WR2 | Syllabus#

Writing 2#

| Weapons of Mass Instruction: Authority, Education, Pedagogy#

Education! Which of the various me’s do you propose to educate, and which do you propose to suppress? Anyhow I defy you. I defy you, oh society, to educate me or to suppress me, according to your dummy standards. . . . Who are you? How many selves have you? And which of these selves do you want to be? Is Yale College going to educate the self that is in the dark of you, or Harvard College? The ideal self! Oh, but I have a strange and fugitive self shut out and howling like a wolf or a coyote under the ideal windows. See his red eyes in the dark? This is the self who is coming into his own.

— D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature

Course Description#

Writing 2-3 is an introduction to academic writing and research. This course sequence prepares you for work in a scholarly environment where you will be expected to engage in inquiry, perform analysis, and communicate clearly. We will cultivate these critical practices by reading and analyzing a series of demanding texts, discussing them together, and composing responses to them in the form of essays. Shorter writing assignments will focus on a number of skills that are important for taking part in academic conversations.

During the winter term we will turn our focus to academic research. Our libraries hold an impressive array of traditional and electronic search tools as well as millions of books, journal articles, and assorted media. Although navigating this vast sea of information is intimidating, it is important that you find your way: excellent research skills are fundamental to your undergraduate training, regardless of your chosen field of study. In consideration of its importance, we will spend a significant amount of time learning how to use our library effectively.

Course Theme#

Formal education is one of the central features of our early life—a deep, organizing structure that has shaped us in profound and unaccountable ways. Education, like culture more broadly, is so ordinary and pervasive that it has become thoroughly naturalized, its powerful effects rendered virtually invisible to us. Education, in short, is part of the everyday backdrop of life that we take for granted and rarely consider critically.

Although it is quite difficult to escape the naturalizing trance that comes from our habitual exposure to such common features of our lifeworld, it is important to develop a capacity for this form of analysis—to see more clearly the weird within the familiar. During the fall term we will try to step outside of our experiences with formal education in order to gain some distance and perspective. If we defamiliarize these experiences by holding them at a distance, trying to view them as if for the first time, what do we see?

Health Information & Resources#

Required Texts#

• Open Handbook, by Alan C. Taylor.
• Other course readings are located in Gesso.

Important Links#

Academic Honesty#

All work submitted for this course must be your own and be written exclusively for this course. The use of sources (ideas, quotations, paraphrase) must be properly documented. Please read the Academic Honor Principle for more information about the dire consequences of plagiarism. If you are confused about when or how to cite information, please consult the course handbook or ask me about it before submitting your work.

| Since all work submitted for this course must be your own, the use of any artificial intelligence is not allowed. Any use of a LLM-based AI to brainstorm, outline, write, or edit assignments of any kind is an academic integrity violation. Similarly, students must read, summarize, and analyze our course readings without assistance from AI-derived technologies. These AI programs include, but are not limited to, bots like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude or AI-based writing assistant tools like Grammarly, Quillbot, and WordTune.

If you have any questions about this policy or are not sure if a resource you have found will violate this policy, please ask me.

Attendance Policy#

Regular attendance is expected. Bracketing religious observance, serious illness, or personal tragedy, no more than three unexcused absences in a single term will be acceptable for this course. This policy applies to:

• regular class meetings
• assigned X hours
• tutor meetings

Four or more unexcused absences may result in repercussions ranging from significant reduction in GPA to failure of the course. If you have a religious observance that conflicts with your participation in the course, please meet with me beforehand to discuss appropriate accommodations.

| As I mention in the Health Information & Resources section above: if you are very ill, please don’t be a hero by dragging yourself into class to avoid an absence. I prefer that you consider the health of the others in our class and stay home if you have a fever or are possibly contagious. If you experience an illness or other human problem of the sort that exceeds three absences, I will definitely listen and try to work out something with you. Of course, this may not be possible if your emergency is so prolonged that it prevents meaningful participation and commitment to the course.

Typical Weekly Workflow#

Formal Papers#

Students will submit three formal essays and several smaller writing assignments in response to our readings and class discussions. The formal essays focus on core features of academic writing: argumentation, synthesis, and analysis.

As you write for this course, I’d like you to embrace a new understanding of the word “essay.” The word comes into English from the French essai, which can mean a “try,” an “attempt,” a “trial.” We may find something very liberating and instructive in the etymology of this term.

