WR3 | Syllabus

Post-apocalyptic Fiction, Film, and Art

Course Description

Why do we feel such an attraction to disaster? Why do we produce novels, films, and other forms of art that contemplate the end of humanity? Scholars from many disciplines have offered theories about the appeal and meaning of such spectacles of apocalyptic destruction. We will read some of this critical literature, examining views from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, cultural studies, and religion. In addition to these assigned readings, each of you will engage in your own original process of inquiry on a related topic of your choosing. You will present your findings frequently to the community of scholars in our class, sharing and discussing your research discoveries and insights. Ultimately, you will produce a lengthy work of original scholarship that will contribute to this field of inquiry.

COVID-19 Policies & Resources

Course Objectives

Writing 3 continues our focus on inquiry, critical thinking, and argumentation. The course additionally involves an introduction to academic research. Our libraries hold an impressive collection of traditional and electronic research tools as well as hundreds of thousands of books, journal articles, and assorted media. Navigating this ocean of information can be intimidating; however, excellent research skills are fundamental to your training. Therefore, we will spend a significant amount of time learning how to perform academic research and use our library resources effectively. By the end of this course, you should be able to do the following:

1. Formulate research questions that may be used to guide a research process.
2. Discover background information on a topic using reference materials.
3. Locate books, periodicals, and other physical media within library collections.
4. Locate electronic databases and query them with precision.
5. Understand the importance of the process known as “peer review.”
6. Critically evaluate sources for credibility and suitability for research.
7. Use bibliographic software and a research journal to track and manage references.
8. Craft a lengthy argument that contributes to an ongoing critical conversation.

Required Texts

• Open Handbook, by Alan C. Taylor
• Winter readings (.pdf)
• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

Important Links

Academic Honesty

All work submitted in 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.

Attendance Policy

Regular attendance is expected. Bracketing religious observance, severe 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, and TA 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.

Pandemic exceptions to the attendance policy:

• Do not attend class if you have any symptoms of COVID-19.

• If you have COVID-19 symptoms, stay home and contact Dartmouth Health Service immediately for instructions.

• There will be no penalty for missing class due to COVID-19 illness or its prevention.

• If you miss a class or a TA session due to illness, please email me to explain and receive makeup information.

Typical Weekly Workflow

Here is a list of the typical assignments and activities that we will do each week:

1. Before we meet to discuss a reading as a class, each of you should carefully read and critically engage the text on your own—interrogating, analyzing, and questioning the arguments, ideas, and assumptions you discover there.

2. As you read, I ask that you annotate the text—that is, mark up the text by adding meaningful symbols, marginal notes, and questions on the document itself. Note: this requires that you print out the text before you begin reading it. Bring this annotated copy of the reading with you to class to help you engage in the group discussion and analysis.

3. After making your annotations, take critical notes on the text in a separate document. These notes will be valuable to you later, when you write your essays.

4. After annotating and taking notes, contribute to Hive—our open-source repository of notes, ideas, and questions about our course readings.

The following three numbered sections explain these practices in more detail:

I. Annotating Texts

Rather than use a laptop or tablet to read our course readings, I ask that you print them out and annotate them as part of your preparations for class. Annotation refers to the process of marking up a text by adding your own words and symbols to the document itself. There is no right or wrong way to mark up a text, but you should develop a system that you are comfortable with and try to stick with it. Your objective in annotation is to flag the key elements of a piece of writing—the thesis, argumentative claims, and pieces of evidence. In addition, use the margins of the text to ask questions, make brief notes, indicate confusion, define unfamiliar terms, and make connections to other texts. This kind of work serves two purposes: first, it helps you maintain a critical focus as you read; second, it helps you later if the text must be used for study or your own writing. If you plan on being successful in college, the ability to rigorously annotate texts is perhaps the most helpful and important skill you can develop.

It is not required to print out and annotate readings from the Open Handbook.

Further advice and caveats about annotation may be found in the “Annotation and Critical Reading” chapter of the Open Handbook.

