SPRING 2000
This information effective for Spring 2000.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
All sections of Writing 1 explore the power of language to make meaning, to create identities for the writer, to shape communities, and to influence readers. All sections will give you the chance to explore writing as a means of discovery and learning as well as a means of communication. Every section will help you to analyze rhetorical situations: that is, to understand the conventions at work in various situations and the kinds of arguments and evidence that are persuasive in different contexts. And in any section of Writing 1, you will have the chance to develop your particular strengths as a writer of academic prose and work on your particular weaknesses.
All sections of Writing 1 teach writing as a process that involves strategies for generating ideas, revision, and editing. They all will encourage you to work together as readers of each other's papers. And all will require a significant amount of reading and weekly writing which may include informal writing for yourself as well as more formal essays for others.
All course descriptions are subject to change.
Enrollment Procedures:
Frosh have enrollment priority in Writing 1 courses during spring quarter. This means that they will enroll first (during their scheduled TELESLUG appointment times). On Monday, March 13, at 2:00 PM, the frosh restriction will be lifted to allow all students to enroll in the remaining open spaces on a first-come first-served basis
Jeff Arnett
MWF 9:30A-10:40A
Kresge 319
Working with both informal and formal essays, we will examine the role of creativity and the imagination in the development of children, as well as in our own lives. Course readings and individual research will help to focus our discussions and refine your own explorations. For the longer research paper, you will choose a topic related to children. Your final project will be the creation of an original children's book ($15-20 "lab" fee). We will also visit actual children for inspiration.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. " -Albert Einstein
Jeff Arnett
MWF 11:00A-12:10P
Kresge 319
Same as Section 1 above.
Charles Atkinson
MWF 12:30P-1:40P
Kresge 319
In this section we will examine the notion and dynamics of families through contemporary fiction and poetry, analytical essays, and first-hand experience. We'll try to clarify some of what occurs in American families&emdash;between males and females, between parents and children, between the dominant culture and various subcultures. And we'll speculate on what could happen in these families&emdash;if we continue our present ways, and if we try other attitudes and patterns. The goal is to look closely at an arrangement that profoundly shapes us, to think together and on paper about it, and to generate clear, persuasive prose from it. Peer-led discussion, small group writing critiques, constant revision, and a research project will be central to the course, so enroll only if you're willing to participate in all of these ways.
Kate Evans
TTh 12:00P-1:45P
Porter 249
In this course we will read novels, short stories, and a play and view the film adaptations. In the process, we will consider, and write about, the varying effects written and visual media attempt to exert on readers/viewers. We will consider how form and content interact, which will lead to discussion and writing about the various lenses through which ideas can be communicated. Students will also engage in an independent research project which extends their interest in one of the course's key ideas. All writing assignments will focus on methods for generating content, focusing and organizing ideas, and revising with the help of classmates. Texts for the course will include Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (film: Smoke Signals), Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Romeo and Juliet (with two films adapted from this play).
Tim Fitzmaurice
MWF 12:30P-1:40P
Soc Sci II 141
This class will focus on the essentials of academic writing, including the grammar, the vocabulary, the structures, the rhetoric, and the organizational strategies for effective writing at the university and in a variety of career disciplines. We will address the fundamentals, correct problems, suggest more powerful processes, and give students the opportunity to become more forceful and sophisticated writers. Thematically, the class will continue to develop responses to violence in the community and to explore the violent and the persuasive methods of rhetoric and writing itself. We will read some classical texts in argumentative rhetoric, the rhetoric of nonviolence&emdash;focusing on Cesar Chavez&emdash;as well as current writing theory. We will read various authors and write and revise four essays. We will write casual essays in journals, creative work, and find ways to publish our work.
Tim Fitzmaurice
MWF 2:00P-3:10P
Merrill 132
Same as Section 5 above.
Carol Freeman
MWF 9:30A-10:40A
Cowell 113
In this section, we will explore the multitudinous manifestations and dimensions of the essay itself. We will read and write autobiographical narratives, reflective essays, reports on research, arguments, and analyses, always paying particular attention to the interplay between writers' intentions and readers' responses. We will work on developing a writing process and polishing a prose style suitable for academic discourse as well as experiment with more informal styles. Above all, we will explore the notion of effectiveness: that is, what makes a particular piece of writing work in a particular situation? The texts for the course include a collection of magnificent essays. Writing assignments (almost one per week) involve writing and rewriting different kinds of essays on topics of each student's choice.
