ENG 194 Writing - Culture & Sustainability - Final Project
(due Dec 4)
The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and amendment under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery, writing themselves into the land. The growing society is there, yet it is also made and remade in every individual mind.--(Raymond Williams, Reading Culture, p. 6)
What is writing? What does it mean to write? What does it mean to write in a sustainable society? What does is mean to engage in various discursive practices that inform how we write culture and how culture writes us? These have been the key questions that have guided your course of study this semester. This final project will provide an opportunity to reflect on your engagement in these questions through a close analysis of the various texts you have read and written in this course and in the geography courses throughout the semester.
Your analysis should include ALL of the writing you have done for this course:
Review ALL of the writing in your portfolio (including your journal). The guidelines below are meant to help you generate information for your analysis and are not meant to suggest an organizing strategy for your paper.
· What does your writing reveal about the ways you approach inventing, planning, drafting, revising? What do these aspects of constructing written communication mean to you? What do your reflective analyses reveal about the ways you have considered your writing processes over the semester? What do you notice about the way you make decisions when you write? What do these decisions reveal about the ways you consider purpose and audience?
· What does each section in your portfolio reveal to you about your approaches to studying writing this semester? Have you focused on some kinds of writing more than others? Why? Consider the kinds of writing tasks you’ve completed as well as how you completed them. Consider also any surprises you find as you review your portfolio. What aspects of writing do you find particularly interesting or challenging? Explain why.
· Discuss how you have challenged and have developed your ideas and knowledge about what writing is and what it means to write. Some questions to consider: How did you interpret and problem solve the various assignments and research questions? What strategies for constructing written communication have you found helpful or unhelpful? What different approaches to writing have you uncovered or discovered? What areas do you want to work on?
· How do you plan to continue to develop questions about writing? Where do you see these questions applying to types of writing you might do for other classes as well as outside of class?
As you review your portfolio and explore ideas for your analysis, you’ll undoubtedly think of more questions or areas to examine for your analysis. Go with these. In other words, don’t feel bound by the questions above.