To try is to begin without guarantees. An essay is not a performance of what you already know, but a record of you working something out — a record of effort, of frustration, of bringing something shapeless slowly into focus. To try is what we ask of someone who is new to something challenging, someone who may not yet have the skill or expertise but brings a willingness and optimism. A try does not promise success. It asks only for honest effort in the face of uncertainty.

To attempt is to accept incompleteness, failure. Good writers understand this. They know that the first sentence is a guess, that the argument evolves as it gets written, that the essay you finish is never exactly the one you set out to write. Writing is messy, unfinished, iterative, provisional. But the frustration and failure is precisely what makes progress, growth, learning. An attempt recognizes that the present effort is not final; it is one effort among many such efforts. These are not setbacks. This is the process.

A trial is something difficult that unfolds over time. Rilke wrote that “the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” Good writing asks the same of you — not a single burst of effort, but a sustained willingness to return, day after day, to something that resists you. The essay improves not in moments of inspiration but in the slow accumulation of revision. Stay with it long enough and the difficulty becomes the work, and the work becomes something you could not have imagined at the start.

The exact nature and objective of each assignment will be explained in greater detail throughout the course of the term.

• Formatting: During the fall term papers must be submitted in the MLA style; in the winter term we will transition to the Chicago style. Information on these styles may be found in the Open Handbook.

• Revisions: It is my practice to return essay drafts to you within one week. Afterward, you will have a minimum of one week to revise your writing. During this two-week revision cycle please feel free to drop by my office hours (or make an appointment) to go over your writing or discuss your ideas.

Grading#

A few years ago I decided to quit grading, mostly as an emergency response to the realities of teaching during the COVID pandemic. Although I didn’t know it at the time, a large body of research concludes that grading is not just counterproductive, but actively harmful to the process of education. As Jesse Stommel writes, grades are “not a good measure of learning, they inhibit intrinsic motivation, and they create a competitive environment between students and hostile relationships between students and teachers.” Perhaps the foremost scholar on grading, Alfie Kohn, argues that grading produces three predicable effects in students: “less interest in learning, a preference for easier tasks, and shallower thinking” (xiv). If you think back on your experiences in high school, you may very well discover evidence of these effects in your own life.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

For the reasons described above (and others we will explore together), this class will not feature traditional letter grades for evaluation. To be sure, I will give you feedback and encouragement and promise to assist you in any way that I can. I will ask a lot of questions and try to push you to experiment and grow as a writer. You will receive similar feedback from your colleagues in the class. And you will also perform reflective self-evaluations of your writing, thinking, and effort. But at no point will this complex and important work be reduced to a percentage or letter grade.

At the end of the term we will reflect together on your progress, effort, participation, and performance; we will decide together what final grade to enter into Banner. This discussion about your performance in the class will involve our mutual reflection on the following topics:

• Participation
• Attendance
• Collaboration and sharing
• Late, incomplete, missing work
• Growth
• Effort

| There is one important caveat. To earn this right (and to pass the course), all assignments must be completed, a solid attendance record must be kept, and no AI may be used for any of our coursework.

Help With Your Writing#

There are many sources of help for your writing assignments. I am happy to meet with you all term during my office hours or by appointment. Each of you will meet with our tutor for 45 minutes each week to go over your writing and plan revision.

If you require further help, the Dartmouth Writing Center is a free support service that is dedicated to helping students through all stages of the writing process and at any point in their undergraduate careers. In one-on-one appointments, peer tutors use facilitative approaches to engage students in active dialogue about writing and help them grow as writers. Tutors can help students develop strategies for generating ideas, find and evaluate research sources, outline and organize information, and revise completed drafts. Students may schedule an appointment with a peer tutor by visiting Dartmouth Writing Center website.

Students With Disabilities#

Students requesting disability-related accommodations and services for this course are required to register with Student Accessibility Services (SAS; Getting Started with SAS webpage; student.accessibility.services@dartmouth.edu; 1-603-646-9900) and to request that an accommodation email be sent to me in advance of the need for an accommodation. Then, students should schedule a follow-up meeting with me to determine relevant details such as what role SAS or its Testing Center may play in accommodation implementation. This process works best for everyone when completed as early in the quarter as possible. If students have questions about whether they are eligible for accommodations or have concerns about the implementation of their accommodations, they should contact the SAS office. All inquiries and discussions will remain confidential.

• Please make me aware of anything that may hinder your success in this course.

Symbol Legend#

Schedule of Readings and Assignments#