Maria Cecilia Freeman
MW 5:00P-6:45P
Crown 203
In this class we will practice strategies and conventions of writing for different purposes, with emphasis on explaining, analyzing and arguing about issues in our local communities and the unique natural environment we inhabit. Course reading will include a mix of essays and fiction by such authors as Edward Abbey, Joan Didion, Louise Erdrich, John Muir, Gary Snyder, Wallace Stegner and John Steinbeck (among others). As we read we will critically examine the ideas, purposes, strategies and writing styles of the authors, to inform and inspire our own writing. We will explore and write about the UCSC campus environment and local natural history while pursuing research on issues of each person's own choice through the library, internet, newspapers and interviews. Writing will include informal opinion pieces, descriptive sketches and reflections, and critical responses to reading as well as several formal essays based on reading and research. Coursework will emphasize strategies for drafting, revising and editing papers, with close attention to grammar and effective language use. Everyone will participate in writing group workshops and share responsibility for discussion~all viewpoints welcome.
Susan Kimoto
TTh 8:00A-9:45A
Eight 242
Through Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and
Glenn Tinder's Political Thinking, this course will survey a
rudimentary history of economic oppression in the context of basic
political thought. While this is not a history or politics course,
the material provides a thought-provoking arena for students to
practice the necessary analytical and referential skills required for
most academic reading and writing tasks. Students should expect to
complete seven (7) comparative 2-page journal entries, four (4) short
3-page essays, and a final 6-8 page research paper. Revisions for all
work are built into the course timeline. Remember: The best writers
aren't necessarily gifted; they're ordinary people determined to
acquire healthy writing habits which work towards their written
success.
Writ. 1 Sec. 10 Susan Kimoto TTh 10:00A-11:45A Eight 242
Same as Section 9 above.
Robin King
TTh 2:00P-3:45P
Eight 242
Some psychologists and educators claim that emotional intelligence predicts a person's success in life more than performance on IQ tests, SAT scores and other standardized exams. In this section of Writing 1 we will explore concepts of emotional intelligence by writing about the influence of emotions on perception, awareness, behavior and critical thinking.
Students will complete informal and formal writing assignments in which they analyze how humans dramatize emotions in effective and dysfunctional ways. In peer-led discussion and small writing response groups, there will be a strong link between analytical reading of essays about the dynamics of human emotions and writing convincing arguments about the connections between emotional intelligence and rational thinking. Students will research and write four 3-6 page essays and a final research paper about the influence of culture and social institutions on emotions, perceptions and behavior. Course work will emphasize the essentials of academic writing, including grammar, effective language, drafting, rewriting, and editing papers.
Patrick McKercher
TTh 12:00P-1:45P
Oakes 103
This course will be devoted to media criticism, including new media in cyberspace. We'll look at the origins and potential of cyberspace, as well as how it is viewed in popular culture. Employing a rigorous rhetorical approach, we'll investigate media which seek to persuade, and employ semiotic analysis to decode visual messages in film, television and advertising to produce four essays and one research paper. The course will also offer opportunities to create websites and work with virtual reality (including using it for tutoring students from underresourced high schools). No computer expertise is needed, though those with little will have to put in some extra time to get up to speed, and everyone will need to set aside at least two hours a week outside of class for group projects, tutoring and viewing films.
Patrick McKercher
TTh 2:00P-3:45P
Oakes 103
Same as Section 12 above.
Peggy Miles
MWF 2:00P-3:10P
Cowell 223
"Whoever sets pen to paper speaks of himself [or herself!] whether knowingly or not." E.B. White
This course will explore how written and spoken language both shape and reflect who we are, how we think, and how others perceive us. Focusing on the power, uses, and abuses of language, we will examine cross-cultural and gender issues. Texts include Lives on the Boundary by Mike Rose and You Just Don't Understand: Conversations Between Men and Women by Deborah Tannen.
Students will write multiple drafts of essays and participate in writing groups to discuss peer work-in-progress.
Ellen Newberry
MWF 9:30A-10:40A
Crown 203
People have often used writing as a tool for exploring their own identity or for presenting their sense of self to the rest of the world. In this section of Writing 1 we will read fictional and autobiographical works which focus on the search for self. In particular, we will examine the ways that race, class, gender and sexual identity affect this process of exploration, and we will discuss why people might use writing as a way to assist in their processes of discovery. We will read books by such authors as Toni Morrison, Julia Alvarez, Daphne Scholinski and others, and mix films and music into our examination of this complex process of self-discovery. We will use the writing process as both a challenge to think critically about the world around us and an opportunity to examine our own lives more thoroughly. There will be four essays, each of which moves from discussion and planning through drafts, peer response and revision. One essay will be based on research and will allow you to investigate a topic of your choice that centers on an issue connected with the search for identity.
