafisi's recent account of her time as a teacher of English in Iran, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Other readings will include: pieces of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point; Beth Loffreda remembering the death of Matthew Shepherd, Susan Faludi debating gender integration at the southern military academy the Citadel, and David Abram reflecting on what he has called "the ecology of magic." (James Mulholland)

Section A11 Writing About Crime

What's so bad about crime? Who has more fun-the private detective on the all-night stakeout, or the assassin on the prowl? Is there a clear line between good and evil, and if so, where do we draw it? Step into the murky shadows with Robert B. Parker and Lawrence Block, Thom Gunn and Frank Bidart. If we're lucky, we might even run into Truman Capote while we're there. This course will have elements of traditional lecture and discussion combined with workshop. We'll use crime as a framework to discuss the larger issues of writing in both formal and informal assignments. Each student will have frequent one-on-one consultations with the instructor. There will be an emphasis on process and revision while we develop the skills needed for college-level writing. (Ruth Foley)

Section A12 Writing about Multi-Cultural Lives

What do you think of when you hear the word "culture"? Race? Religion? Traditions? Language? What does it mean to be living among people who embody different aspects of culture? What does it mean to identify with more than one culture simultaneously? We'll look at some possible answers, along with the work of Louise Erdrich, Martin Espada, Barbara Kingsolver, and others. If you're really good, we'll spend a class or two with Will Smith. This course will have elements of traditional lecture and discussion along with workshop and small group work. We'll use the different aspects of culture as a framework to discuss the larger issues of writing in both formal and informal assignments. Each student will have frequent one-on-one consultations with the instructor. There will be an emphasis on process and revision while we develop the skills needed for college-level writing. (Ruth Foley)

Section A13 Representations of the Self in Popular Culture

What makes each individual--forms a person's essence? Instinct? Integrity? Can one learn how to create a "new you"? Are we in danger of losing our primal selves as we conform to jobs' demands--so we can buy products by which we establish our identity? In this class we'll explore images of the self in popular culture that are based in gender, ethnicity, and individuals' relationships to power. We'll consider the extent of their influence and the consequences of defining the self in these ways. Texts will include Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, Alan Moore and David Lloyd's graphic novel V for Vendetta, and essays on fashion and Hip Hop. In our writing we'll analyze and interpret images of the self and critique essays that do likewise. We'll record our immediate responses, discuss them, practice extensive "free-writing" to fully explore our ideas, confer with each other about how we'll develop them, and figure out how to structure each essay, given not only our goals in writing, but also our readers' needs and expectations. Then we'll draft and revise to produce focused, clear essays. Some evening film viewings will be required. (Rebecca Kanost)

Section A14 Write...or Remain Silent: Politics & Cultural Citizenship in the Age of the Internet

In the months before the upcoming election, presidential, senatorial and congressional campaigns will spend close to a billion dollars trying to win your vote. Conventional media--TV, magazines, newspapers--have long been used to shape public opinion during election season. Today, they face a formidable opponent in 'netroots' politics, in which thousands of professional and amateur bloggers, reporters, and activists from across the ideological spectrum are using the Internet to redefine the relationship between culture, politics and citizenship.

That the Internet is a major influence in American politics and popular culture is hardly news. What is less well-known, though, is that it is a vital form of participatory democracy and cultural citizenship, one that has begun to hold politicians and mainstream news outlets newly, often uncomfortably accountable. One of the most fascinating aspects of the 'netroots' is that it consists of people who use cutting-edge media and technology to engage in some of the most low-tech but revolutionary forms of communication: they are reading and writing.

The Internet is teaching us a crucial lesson about twenty-first-century cultural citizenship: you either write, or remain silent. Students in this course will be expected to write in order to be heard, to read in order to listen, to work hard, have fun, and take intellectual risks. In addition to completing a variety of individual writing assignments (analytical essays, free-writing, response papers, etc.), students will also work together to create and maintain a class blog or wiki.

In order to study the changing relationship between the Internet, popular culture, politics and citizenship, we will follow the 2008 presidential election closely. Students can expect to read newspaper articles, blog posts and the like on a manageable but daily basis, as well as essays, articles and excerpts from books such as:

The Rise of the Blogosphere (Barlow); Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics (Feld & Wilcox); The Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Politics & Celebrity in the Age of Contempt (Indiana); Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Media Consumers in a Digital Age (Jenkins); The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything (Trippi); Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics (Winograd & Hais). (Josh Stenger)

Section A15 Writing as Discovery

This section of English 101 will explore some of the many ways writing functions as a means of discovery--of who we are, what we think and know, and what we have to say to others. Within a workshop format, the challenges of writing effectively in college will be addressed through frequent one-to-one consultation with the instructor regarding individual students' work in progress. Assignments are designed to provide ample opportunity for independent and creative exploration while enabling students to gain confidence in a variety of writing modes, both formal and informal, by means of a process involving idea generation, drafting, revision, and editing. (Susan Dearing)

Section A16 Writing as Discovery

Section A17 Representations of the Self in Popular Culture

Section A18 Writing about Public Health

Section A19 Write...or Remain Silent: Politics & Cultural Citizenship in the Age of the Internet