II. Critical Reading Notes

Take detailed notes on each reading. Since you will write essays about these texts, these notes will be of significant help to you later. Your aims here should be to 1) reduce the entire argument to its bare essentials using paraphrase, summary, and selective quotation—carefully documenting page numbers during this activity; 2) interrogate the text by asking questions, raising objections, and making observations; 3) connect and compare the reading to others we have read; 4) define any unfamiliar terms and link the text to any outside research you perform. At the end of this rigorous process you should have a simplified version of the essay as well as a number of critical observations, questions, and ideas that emerged in the process of reading.

For more detailed information on the creation and purpose of these notes, read the chapter on “Critical Notes” in the Open Handbook.

III. Contribute to Hive

Hive is an open-source repository containing notes, ideas, and questions about our course readings and class discussions. We will build this resource together as a class—sharing the work of interpreting, analyzing, and questioning the complex course readings we encounter.

Our objective for Hive is to explore meaning, discover argumentative structures, evaluate supporting evidence, ask probing questions, connect to other readings, link to relevant resources, and think critically about the implications of a text. The “hive mind” is capable of discovering and creating far more than any one individual. With luck, Hive will become a central resource in our class discussions and an indispensable aid to you as you craft your essays.

You might contribute to Hive by doing some of the following tasks:

• Help create a simplified version of the text’s argumentative structure by presenting an ordered list of claims, reasons, and evidence.

• Ask a question about a difficult passage in the text or offer an answer to one posed by another student.

• Define difficult vocabulary.

• Flag a key portion of the essay that seems worthy of discussion or analysis and explain why it seems significant, or build on the thought of another student who has done so.

• Make a connection between an idea found in one text with others we have read in class (or elsewhere).

• Constructively question, respond, or correct the ideas or work of another student.

We will use a shared Google drive and Google docs to create the Hive resource. Each reading in the syllabus has a corresponding Google document within the shared drive which we will use to collectively explore and interrogate the text.

When you make your contributions to Hive, please ensure that you post in the Google drive associated with your course section. To make this easier, I have flagged the links to each section with an exponential notation, as in the example below:

• ³ : Hive page for section 3 @ 11 hour
• ⁴ : Hive page for section 4 @ 12 hour

You must use your Dartmouth login credentials to access the drive, not your personal Gmail account. Please authenticate using this G-Suite link: https://google.dartmouth.edu/

Grading

Decades of research on grading concludes that it is counterproductive, even harmful, to the process of education. If you care to examine it for yourself, Alfie Kohn has conveniently summarized the key findings of this scholarship.

For the reasons described by Kohn (and ones we explored in the fall term), this class will not feature traditional letter grades for evaluation. To be sure, I will evaluate your writing and give you rigorous feedback on how to improve (at least from where I’m sitting). You will receive similar feedback from your colleagues in the class. And you will also perform reflective self-evaluation of your writing and thinking. Ultimately, you will have to decide how best to express your ideas. But at no point will this complex, 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, inspired by the grading contract in Asao B. Inoue’s Labor-based Grading Contracts:

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

Nota bene: To pass this course all assignments must be completed and an acceptable attendance record must be kept.

Major Assignments

1. Formal Research Essay

You will write one formal research essay. The project will involve many of the core competencies we developed in the previous term including argumentation, critical thinking, close reading, synthesis, and theoretical analysis. You may write on any topic you wish, so long as it is a contribution to our course conversation and theme. Please discuss your ideas with me before you get too far along. I am happy to meet with each of you to discuss ideas and help formulate a research plan.

Essay requirements:

• The essay must be submitted in the Chicago format. You may choose to use either footnotes or endnotes for your citations; no bibliography page is required.

• It must contain a minimum of 15 peer-reviewed sources.

• Sources that are not peer-reviewed may also be used. However, be judicious if you do so.

• Your essay should be 3,700 words, or about 15 pages in length.

