ENGL 347 A: Studies in Non-Fiction Prose

If you have confirmed or suspected COVID-19: please notify the UW Environmental Health & Safety COVID-19 Response Team at  covidehc@uw.edu, or call 206.616.3344. Then please contact me by email so we can get a plan in place.

If owing to quarantine you have to miss meeting classes in person,

1. Please contact a class member by email or carrier pigeon to get notes for the classes. Each of you may be called on to share your notes with others. Thank you in advance for establishing and honoring community.

2. You will need to do a viva voce for the missed material, in order to demonstrate your engagement with the material; this will count toward the "Discussion" element of the course grade. See "How to do a Viva Voce" in "Files."

Face coverings are required indoors at UW. In keeping with the official “University of Washington Face Covering Policy” (updated 22 Sept 2021), fully vaccinated faculty may remove face coverings while lecturing, in the service of audibility. As required by this policy I will at these times maintain 6’ distance from others; please assist me in so doing.

Professor Burstein jb2@uw.edu

Engl 347A Nonfiction Prose: The Essay         Autumn 2021        T/Th 2:30-4:20. Loew 106.

Office hours: Fridays 8-10 am, Zoom, link TBA.

Texts

The course reader is now available at Rams Copy Center on The Ave. Note its new address: 

The class will be reading material containing explicit sexual language; explicit references to violence and self-harm; the use of racially demeaning terms; and misogynist language. Alongside a commitment to anti-racist pedagogy, I adopt Dr. Koritha Mitchell’s pedagogical practice: “The N-word is not uttered in my classes, even if it appears in the reading. We simply say N or N’s when reading passages aloud.”  http://www.korithamitchell.com/teaching-and-the-n-word/ (Links to an external site.) https://soundcloud.com/c19podcast/nword

Calendar

Week One Start

Thursday 30 October Introduction, Introductions

Week Two Examples

Tuesday 5 October

1) Donna Steiner, “Elements of the Wind” (2009) (8 pages).* Instructions are found in the first “comment” in the PDF.

2) Zadie Smith, “North West London Blues”* (5 pp)

3) O’Farrell, “All Hail the Holy Bone”* (2018) (14 pp)

Thursday 7 October Single paragraph #1 due

4) Namwali Serpell, “Unbothered: On Black Nonchalance” (23 pp). Here's the link, supplying images and videos.  [The eversion  in Files also has some notes]

And here's a link to the piece by Ashon Crawley that Serpell refers to on Serpell, p. 60: It has links to the Clark Sisters' (wonderful) work and performances--and it's important to continue to see [and hear] what "style" looks like for Serpell. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911043651/twinkie-clark-sisters-gospel-church-women-black-lives

5) Alaine Locke, “Enter the New Negro”* (1925) (6 pp)

Week Three “Notes”

Tuesday 12 Oct 

Namwali Serpell, “Unbothered: On Black Nonchalance” (23 pp). Here's the link, supplying images and videos.  [The eversion  in Files also has some notes]

And here's a link to the piece by Ashon Crawley that Serpell refers to on Serpell, p. 60: It has links to the Clark Sisters' (wonderful) work and performances--and it's important to continue to see [and hear] what "style" looks like for Serpell. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911043651/twinkie-clark-sisters-gospel-church-women-black-lives

5) Alaine Locke, “Enter the New Negro”* (1925) (6 pp)

6) Sontag, “Notes On Camp”* (1964) (15 pp.)

Now moved to Tuesday 19 October: 7) Carson, “Every Exit is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep)”* (17 pp)

Thursday 14 Oct 

8) Serpell, “Notes on Shade”* (2021) 29 pp. There’s a hard copy version (and one in Canvas/Files) but supplement it with the e-version for embedded videos: https://post45.org/2021/01/serpell-notes-on-shade/

Week Four On Writing

Tuesday 19 Oct Single paragraph # 2 due

7) Carson, “Every Exit is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep)”* (17 pp)

9) Davis, “Revising One Sentence”* (7 pp.)

10) Didion “Why I Write” (1976)* (4 pp) 

11) Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”* (6 pp)

12) Hilton Als, “Forward” from Didion, Let Me Tell You What I Mean (2021)* (34 pp.)

13) Didion, “On Being Unchosen By the College of One’s Choice” from Didion, Let Me Tell You What I Mean* (2021; 1968)

Thursday 21 Oct: On the writing of others (i.e. reviews):

14) Galchen, “A Mystery to Itself: What is a Brain?”* (8 pp.)

