ENGL 281 C: Intermediate Expository Writing

English 281 C Winter 2024

Time and location: M/W 11:30-1:20, Thomson 234

Instructor: Dr. Emily George                                                             

Email: ecg136@uw.edu (Note: please email me from your UW email address to help ensure that your email does not get filtered as spam. UW has an aggressive spam filter!)

Office Hours: MW 10-11 or by appointment (Office Hours are on Zoom unless otherwise arranged)

Office Hours Zoom Link: https://washington.zoom.us/j/99625371204

Course Description

This composition course focuses on the imaginative and ideological power of storytelling. We will think about how cultures, political movements, academics, artists, and writers invest in certain narratives, how those narratives get used, and how people continually return to and reimagine them in different times and contexts. Some of our guiding questions include:

• What stories (or myths) do we tell ourselves about the past and present?
• How do we use stories to make sense of the world and our place in it?
• How do the stories we tell impact our world?

We will explore these and other questions as they emerge and intersect across different disciplines, including history, anthropology, public health, environmental studies, art, classics, and literature, in academic and in public-facing work. We will also consider the relationships between genre, mode, and audience, and practice different forms of composition for different writing situations.

Readings

There will be a significant amount of reading each week for this class, so make sure you are scheduling time for it and looking ahead! All readings are available for free on Canvas. Our readings will be broken up into three units:

Borders and Geographies as Narrative

Epeli Hau’ofa, “Our Sea of Islands”

Bouchra Khalili, The Mapping Journey Project

Julian Barr, “Pioneer Square and the Making of Queer Seattle”

The Spouter-Inn: Hereford Mappa Mundi

Narratives to Inform—and Misinform

Harvey et al., “Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy”

The 1918 Pandemic in Philadelphia Exhibit Tour

NPR, "America's Satanic Panic Returns—This Time Through QAnon"

Narratives that Kill

Magda Teter, Introduction to Blood Libel  

Rebecca Futo Kennedy, “Blood and Soil from Antiquity to Charlottesville: A Short Primer”

Lore, “Half Hanged”

Course Outcomes

Outcome 1 

To compose strategically for a variety of audiences and contexts, both within and outside the university, by 

• recognizing how different elements of a rhetorical situation matter for the task at hand and affect the options for composing and distributing texts; 
• coordinating, negotiating, and experimenting with various aspects of composing—such as genre, content, conventions, style, language, organization, appeals, media, timing, and design—for diverse rhetorical effects tailored to the given audience, purpose, and situation; and 
• assessing and articulating the rationale for and effects of composing choices.

Outcome 2 

To work strategically with complex information in order to generate and support inquiry by 

• reading, analyzing, and synthesizing a diverse range of texts and understanding the situations in which those texts are participating; 
• using reading and writing strategies to craft research questions that explore and respond to complex ideas and situations; 
• gathering, evaluating, and making purposeful use of primary and secondary materials appropriate for the writing goals, audience, genre, and context; 
• creating a ‘conversation’—identifying and engaging with meaningful patterns across ideas, texts, experiences, and situations; and 
• using citation styles appropriate for the genre and context. 

Outcome 3 

To craft persuasive, complex, inquiry-driven arguments that matter by

• considering, incorporating, and responding to different points of view while developing one’s own position; 
• engaging in analysis—the close scrutiny and examination of evidence, claims, and assumptions—to explore and support a line of inquiry; 
• understanding and accounting for the stakes and consequences of various arguments for diverse audiences and within ongoing conversations and contexts; and
• designing/organizing with respect to the demands of the genre, situation, audience, and purpose. 

Outcome 4 

To practice composing as a recursive, collaborative process and to develop flexible strategies for revising throughout the composition process by 

• engaging in a variety of (re)visioning techniques, including (re)brainstorming, (re)drafting, (re)reading, (re)writing, (re)thinking, and editing; 
• giving, receiving, interpreting, and incorporating constructive feedback; and
• refining and nuancing composition choices for delivery to intended audiences in a manner consonant with the genre, situation, and desired rhetorical effects and meanings.