Dora Katheryn Nur
TTh 2:00P-3:45P
Crown 202
The American obsession with time figures fundamentally in what we value and in our decisions about work, school, leisure, and play. How do we use and conceive of time as individuals and in our society as a whole? How are time and pace important in our lives? Analyzing essays, articles, and video clips, along with Robert Levine's A Geography of Time, Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, and chapters from Gleick's Faster, we'll explore and write about time as others have thought about it and as we come to understand it better. In addition to 30 journal entries, each student will write one reflective essay, three academic essays, and an individual research paper. (This offer good for a limited time only!)
Writ. 1 Sec. 17 Dora Katheryn Nur TTh 6:00P-7:45P Crown 202
Same as Section 16 above.
Sherri Paris
MWF 11:00A-12:10P
Eight 242
This course will focus on social and political movements of the 1960s. Students will be introduced to major events, personalities, and ideas that made the decade unique. We will examine the Old Left roots of movement politics, how organizations like S.N.C.C. and S.D.S. redefined the Left's agenda, and how militant groups like the Weathermen and media-oriented groups like the Hippies changed and perhaps undermined that agenda. We will ask the questions: "What went wrong? What endured? What should the Left do differently in the Nineties?" Cultural influences will be examined through primary source material, including excerpts of tracts, novels, films, and guerrilla theater. This course continues themes which began in the Merrill Core Course regarding the Civil Rights movement and the Viet Nam War. In addition to writing several short pieces, students will be required to write and completely revise a paper of substantial range.
Sherri Paris
MWF 12:30P-1:40P
Eight 242
Same as Section 18 above.
Dan Scripture
MWF 2:00P-3:10P
Oakes 103
In this course, we will read a book called The Other Side of Heaven, edited by Wayne Karlin, Le Minh Khue, and Truong Vu, which offers many different perspectives on the experience of war and its aftermath. We will also read a short book of poetry, Renny Christopher's book, Viet Nam & California, and a book by Arnold Isaacs, Vietnam Shadows, which is meant as general background, and as an information resource. It has an excellent bibliography and a good index, among other things. It is not a history of the war, but a history of the cultural aftermath of the war. These three books raise a number of issues: the history and politics of the War, the stress on families, the mystery of the recent past, the political conflict surrounding the War, personal and political healing, the present state of things in Viet Nam, and many other issues. Overall, we will be examining how the Viet Nam War has entered literary, political, and cultural memory. As a Composition & Rhetoric course, the focus is learning to write capably, fluently, and well. Writing and research in the course will address the issues above, and will explore a number of different forms, including a final project or research paper. We will explore the writing process, including prewriting, planning, peer feedback, revision, and research.
Dan Scripture
MWF 3:30P-4:40P
Oakes 103
Same as Section 20 above.
Jude Todd
TTh 10:00A-11:45A
Porter 249
How might humans live in physical, mental, and spiritual harmony with the rest of nature? Buddhist, Jain, and Native American conceptions of the human place in nature, Western scientific ecology, and contemporary nature writers of sundry stripes will inform our developing understanding of what it means to dwell on the Earth. What fundamental assumptions about the nature of nature hamper our capacity to live harmoniously within it? What's the relationship between our own bodies and that of the Earth, and what do our attitudes toward one imply about our conceptions of the other? Do language limitations impede articulation of crucial insights that could help heal ecological distress? What light can we, as a group and individually, bring to the question: How can humans appropriately take our place (and give our share) within nature?
Students will enhance writing skills through composing and revising essays that explore such questions. The final research project allows students to delve deeply into a course-related topic of their choice. Required texts, all non-fictional, include a reader, Rules for Writers, 4th ed., by Diana Hacker, and a recent issue of an environmental magazine.
Additionally, students will select one other book of their choice from a list of supplementary texts.
Note: Due to my multiple-chemical sensitivity, I need to have a scent-free classroom. I ask that people not wear perfume, scented hair or body products, or clothing smelling of tobacco smoke, fabric softeners, etc., to class. Thank you.
Jude Todd
TTh 4:00P-5:45P
Kresge 319
Same as Section 22 above.