15) Stevens, “Yo Ho Hum”* (1 pg)

16) Wolcott, “Smugged By Reality”*  (5 pp) (2007)

Week Five  Theory

Tuesday 26 Oct Single paragraph #3 due on Adorno

17) Adorno, “The Essay as Form”* (1958, trans. 1984) (22 pp.) Read instructions in the comment I posted on page one of the Eversion in Canvas “Files”: they include how to read it. This is the toughest thing you’ll read in this class, so please don’t panic, or do so only briefly. Today we will focus on the first half: pp. 151-161 (through to the section break).

Thursday 28 Oct [Halloween class]   Adorno, con’t (2^nd half: pp. 161- end). Boo.

Week Six  Theories

Tuesday 2 Nov: Adorno, con't

Thursday 4 Nov

18) David Foster Wallace, first 2 pages of syllabus for creative nonfiction class.* (1.5 pp.)

19) Margo Jefferson, “The Life of the Mind in Close Up”* (1 p)

20) D’Ambrosio, “By Way of a Preface” (4 pages)*

21) Shields, from Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (2010)* “ “Reality,” **and “Appendix” (13 pp)

Week Seven  

Tuesday 9 Nov In class soi-disant midterm

  Single paragraph #4 due on Malcolm.

22) Malcolm, “The Journalist and the Murderer”* (44 pp)

Thursday 11 Nov. Veteran's Day. No class.

Week Eight: Flâneurie and Travel 

Tuesday 16 Nov Single paragraph #5 due on Wallace or Woolf. It cannot be about the role of footnotes in Wallace.

23) Virginia Woolf, “Street Haunting” (12 pp)*

24) D’Ambrosio, “Loitering,” (9 pages), from Loitering: New and Collected Essays.* Originally published in the Stranger. Note that the PDF is of the entire section of CD’A’s book; read only the assigned stuff.

25) D’Ambrosio, “Seattle, 1974”* (6 pages) from Loitering: New and Collected Essays. Note that the PDF is of the entire section of CD’A’s book.

25.5) NB: Cobain committed suicide, a fact referenced in this piece:

Azzerad, “My Time with Kurt Cobain” (22 Sept 2021). (24 pp.)

26) David Foster Wallace, “Shipping Out” (1996)* 24 pages. This piece will take 4-5 hours to read carefully.

Thursday 18 Nov Wallace, con’t

Week Nine: Other People

Tuesday 23 Nov

27) Mitchell, “Joe Gould’s Secret: I” (29 pp)*

Thursday 25 Nov No class

Week Ten St/art

Tuesday 30 Nov Single paragraph #6 due

28) Janet Malcolm, “41 False Starts” * (37 pp) JB will supplement with some visuals, via the interweb.

29) Ali Smith, “Green” (2010).* 6 pp. Here is the painting. https://www.wikiart.org/en/paul-cezanne/the-etang-des-soeurs-at-osny-1875

Thursday 2 Dec

30) Rachel Kushner, “The Hard Crowd”*  (2021) (16 pp.)

31) Didion, “Goodbye to All That”* (9 pp)

Week Eleven

Tuesday 7 Dec  

32) Roupenian, “Cat Person” (2017)*

33) Nowicki, “’Cat Person’ and Me” (2021)*

Thursday 9 Dec. Conclusion.

Exam: Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021 4:30-6:20 p.m (PST). Identification, short answer, multiple choice.

Grading

Single Paragraphs: 25 %

Midterm: 25%

Final: 25%

Classwork and discussion: 25%

Assignments

A Single Paragraph. Due in hard copy at the start of the class sessions indicated above.

Each week’s Single Paragraph will get a letter grade ranging from A to F. The letter grades will be converted to the 4.0 rating scale according to the UW’s official “Standard Grading System” and then averaged. That averaged, cumulative grade will be the “Single Paragraphs Grade” (see above) that is part of the overall course grade.

Late incurs penalty. Very late risks a D or below. Write me a reasonable email ahead of time if you foresee an issue with timing.

While this class doesn’t count as a “W” course, it is impossible to study literature seriously without writing. Thus on the days indicated you’ll turn in a single, composed paragraph. This assignment rhymes with the essay as a short form genre, so you’ll be honing form (the force of brevity) as well as function (thinking analytically). Brevity is hard.