Course Materials

• Readings will be posted to the Canvas website
• Regular (daily) access to the Canvas website and to your UW email.

Grading, Late Work, Incomplete Work

See Grade Contract

Class Expectations and Guidelines for Discussion

You will be working within small groups, peer review pairings, and the whole class throughout the quarter. Disagreement can be productive, and scholars in all fields depend on disagreement to strengthen their arguments, discover errors, and challenge their own thinking. You may find that some of the topics and discussions in this class will cause you discomfort. This is normal, expected, and, in fact, crucial to your learning. Engaging with complexity—through history, art, literature, politics, cultural studies, your own research and writing—is a difficult labor, and difficult labor is often uncomfortable. 

However, in order for conflict to be productive, it must be respectful. Personal attacks, disrespectful language, and disrespectful behavior have no place in the class, and will not be tolerated. If debates or discussions get intense or heated, remember that it is difficult to know the backgrounds, experiences, emotions, and beliefs of others in the room, and be sensitive to that. Be generous with others and try to assume good intentions. Keep your responses specific to the topic under discussion. You are expected to use language and action that shows respect for gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, and ability in order to create a safe and welcoming class.

Guidelines for Class and Small Group Discussion

• Listen carefully to others, and do not attempt to respond before they’ve finished what they have to say.
• When someone else is talking, try not to focus on how you disagree or the way you want to reply. Instead, focus completely on what they’re trying to communicate until they finish.
• Stay on topic and connect what you have to say with the readings and/or with what others have said.
• Write down your thoughts so you can return to them.
• Ask follow-up questions of others, and try to repeat your understanding of what they’ve said as part of that follow up.
• Speak up with a willingness to discover you're wrong.
• Try not to dominate conversations. Make sure everyone in your group is included, and invite others to speak.

Academic Integrity

Plagiarism, or academic dishonesty, is presenting someone else's ideas or writing as your own. In your writing for this class, you are encouraged to refer to other people's thoughts and writing—as long as you cite them. As a matter of policy, any student found to have plagiarized any piece of writing in this class will be immediately reported to the College of Arts and Sciences for review.

Note from Dr. George—If you are confused or unsure about whether or not something you want to do would be considered plagiarism, please talk to me about it! I won’t penalize you for not knowing. Sometimes plagiarism is something obvious, like copying someone else’s essay, but sometimes it can get trickier, like paraphrasing, citing information/ideas and not just quotes, etc. Likewise, if you are feeling so much pressure or confusion that you’re thinking about plagiarizing, talk to me. Plagiarizing can have huge consequences for your grade and your academic future, and we can come up with a solution that’s better than taking that risk.

Academic Integrity: On the use of “Artificial Intelligence,” ChatGPT, and other AI writing programs

Artificial intelligence is a subject with tons of branches, and sometimes, the results of AI research and projects are useful, creative, and ethically well-thought-out. However, this is not true in many instances. ChatGPT and other forms of “AI” have repeatedly been shown to provide you with misleading or outright false information; to unethically scrape the labor of creators (artists, writers, researchers, programmers, engineers, and other workers) and use it without compensation or permission; and even, on occasion, to “hallucinate,” providing nonsensical responses. All of these are important reasons for being wary of using AI for research, writing, or fact-checking. But in the case of this class, the most important thing to remember is that English 281 is a class designed to guide you through a particular process of thinking, making judgments, coming to conclusions, and revising your conclusions. A machine might be able to produce an essay that is coherent, follows “standard English grammar,” and addresses a given topic. It cannot, however, demonstrate how your ideas have changed over the course of reading and discussing a topic, or how your argument has been revised to accommodate new information, or how you have read and researched different sources and made your own judgments about their reliability, their usefulness, their connections to one another and to your own thinking. Therefore, because those are the habits and skills we are focusing on in English 281, submitting work produced by AI instead of written by you is considered a form of academic dishonesty and falls under the plagiarism clause described above.