2. Research Workshops

Several workshop assignments will help you gain confidence with using library resources, constructing bibliographies, and managing a large research project.

3. Presentations

You will make one formal presentation at the conclusion of the term to explain your research project to our class. You will also make a number of informal presentations about your ideas, research, and writing as they evolve over the term. These informal presentations may not be announced, so be prepared to discuss your project at any time.

4. Author Page

Each of you will curate a webpage dedicated to your research project. We will call this site your Author Page. You may create this page as a shared Google Doc or use the Dartmouth Journeys platform. After creating your page, link to it on the course research projects page so that we may locate it. We will use these Author Pages to view your project as it evolves over time. One of your most important responsibilities this term is to keep this page updated. Your author page should contain the following:

• a short research proposal/statement of no more than 250 words.
• an annotated bibliography of all the sources used to construct your research project.
  • Use permalinks to link to the book or article within the library system.
• a current draft of your research essay.
• a weekly reflective blog post about the progress of your research project (see #7 below).

I have created a model author page on the course website that you may use as a template.

5. Contribute to Hive

Hive is an open-source repository containing notes, ideas, and questions about our course readings and class discussions. We will build this resource together as a class—sharing the work of interpreting, analyzing, and questioning the complex course texts we encounter.

• Your contributions to Hive are a key element in your class participation.

We will use shared Google docs to create the Hive resource. Each week containing course readings or films has a dedicated Hive document. Please make sure to contribute to the Hive document for your course section.

Instructions and ideas for Hive contributions are described in more detail above.

6. Critical Reading Notes

Take detailed notes on each course text. Your aim here should be to reduce the entire argument to its bare essentials using paraphrase, summary, and selective quotation. Carefully document page numbers during this activity. Interrogate the text by asking questions, raising objections, and noting observations. Connect and compare the reading to others we have read. Link to any outside research you perform and define unfamiliar terms or words. At the end of this process, you should have a simplified version of the essay as well as a number of critical observations, questions, and ideas that emerged as you read. If the text is a film, take detailed notes on elements of the film that seem significant. Don’t forget to note the timestamp.

For more detailed information on the creation and purpose of these notes, read the chapter entitled “Annotation and Critical Reading” in the Open Handbook.

7. End-of-Week Journal Reflection

Compose a weekly reflective “blog” post on your Author Page that details your efforts that week to further your research project. At the beginning, these posts will likely be searching, inarticulate musings as you think through possible ideas for a research project. However, as your research intensifies and comes into focus, these posts should begin to include the steps that you took that week to further the project in some way. What kind of research problems or difficulties did you encounter? What sources did you locate? How is the project evolving as you read and think more deeply on your subject? In essence, I would like you to blog your experiences as a novice researcher engaged in your first big research project. Significantly: the things you say in your posts will help me, the teaching assistant, and your colleagues assist you with your project.

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 TA for 45 minutes per week to go over your writing and plan revision. If you require further help, the RWIT program offers excellent peer tutoring on all phases of the writing process—from generating ideas to formal citation.

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.

Mental Health & Wellbeing

The academic environment is challenging, our terms are intensive, and classes are not the only demanding part of your life. There are a number of resources available to you on campus to support your wellness, including:

• Your undergraduate dean.
• The Counseling Center.
• The Student Wellness Center.
• The student-led Dartmouth Mental Health Union.
• The student-led Sexual Assault Peer Alliance (SAPAs).

Please make me aware of anything that will hinder your success in this course. I will help and I will put you in touch with others who can help even more. The earlier I am aware of issues, the more I can do to assist you.

Symbol Legend

Schedule of Readings and Assignments

10 - The End

Monday, 3.6

In-class work

• Final Question of the Day™
• Eat celebratory donuts!
• Tearful goodbyes.
• End-of-term Reflection and Self-Assessment.

---

Friday, 3.10

Due

• Final Essays Due.
• Final draft of Author Page Due.

Monday, 3.13

---

Due

• End-of-term Reflection and Self-Assessment.