"In itself every sound paragraph has unity: it deals with one aspect of the subject or serves one function. It is coherent: that is, it hangs together; it is not a jumble. Finally, it often has its own emphasis or high point -- it peaks at some point of stress. In sum, the paragraph resembles an essay in miniature."

--[Cleanth] Brooks and [Robert] Warren, as quoted in Levenson, Modernism and the Fate of Individuality)

Instructions. Write a paragraph. It will be one critical-analytic idea that is directly connected to that week’s reading. You might but need not write a paragraph about multiple essays from the same week; feel free to focus on a single essay, or to examine how the paragraph works qua form in an essay you’re reading.

1. It will refer directly to one or more of the essays.
2. It will not use the first person.
3. It will be 150 – 250 words. Put the word count at the bottom of the page.

You can use an epigraph from another source. See “How to Write an Epigraph” file in Canvas. The epigraph does not figure into the word count. Since an epigraph should not be longer than the work it is epigraph-ing, your epigraphs should not be longer than one or 2 sentences. One sentence is sleek. Three at most, but it better be worth that extra sentence.

Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors and ickiness-es (sic) will figure into the grade awarded the Single Paragraph.

Exams

Midterm and the cumulative final exam consist of identification and short answer. You will need to bring a blank blue book, and a pen. At the start of the exam period, the blank blue books will be turned in, shuffled by Vanna White, and redistributed: thrown up into the air, and then graded on the basis of who grabs the most of them. Well, no, not that last part. However, if you cheat, measures will be taken in accord with UW policies.

Misc.

1. Always write me from your uw.edu email account. I do not open emails sent from personal accounts. Call UW IT if you are confused about the mechanics of forwarding email to different accounts. (You can also use Canvas, but regular email keeps the thread of the conversation more readily.)

2. If you are asked to read something aloud containing language you are not comfortable uttering, you are free to decline. (Profanity does not include the words penis or vagina. These are anatomical terms. It does include “fuck.”) Just say, “I’d rather read another quote another time.”

I request, but do not require, that you see me later in office hours, or email me, to let me know the generic grounds for declining: I am not asking a personal question. My request is in the service of continuing to maintain my own professional awareness of evolving student realities and horizons. Whether or not you later contact me is entirely your decision. Nothing hinges on it.

3. All written assignments are to follow standard paper formatting. This may mean you have to change the default spacing in Word from spacing to “no spaces” between paragraphs. Papers receive an automatic penalty if this is not adjusted. Spaces are used between sections of papers, or novels, or items in lists. They do not separate paragraphs.

4. Do not plagiarize. Plagiarism includes the lifting of material from the internet, collusion, and the use of sources without full citation. Papers and presentations are to be the result of your own labor, and all sources must be documented. If you have any questions regarding what constitutes plagiarism, consult me. Plagiarism encompasses unintentional as well as intentional behavior.

5. If I get your name or preferred pronoun wrong, please let me know.

6. I do not hold office hours via email.

7. This syllabus is subject to change. I will announce changes during our in-person classes, and/or notify the class through announcements and/or email. You are responsible for keeping up with these modifications to our schedule and/or assignments: check your email account once a day for the remainder of the term.

8. Things are especially crazy nowadays, and something is going to go sideways at least once and possibly 200 times. Keep calm, stay in contact with me, and carry on.

Finally

Finally—and there are 2 places to pay especial attention to in any prose: the opening and the closing—if you do not know what something means look it up.*** This ranges from the definition of a word to a reference that the essay is running with. If you don’t know what it means, you won’t know what it means. That means you’re not doing the work that at least two people want you to do. The author was hoping; I’m factoring it into participation. And obviously I don’t mean you look everything up, but if you repeatedly don’t have an informed clue, the chances of success in this class diminish accordingly.

*** Make sure the source is scholarly, or at least not insane. Googling randomly is inevitable, but you’re paying money to be part of an expensive research library that has readily accessed sources. Bookmark the UW library’s link to the OED on your machinery.

 You will be held to the UW’s stipulations regarding health and conduct.

If you require accommodation owing to a disability, contact the Disabilities Resources for Students Office (DRS) in Schmitz Hall 448 (206-548-8924; uwdss@u.washington.edu) or the Disabilities Services Office (DSO) at dso@u.washington.edu. It is your responsibility to follow all rules outlined by the DRS/DSO: Should forms be involved, you must ensure delivery to me with time enough to allow for us to arrive at a mutual understanding of the means by which those accommodations are best met.

 “Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/) (Links to an external site.). Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form (https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/) (Links to an external site.).”

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