Keep in mind that since we are using a grade contract, no amount of plagiarizing—even if you are never caught—can get you a higher grade than turning in your own work would. But plagiarism can get you an automatic failing grade.

Religious Accommodations

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 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.)

Accommodations

If you need accommodation of any sort, please let me know so that I can work with the UW Disability Resources for Students Office (DRS) to provide what you require. This syllabus is available in large print, as are other class materials. More information about accommodation may be found at http://www.washington.edu/students/drs/.

English Departmental Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Justice

The UW English Department aims to help students become more incisive thinkers, effective communicators, and imaginative writers by acknowledging that language and its use are powerful and hold the potential to empower individuals and communities; to provide the means to engage in meaningful conversation and collaboration across differences and with those with whom we disagree; and to offer methods for exploring, understanding, problem solving, and responding to the many pressing collective issues we face in our world--skills that align with and support the University of Washington’s mission to educate “a diverse student body to become responsible global citizens and future leaders through a challenging learning environment informed by cutting-edge scholarship.”

As a department, we begin with the conviction that language and texts play crucial roles in the constitution of cultures and communities, past, present, and future.  Our disciplinary commitments to the study of English (its history, multiplicity, and development; its literary and artistic uses; and its global role in shaping and changing cultures) require of us a willingness to engage openly and critically with questions of power and difference. As such, in our teaching, service, and scholarship we frequently initiate and encourage conversations about topics such as race and racism, immigration, gender, sexuality, class, indigeneity, and colonialisms. These topics are fundamental to the inquiry we pursue.  We are proud of this fact, and we are committed to creating an environment in which our faculty and students can do so confidently and securely, knowing that they have the backing of the department.  We acknowledge that to study and engage the English language is to grapple with its imperialist and colonialist history, its relationship to power and whiteness, its involvement in the spread of globalization and in perpetuating inequity, as well as its creative uses to imagine and bring into existence a better world.

Towards that aim, we value the inherent dignity and uniqueness of individuals and communities. We acknowledge that our university is located on the shared lands and waters of the Coast Salish peoples. We aspire to be a place where human rights are respected and where any of us can seek support. This includes people of all ethnicities, faiths, gender identities, national and indigenous origins, political views, and citizenship status; nontheists; LGBQTIA+; those with disabilities; veterans; and anyone who has been targeted, abused, or disenfranchised.

Reaching Out

If you have any concerns about the course or your instructor, please see the instructor about these concerns as soon as possible. If you are not comfortable talking with the instructor or not satisfied with the response that you receive, you may contact the following Program in Writing and Rhetoric staff: Director Stephanie Kerschbaum, kersch@uw.edu or Associate Director of Writing Programs, Carrie Matthews (cmatthe@uw.edu). If, after speaking with the PWR Director or Associate Director, you are still not satisfied with the response you receive, you may contact the English Department Chair, Anis Bawarshi; bawarshi@uw.edu, (206) 543-2690.

English 281 Winter 2024 Calendar

Our class is broken up into Weekly Modules, which consist of participation assignments, homework assignments, and essays. Modules are not all open at once, but will be opened at least two weeks in advance. This calendar is an overview of the focus of each module, not a complete list of assignments. Participation assignments will usually be assigned to complete during class. Always check Canvas modules for up-to-date assignments and deadlines.

Week 1: Wednesday, January 3^rd-Sunday, January 7^th

Jan 3: Introduction to the class

Participation: Read the Syllabus and Grade Contract; complete the Syllabus and Grade Contract Quiz before Friday at 11:59 PM

Homework: Read and complete the shared annotation of Epeli Hau’ofa, “Our Sea of Islands,” due Sunday, Jan 7^th, 11:59 PM  

Week 2: Jan. 8-Jan. 14

Monday, Jan 8: Hau’ofa Discussion

HW: Explore Bouchra Khalili, The Mapping Project, and Julian Barr, “Pioneer Square and the Making of Queer Seattle,” and respond to the discussion board before Wednesday, 11:30 (before class)

Wednesday, Jan 10: Khalili and Barr discussion; working within academic and public-facing contexts.