James Wilson
MW 5:00P-6:45P
Stevenson 151
This course will explore (in reverse chronological order) fiction and film relevant to several intellectual and historical moments of the past 75+ years: post-modernism, political activism, neo-realism, and women authors during Mussolini's regime. Students can expect to write short reading logs and five papers (including a 6-9 page research effort), to revise substantively, and to participate in small and large group discussions and draft workshops. Authors and directors include Calvino, Fo, Negri, Tartufari, Ginzburg, Wertmuller, Fellini, and de Sica.
James Wilson
MW 7:00P-8:45P
Cowell 223
This course will explore fiction and film relevant to several cultural and intellectual moments of the past 50+ years including existentialism, feminism, and post-modernism. Students can expect to write short reading logs and five papers (including a 6-9 page research effort), to revise substantively, and to participate in small and large group discussions and draft workshops. Authors and directors include Camus, Duras, Redonnet, Darrieussecq, Renoir, Rohmer, and Klapish.
Holly Gritsch De Cordova
MWF 8:00A-9:10A
Eight 242
Using the topic of the interaction of family and society, students will read, think, and, especially, write about issues, both personal and social. We will read two novels, The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, as well as a number of narrative and argumentative essays regarding the continual push and pull as families and societies as they develop cultural norms and interact with one another. Students will write extensively. Assignments will include personal reflection, analytic, and argumentative essays, and, as the course evolves, a research-based position paper. A process approach to essay writing will be stressed, including writing multiple drafts of essays and working collaboratively with a peer writing group.
Sondra Archimedes
TTh 2:00P-3:45P
Soc Sci II 141
In this course we will explore nineteenth-century ideas about madness in women. The readings encompass selections from fiction, conduct manuals, medical guidebooks and a psychoanalytical study, all of which illustrate the complex ways in which gender, body, and mind were interconnected in popular and scientific thought. Literary offerings include short stories by Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James, along with excerpts from novels by Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens. The diverse and sometimes contradictory material should encourage students to think critically and to see their own writing as the outcome of a spirited engagement with ideas. Students will write both formal and informal essays, revise papers, keep journals, and participate in peer response groups, all of which will lead to a final research project.
Julie Beck
TTh 4:00P-5:45P
Soc Sci II 141
This course examines current social, political, and cultural issues and debates in America from a sociological perspective. Through film, discussion, group-work, and reading academic articles students learn to critically analyze social issues and events, and to master the essentials of academic writing&emdash;including grammar, sentence and paragraph structure, and organizational strategies. We examine such topics as, crime and drugs in the media, reproductive liberty, race and multi-culturalism, consumer culture, family and moral politics, and technology and environment. Students will write and revise four short essays and produce a 6-8 page essay using research. This course aims to help students gain knowledge of current debates, and to develop critical reading and analytical writing that will aid them both at the university and in their career disciplines.
Candace Calsoyas
TTh 12:00P-1:45P
Crown 202
How do we develop a sense of place? We will read natural history essays and visit campus sites to determine how we locate and situate ourselves in the environment. A sequence of essays from Words From the Land and Natural State will provide the framework to analyze how authors Peter Matthiessen, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, and John McPhee interpret the geographical, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of place. Your own writing will include informal writing responses, reading journals, and a series of essays-autobiographical, expository and argumentative exploring how environment has shaped and affected an intellectual and spiritual sense of self. Reading will be relatively light but intense with "close readings" and critical analysis of stylistic devices and rhetorical strategies used by authors to give meaning to place. Analysis will include the role of "unobtrusive observer," language of fact and reverie, and the process of "dialoguing" with place. Coursework will emphasize strategies for drafting, revising and editing papers and everyone will participate in a writing group.
Kate Kordich
MW 5:00P-6:45P
Cowell 223
This class will look at a variety of California narratives in an effort to locate effective writing strategies. Students will be asked to identify what conventions and strategies are and are not effective in selected texts as a means to clarify and strengthen their own writing. Readings will include newspapers from early statehood to the present, essays, poetry, and short fiction by authors such as John Steinbeck, Joan Didion, John Fante, Gary Soto, and Hisaye Yamamoto. The class will also view and discuss Chinatown and Vertigo, two films that have strong, nearly mythic California associations. Topics to analyze and discuss include the ways in which the changing social landscape of California is registered by immigrant authors of early statehood through today; how authors narrate California's natural environment, in both its quietly lovely (coastline, the Sierra Nevada, the desert) and infamously threatening (earthquake, fire, flood, drought) manifestations. Students will write several formal essays and shorter essays, keep a reading journal, and participate in peer editing groups. All writing assignments will focus on methods for planning, drafting, revising and researching.
