Kresge College- Winter 1998

This workshop course will assist Kresge students with the writing tasks required by their other courses in any discipline. Participants will study exemplary essays from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Physical Sciences and learn t apply selected appropriate techniques to their own papers.

You will work closely with other students in workshop groups and with the instructor, Tom Marshall, to strengthen the composition of your essays and your command of the concepts and vocabulary in your field.

This course is especially designed for transfer students and others needing particular help in getting into appropriate writing modes for work across this campus.

Call Tom at 459-3760 if you have any questions.

This is a companion course to LIT 101, Introduction to Theory, that is being taught by Richard Murphy, Winter 98. The texts we will use will be the same as those in Professor Murphy's LIT 101.

The course is designed specifically for transfer students, and should be seen as a bridge to help those students adjust to the kind of college level work we do at UCSC. Using the small seminar environment as a focus group, students will have the opportunity of going over difficult theoretical texts slowly and in depth. One of our aims will be to explore the ways in which so- called "theoretical" texts can contribute to our understanding of so-called "primary" texts. In addition to reading selections from their LIT 101 syllabus, students will read an introduction to theory (either Terry Eagleton's LITERARY THEORY, or Catherine Belsey's CRITICAL PRACTICE), giving small group presentations on each of the chapters from this text and accompanying those presentations with 1-2 page précis of the chapter/topic in question. In addition to the weekly précis, students will have the chance to work on preparatory drafts of the papers they are assigned in their LIT 101 course, and will be asked to write a separate essay, of 6-10 pages, on a work of literature.

Evaluations will be based on participation and work with other students in the class, revision work on essays, and on the quality of all other written assignments for the class.

A seminar that builds upon a methodology I/we have been working with in the Kresge Core Course for several years: locating the individual within his or her cultural understanding and social relations; by proceeding from life histories to a broader look at intersecting cultures. This course originates from my own history among African-Americans, Chicanos and Mexicans&emdash;as well as white mainstream and counter- cultures&emdash;in the larger LA area in the 1960s, as a starting point for considering these cultures in this time and place.

We will focus our studies on the individual situated in place/neighborhood, in relation to contemporary sub-cultures, and popular cultural production.

We will study historical and cultural contexts of the LA area in the 1960s, through speakers, background and narrative materials, including social history, fiction, film, autobiography, magazines and music.

Writing work will begin with self and space, move to an interview project, and expand through research. What areas of enquiry and research open out from life history? How does lifestyle reflect or deflect culture?

Our purposes are, through reading, discussion, and writing, to explore how the experience of an individual expresses his or her culture. How does that culture function in unity with and opposition to other cultures? How do co-existing cultures define one another? How are related cultures integrated, how isolated?

Overall, what are our possibilities for cultural maintenance, exchange, and communication?

Mike Davis, CITY OF QUARTZ

Walter Mosley, BLACK BETTY

Jose Antonio Burciaga, EN POCAS PALABRAS/ IN FEW WORDS

Course Reader (see assignments)

Films

Speakers

I Course Participation

II Writing project in three stages

a) Self-study ("self-location")..................Due date: Jan. 2

b) Interview project .............................Due date: Feb.3

c) Research incorporation/presentation........Due date: Feb. 24 (draft)

........Due date: Mar. 5 (final)

Papers must be typed, throroughly proofread, and handed in at the beginning of class on date due. Essays with numerous errors will not pass. Students missing more than four classes will not pass the course. Should problems arise, students must confer with me at least three days prior to any deadlines.

(contd.)

Jan. 13
An Anthropologist's Attic
The World of Wrestling
The Founders of Los Angeles
Davis Prologue
Clark's "Improbable Los Angeles" from SUNBELT CITIES

Jan. 15
Davis 1: Sunshine or Noir?
From the Orange Crate Lable catalogue
Didion: The White Album
The Doors' Night in the City
Speaker life-line

Jan. 20
Davis 2: Power Lines
Didion: Letter from LA

Jan. 22
Davis 3: Homegrown Revolution
Westward to Canaan
Speaker life-line

Jan. 27
Davis 4: Fortress LA
Home and Yard: Black Folk Life in LA

Jan. 29
Film: To Sleep With Anger

Feb. 3
Mosley's BLACK BETTY

Feb. 5
Mosley's BLACK BETTY

Feb. 10
Davis 5: The Hammer and the Rock

Feb. 12
Violence in the City
Pynchon's A Journey into the Mind of Watts
Speaker life-line

Feb. 17
Rios-Bustamente's History of Mexican Los Angeles
Davis 6: New Confessions

Feb. 19
Film: Valdez' I am Joachim

Feb. 24
Mexican Voices, American Dreams

EN POCAS PALABRAS

Feb. 26
Visitor life-line
Chicano music

EN POCAS PALABRAS

Mar. 3
Readings '92
Twilight

Mar. 5
Twilight

Students will be encouraged to work out of their own cultural background to see the forces of neighborhood/space/community that shape them, as well as each individual's similarities and differences with their own community dynamics. As a writing instructor, I will help you with your writing. However, this is not a writing class.

Your writing will probably be a three-part project:

1) Self-study ("self-location")

2) Interview someone connected to you, your family, your culture, time/place, or the kind of cultural production you want to study & research (music, art, crafts, film).

3) Add research. Expand your self-study, interview, or subject of interest with the incorporation of further information and more sources of breadth and depth on the subject.

Revised 7/12/04.