Spring Semester, 2009

Section B30 Hip Hop and Entrepreneurship

Note: To take this course, you must also have enrolled in the (Fall) First-Year Seminar 101 A30.
To develop and apply strategies that writers use in producing effective writing, this section of Eng 101 will examine biographies of hip hop figures such as Sean "Diddy" Combs, Marc Ekco, Jay Z, Queen Latifah, and, Russell Simmons and employ musical samples, a series of contemporary writings such as Hip Hop, Inc. and Make It Happen, documentary films such as The Industry and Rhyme Pays, which demonstrate (some of) the ways in which hip hop is both an art form and a web of complex instances of entrepreneurship. The texts students will examine are useful for studying the craft of written discourse because they demonstrate, for example, how writers conceptualize a project, examine cultural practices, contemplate audience, develop a claim into an argument, or manipulate structure to convey point of view. Early class discussions will grow out of our efforts to make sense of "the hustle" in and as the emergence of hip hop and then use that dynamic as a framework for reading course texts. We will also evaluate and model essays to critically analyze course material, apply strategies, and thoughtfully articulate our insights about what makes a piece of writing effective. Class assignments and activities for this section will include weekly readings, participating in/or leading class discussion, in-class journaling, peer feedback and editing sessions, short response papers, and longer, peer-edited, prompt-driven papers. (Shawn Christian)

Section B31 Writing about London

Note: To take this course, you must also have enrolled in the (Fall) First-Year Seminar 101 A31.
From Big Ben to the Tower of London and a quick pint at the pub: is this your idea of London? In this class we will use your own and a variety of literary and historical writings by others to explore the history of modern London. Visual texts such as maps, paintings, television shows and films will also help us to go behind the tourist's London. From the eighteenth century onward the city was the metropolitan center of the British Empire, as reflected in the buildings, the layout of the city, and its inhabitants. You will study topics such as the use of architecture to reflect England's idea of itself as an imperial nation, and the ways in which different neighborhoods, and even particular streets, come to symbolize the class and racial relations of the city.

We will look at the diverse peoples who have lived in and left their mark on London: the ruling elites who governed England and designed the city; the coffee house intellectuals of the eighteenth century; the working class poor of the nineteenth century slums including Irish and Jewish immigrants; and the South Asian and Caribbean immigrants of the later twentieth century. In this class, you will begin to orient yourself to college level writing expectations, using what you bring from high school as the basis for your next steps as a writer. The pre-writing, drafting, redrafting, and editing strategies that we practice in this class are practical tools, but they will also make you intentional and reflective about the ways your writing can make you an active learner throughout your Wheaton education. (Claire Buck)

Section B32 Writing about Reality and Risk

Note: To take this course, you must also have enrolled in the (Fall) First-Year Seminar 101 A32.
Writing about Reality and Risk will focus on the ease with which we use the term "reality" and will seek to discover the many levels of its meaning by examining what is "real" in the essays, fiction, poetry, and occasional play that will comprise our weekly reading. These works will cover such authors as Emma Goldman, Joan Didion, Arthur Miller, Sophocles, Virginia Woolf, W.H.Auden, William Blake, Flannery O'Connor, James Joyce and many others. The level of attention we apply to each reading will uncover the risk each author has taken to say something real; we, in turn, will come as close as we can to engaging in the reality each author presents, taking something of a risk ourselves by doing so. This course is writing and reading intensive and includes the keeping of an academic journal, active participation in class discussions, and engagement with each other's written work through the on-going process of peer review and workshops. (Constance Campana)

Section B33 Writing about Public Health

Section B34 Writing about Crime and Justice

The rhetoric of mystery, crime, or court narratives has become a dominant discourse in American culture. Our focus in our reading will be to uncover assumptions that cast characters as victims or transgressors and examine how seeking a villain and victim acts upon our reason and emotion, beyond the page, film, or news. Using this lens in a college writing class allows us to practice various methods of creating arguments and presenting textual evidence that demonstrates complexity and is able to sway readers. We will examine texts that are rooted in "fact"--such as Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You--along with works of "pure" fiction--such as Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress--to understand cultural conventions, thought conventions, and writing conventions. We will also focus research around continued cultural practices that bring harm to others yet seem to resist reform. In defining and re-defining crime we will question, research, and, through writing multiple drafts, perhaps even reach audiences beyond our classroom.

Class texts include films that will be shown outside of class on a weekday evening. If you can't make class viewing times, however, you may see the film on your own. Library viewing rooms make this option possible. (Katherine Conway)

Section B35 Writing as Discovery

Section B36 Writing about Public Health

Section B37 Writing about the Journalistic Tradition

Section B38 Writing about Hip Hop and Entrepreneurship

To develop and apply strategies that writers use in producing effective writing, this section of Eng 101 will examine biographies of hip hop figures such as Sean "Diddy" Combs, Marc Ekco, Jay Z, Queen Latifah, and, Russell Simmons and employ musical samples, a series of contemporary writings such as Hip Hop, Inc. and Make It Happen, documentary films such as The Industry and Rhyme Pays, which demonstrate (some of) the ways in which hip hop is both an art form and a web of complex instances of entrepreneurship. The texts students will examine are useful for studying the craft of written discourse because they demonstrate, for example, how writers conceptualize a project, examine cultural practices, contemplate audience, develop a claim into an argument, or manipulate structure to convey point of view. Early class discussions will grow out of our efforts to make sense of "the hustle" in and as the emergence of hip hop and then use that dynamic as a framework for reading course texts. We will also evaluate and model essays to critically analyze course material, apply strategies, and thoughtfully articulate our insights about what makes a piece of writing effective. Class assignments and activities for this section will include weekly readings, participating in/or leading class discussion, in-class journaling, peer feedback and editing sessions, short response papers, and longer, peer-edited, prompt-driven papers. (Shawn Christian)