Staff
TTh 12:00P-1:45P
Soc Sci II 141
This course will focus on how U.S. culture, at the turn of the century, is ever rapidly fluctuating. With this in mind, we will consider how place, along with its characteristics, can shape who we are. While examining what the term "community" has implied throughout the past and up to the present day, we'll explore how groups of people, as well as individuals, react to change within contemporary culture. We will then look at specific instances and issues confronting those within the United States (and oftentimes elsewhere). Areas of exploration will include: ecology, multi-culturalism, politics, resistance, social movements, economics, and others. Readings will potentially include pieces by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Gloria Anzaldúa, Dave Foreman, Judi Bari, Ed Abbey, Joan Didion, Jon Krakauer, Eric Bogosian, Maxine Hong Kingston, Cherríe Moraga, and others. Students will write several short essays throughout the quarter, as well as one longer research paper.
Kate Evans
TTh 4:00P-5:45P
Kresge 194
In this course we will read novels, short stories, and a play and view the film adaptations. In the process, we will consider, and write about, the varying effects written and visual media attempt to exert on readers/viewers. We will consider how form and content interact, which will lead to discussion and writing about the various lenses through which ideas can be communicated. Students will also engage in an independent research project which extends their interest in one of the course's key ideas. All writing assignments will focus on methods for generating content, focusing and organizing ideas, and revising with the help of classmates. Texts for the course will include Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (film: Smoke Signals), Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Romeo and Juliet (with two films adapted from this play).
Valerie Kaussen
TTh 10:00A-11:45A
Soc Sci II 141
In this course we will learn critical writing skills by discussing and writing extensively about a selection of autobiographical works. We will look at issues of genre, form and voice as we analyze the ways that a life, a subject, or a self is constructed in writing. Composing our own autobiographical and biographical pieces will also allow us to explore the borders between fact and fiction, reporting and inventing. Three to four essays plus a longer research paper will be assigned throughout the quarter. Peer responses, revisions, informal writing assignments and oral presentations will help us to further explore our understanding of the autobiography as well as hone our ability to produce clear prose and well-organized essays. Readings will include I, Rigoberta Menchu and a course reader.
Robin King
MWF 11:00A-12:10P
Eight 250
Some psychologists and educators claim that emotional intelligence predicts a person's success in life more than performance on IQ tests, SAT scores and other standardized exams. In this section of Writing 1 we will explore concepts of emotional intelligence by writing about the influence of emotions on perception, awareness, behavior and critical thinking.
Students will complete informal and formal writing assignments in which they analyze how humans dramatize emotions in effective and dysfunctional ways. In peer-led discussion and small writing response groups, there will be a strong link between analytical reading of essays about the dynamics of human emotions and writing convincing arguments about the connections between emotional intelligence and rational thinking. Students will research and write four 3-6 page essays and a final research paper about the influence of culture and social institutions on emotions, perceptions and behavior. Course work will emphasize the essentials of academic writing, including grammar, effective language, drafting, rewriting, and editing papers.
Roxanne Hamilton
TTh 6:00P-7:45P
Porter 249
Beginning with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, we will write about the literary, historical, and thematic elements of long poems and shorter lyrics from the Medieval period to the present. We will write explications, historical analyses, and argumentative essays in a sequence of revised essays that culminate in a longer research project. Our goal is to perform close readings of poems that incorporate formal poetic conventions without sounding mechanical. That is, we will try to carve out a "voice" that enhances the beauty or complexity of the poem rather than nailing it down to a single meaning. Poets include Shakespeare, Donne, Swift, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Williams, Stein, Hughes, Brooks, Plath, Rich, Olson, Ginsberg, O'Hara, Lorde, and Hacker.
Sean Thomas
TTh 8:00P-9:45P
Cowell 223
This course focuses on your writing&emdash;informal and formal. As you shuttle between personal, academic and professional spheres, your deployment of language becomes an increasingly crucial means of self-empowerment. This course encourages you to adopt a style that can move easily and knowingly among very personal and informal writing through the shared informal language that small groups create and on into the formal, polished writing that critical, out-of-class audiences demand.
To help you develop familiarity with a variety of writing modes and a facility in their use, the course will regularly include a similar range of writing activities and assignments. Much of the time, you and the other students will be learning from each other--sharing and discovering the powers of language. We will also look closely at a number of published essays collected in Bartholomae and Petrosky's Ways of Reading: an Anthology for Writers.