Summer 2009

Wednesday -- Writing Due

Friday -- Workshop Due

Week 1

1-June

Questions about the Course--please review all of the course materials and post any questions you have about the course in the "Questions about the Course" forum.

For all reading assignments you will compose a response to the reading and post it in the Reading Board. In order to receive credit your response must:

• meet the word-length requirement of 350 words (or surpass it). This equals one double spaced page in 12 point times new roman.
• use short quotes to support your response
• provide analysis (using literary terms) rather than summary (retelling)

3-June

Virtual Cafe--Please post a note about yourself in the Virtual Cafe.

Writings 1-4 are activities designed to produce material for Writing 5, which will be a 5-10 page polished essay. For writings 1-4, please submit your response to the prompt in polished prose form. It will not make a complete story, but it should not be in the form of notes. Write polished prose as a result of the assignment listed.

Writing 1: Scene Versus Exposition

Scene is cinematic. It uses sensory detail and sensory information to recreate experience, generally with location, action, a sense of movement through time, and dialogue. For today's writing, remember a scene that is of the utmost importance to your topic for your first essay. Write the scene with as much fidelity as possible. Have people enter and leave, describe what you saw, heard and felt. Use all the sensory detail you can.

5-June

• meet the word-length requirement of 350 words (or surpass it). This equals one double spaced page in 12 point times new roman.
• use short quotes to support your response
• provide analysis (using literary terms) rather than summary (retelling)
• offer suggestions for revision

Workshop 1

Week 2

8-June

Reading 2: Chapter 9 The Personal Essay
Chapter 3 The Body of Memory
Bausch, Richard, "So Long Ago"
Beard, JoAnn, "The Fourth State of Matter"
Berry, Wendell, "Entrance to the Woods"
Cooper, Bernard, "The Fine Art of Sighing"
Didion, Joan, "Goodbye To All That"
Dillard, Annie, "Total Eclipse"

10-June

Writing 2, Specificity and Detail

Even in discussing the largest of ideas, our brains engage in the small workings of the senses first. The small sensory details in your essay can therefore do the most work towards representing complex and abstract emotions. For this activity, first make a list of as many unique sensory details as you can in relation to your essay topic (sights, sounds , smells, textures, and tastes). Then write 2 pages of your essay that include those details.

12-June

Week 3

15-June

17-June

Writing 3, Character Development

Write character sketches that include all the unexpected details (instead of the expected details) about the people in your essay.

19-June

Workshop 3

Week 4

22-June

Reading 5:Chapter 10 The Lyric Essay
Kingston, Maxine Hong "No Name Woman"
Lamott, Anne, "Why I Don't Meditate"
Morabito, Fabio, "Screw" and "Sandpaper"
Mukerjee, Bharati, "A Four-Hundred Year Old Woman"
Price, Jennifer, "A Brief Natural History of the Pink Flamingo"
Rekdal, Paisley, "The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee"
Rider, Bhanu Kapil, "Three Voices"
Sanders, Scott Russell, "Buckeye"

24-June

Writing 4, Dialogue

Write two pages of dialogue that does work: it moves action forward, it characterizes, it adds details.

26-June

Workshop 4

Week 5

29-June

Reading 5: Chapter 11 The Basics of Personal Reportage and Chapter 12 The Writing Process and Revision
Sedaris, David, "The Drama Bug"
Selzer, Richard, "The Knife"
Simic, Charles, "Three Fragments"
White, E.B., "Afternoon of An American Boy"
Williams, Terry Tempest, "The Clan of One-Breasted Women"
Woolf, Virginia, "The Death of The Moth"

 

1-July

Writing 5, Essay 1

Please submit a 5-10 page double spaced working draft of your first essay.

3-July

Workshop 5