Homework: Listen to The Spouter-Inn: Hereford Mappa Mundi and respond to the discussion board post by Sunday, 11:59 PM

Week 3: Jan. 15-21

Monday, Jan 15: No class (MLK Jr. Day)

Homework: Discussion Cluster: Geographies and Borders due by Wednesday, 11:30 (before class)

Wed, Jan 17: Major Writing Project One introduction; introduction to source assessment

Homework: Read and annotate Harvey et al., “Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy” by Sunday, Jan. 21, 11:59 PM

Flexible Assignment Option 1 closes Sunday, Jan. 21, 11:59 PM. No late work accepted.

Week 4: Jan. 22-28

Monday, Jan 22: Harvey et al. discussion and source assessment practice; lines of inquiry

Homework: Listen to NPR, "America's Satanic Panic Returns—This Time Through QAnon" and respond to discussion board post by Wednesday, 11:30 (before class)

Wednesday, Jan 24: The 1918 Pandemic in Philadelphia Exhibit Tour (in class); Major Writing Project 1 Workshop: Creating the Rubric

Homework: Complete 2 source assessments on sources you can use in Major Writing Assignment 1 by Sunday, 11:59 PM

Week 5: Jan. 29-Feb. 4

Monday, Jan 29: Midterm Essay Workshop: Moving from Research to Argument

Homework: Discussion Cluster: Information and Misinformation due by Wednesday, 11:30 (before class)

Wednesday, Jan 31: Midterm Essay Workshop

Homework: Work on Major Writing Assignment 1

Major Writing Project 1 due Sunday, February 4^th, 11:59 PM

Week 6: Feb. 5-11

Conferences (individual meetings with me; regular full class canceled)

Homework: Read and annotate Magda Teter, Introduction to Blood Libel by Sunday, 11:59 PM

Flexible Assignment Option 2 Closes Sunday, February 11^th, 11:59 PM. No late work accepted.

Week 7: Feb. 12-18

Monday, Feb 12: Teter discussion. Using primary sources.

Homework: Read Rebecca Futo Kennedy, “Blood and Soil from Antiquity to Charlottesville: A Short Primer” and respond to discussion board by Wednesday, 11:30 (before class)

Wednesday, Feb 14: Kennedy discussion. Introduction to Major Writing Project 2.

Homework: Line of Inquiry due Friday, Feb 16, 11:59 PM

Homework: Listen to Lore, “Half Hanged” and respond to discussion board post by Sunday, Feb 18, 11:59 PM

Flexible Assignment Option 3 Closes Sunday, February 18^th, 11:59 PM. No late work accepted.

Week 8: Feb. 19-25

Monday, Feb 19: No class, President’s Day

Homework: Discussion Cluster: Narratives that Kill due by Wednesday, 11:30 (before class)

Wednesday, Feb 21: Public-facing scholarship; source assessment work

Homework: Complete three source assessments (primary, scholarly, popular) by Friday, Feb 23, 11:59 PM

Homework: Complete Project Proposal by Sunday, Feb 25, 11:59 PM

Flexible Assignment Option 4 Closes Sunday, February 25th, 11:59 PM. No late work accepted.

Week 9: Feb. 26-March 3

Monday, Feb 26: Project Proposal Feedback

Homework: Work on Final Projects

Wednesday, Feb 28: Asynchronous Project Work (no in-person class)

Homework: Work on the Final Project

Flexible Assignment Option 5 Closes Sunday, March 3rs, 11:59 PM. No late work accepted.

Week 10: March 4-10

Monday, March 4: Final reflections; course evaluations

Wednesday, March 6: Project Presentations