The Vital Voice: Personal Presence in the Essay

 Writing 305 is a course in the writing of narrative.  Though it is grounded in the content of our readings and our discussions, it will be primarily a writing studio.  This means that we will spend a good deal of time writing,  both in class and out of it.   We will work together earnestly in a studio/ workshop setting in order to help one another improve our writing skills.  The writings will be being driven by an exploration of the senses.   We will read several texts that take up with sensory material, as well as essays that begin in sensory experience and move toward meditative writing.   The idea behind this focus on the senses is to develop as writers a kind of powerful attentiveness.  Attentiveness and detail will be the cornerstones of your narratives.  For our purposes, the significance of the personal voice cannot be underestimated in a powerful essay.  This does not mean that all of the texts that we produce in this class will be of a highly personal nature, though some most likely will.  What we are after, finally, is the blending of the personal and the scholarly in your written work.   In keeping with this project we will have several regular writing and in-class exercises.

I.  The Noticing Notebook

The purpose of this is to open all of the senses to what there is around us: to begin to notice.  In this, you'll keep a weekly entry with at least one paragraph for each sense, and one paragraph of meditations that come out of those observations.  This will be handed in weekly and is worth ten points.

II.  Reading Responses

You will compose ten two- page reading responses over the course of the semester.  They are to be considered short formal writing assignments in which you address particular issues within the readings.  Each one is worth two points.  These are all to be typewritten or wordprocessed.  NO EXCEPTIONS.

III.  Formal Papers

You will write three formal essays, two of which will be eight pages in length.   The final essay will be a larger project in which you will produce a ten to twelve page text.  The first two essays will be worth fifteen points each; the final essay will be worth twenty-five points.  These are all to be typewritten or wordprocessed.  NO EXCEPTIONS.

IV.  Participation/ Attendance

Your attentive and prepared presence is considered essential to your success in this class.  Be here and be ready to speak about the readings/ writings at hand.  Participation is worth fifteen points of your final grade.  Missing three classes is justification to lower your final grade one full letter.

Required Texts:

(available at the Orange Bookstore; filed under "WRT 305 HON")

John Berger's Ways of Seeing

Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses

Loren Eisley's The Immense Journey

Colette's Duo

and

Writing 305 Reader at The Campus Copy Center

N.B.-- The calendar to follow is merely an outline for the progress of the class.  Any assignments are subject to change and it is your responsibility to keep up on those week to week details.

Course Calendar:

Weds. 9-1-- First day of class/ Reader and texts/ Notion of collectives/ Workshopping/ Studio Concept/ Syllabus

Mon. 9-6-- class cancelled due to Martin Luther King holiday

Tues. 9-7-- Redefined to Monday.  Have read "Narrative" by J. Hillis Miller.  Two page reading response #1 due.

Weds. 9-18-- Have carefully read "The Story-Teller" by Walter Benjamin.  Be prepared to speak about it in class.

Mon. 9-13-- Reading response #2 on "The Storyteller" due.  In class writing and discussion.

Weds. 9-15-- Have read "Smell" in Diane Ackerman,  and excerpts from Perfume.

Mon. 9-20-- Reading response #3 is due.  Senses trigger memory.  Write a personal narrative that is prompted by a smell.

Weds. 9-22-- Have read Eisley's "How Flowers Changed the World", and "The Secret of Life".  Reading Response #4 due.

Mon. 9-27-- CANCELED-- work on paper for Weds.

Weds. 9-29--Redevelop your short narrative on smell into something longer, incorprating some of the material about other senses from your noticing notebook.   Consider why this information and detail is important and include those claims.

Bring three copies of your  three to four page paper with you to class for workshopping in collectives.

Mon. 10-4-- Have begun correlating ideas for formal paper #1.  Integrate the narrative that you've started on the senses with larger philosophical notions of the narrative as a form.  Bring in some of the ideas from Miller and Benjamin.  Brainstorming in collectives.  Meeting with me.

Weds. 10-6-- Have three typewritten or wordprocessed copies of your four to five page rough draft of the first formal essay.  Workshopping in collectives.

Mon. 10-11-- Classes canceled FALL BREAK

Weds. 10-13-- Final draft due of first formal paper.  Have read excerpts of Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu from  The Ink Dark Moon and  James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues."  Be prepared to speak about how one writes about sound.

Mon. 10-18-- Have read "Hearing" in Ackerman and excerpts of James Baldwin's Just Above My Head.   Reading response # 5 due on Ackerman and Baldwin.  Musical text.  Listening and writing about music.

Weds.  10-20--  Have read the excerpt from Like Water for Chocolate, and "Taste" from Diane Ackerman.  Reading response #6 due.

Mon. 10-25-- Have read "Touch" by F. Gonzalez-Crussi, and "Synethesia" by Ackerman.  The three poems from Louise Bogan's The Blue Estuaries. Reading response #7 due.

Weds. 10-27-- Write a narrative that is inspired by one or both of the two reading responses that you did in this unit.  It may also come out of your noticing notebook.  Does any of this prompt you toward one of your own recollections?  Does it move you to do some research and create a scholarly project of your own?   Be prepared with written ideas in order to brainstorm and generate more of them within the collectives.

Mon. 11-1-- Bring three copies of a four to five page rough draft with you to class.  Workshopping in the collectives and meeting with me.

Weds. 11-3-- Meet with me on a drop-in optional basis or aWriting Consultant (one or the other; NO EXCEPTIONS).  Regular class cancelled.

Mon. 11-8-- Final draft of 2nd formal paper due.  Field trip to the Everson Museum.  Bring notepads.  We will be writing about art.

Weds.  11-10-- Have read all of Ways of Seeing by John Berger.  Prepare a reading response (#8)  in which you read some of the artworks that you saw through his interpretive lens.

Mon. 11-15-- Berger again and more visual texts.  Have read the Wallace Stevens poems in the reader.  Have read "The Man of the Future" by Loren Eisley.   Reading response #9 due. 

Weds. 11-17-- Have read Ackerman's "Vision" and Octavio Paz' "From Criticism to Offering."  Reading response #10 due.  Tamayo pictures.

Mon. 11-22--Have read excerpts from Colette's Duo.  

Weds. 11-24-- Class cancelled due to Thanksgiving holiday

Mon. 11-29-- Bring written ideas for your final paper project.  You will want to take up with some aspect of sensing and being in culture that also interrogates your own identity.   It should incorporate both recollection and investigation.    We will brainstorm again in collectives and meet with me.

Weds. 12-1-- Bring in three copies of your six to eight page rough draft toward your final paper.  We will workshop them in collectives.

Mon. 12-6-- Classes canceled; Conferences-- and meet with writing consultants!!!

Weds. 12-6-- Classes canceled; Conferences-- and meet with writing consultants!!!

Mon 12-13-- Final paper due.  Last day of class.  General discussion.  Evaluations

Reading List

1. Narrative by J. Hillis Miller

2.  The Story-Teller by Walter Benjamin

3.  Excerpts fromPerfume by Patrick Suskind

4.  Excerpts fromThe Ink Dark Moon-- Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu

5.  "Sonny's Blues" from Going to Meet the Man and excerpts fromJust Above My Head by James Baldwin

6.  Excerpts fromLike Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquirel

7.  "Touch" from The Five Senses by F. Gonzalez-Crussi

8. Excerpts fromThe Blue Estuaries by Louise Bogan: "Betrothed," "Division,"and "The Dragonfly."

9. "The Snow Man" and "Postcards from the Volcano" by Wallace Stevens.

10.  From Criticism to Offering and Transfigurations by Octavio Paz from Essays on Mexican Art

11.  Duo by Colette