Fall 2013 First Year Writing Seminar Courses
151. First-Year Writing Seminar.
Degree Requirement: F2
A course that develops the ability to read and think critically, to employ discussion and writing as a means of exploring and refining ideas, and to express those ideas in effective prose. Individual sections of the course will explore different topics in reading, discussion, and writing. Topics are selected by individual professors and are designed to help students develop transferable skills of analysis and argumentation, applicable to the various disciplines of the liberal arts and sciences. Several papers will be required, at least one of which will involve use of the library and proper documentation. The seminar will emphasize successive stages of the writing process, including prewriting, drafting, and revision, and will provide feedback from classmates and the instructor.
FYWS 151. First-Year Writing Seminar.
Section 01 MWF 09:00-09:50 am
Professor - TBA
FYWS 151: Dark Penmanship: African Americans and Writing.
In writing, “My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes,” Frederick Douglass captures the perverse relationship(s) African Americans maintained with the act of writing. “Dark Penmanship” is a course designed to expose the first-year student to the intricacies of critical writing/reading through a creative surveying of African American writers and the ways in which they composed their narratives for a larger American readership.
Section 02 MWF 09:00-09:50 am
Section 04 MWF 10:00-10:50 am
Professor Ernest Gibson
FYWS 151: American Suburbia.
This writing seminar focuses on the culture of American suburbia, paying particular attention to suburban life after 1945, when the suburbanization of America really took flight. Today roughly half of the nation lives in the suburbs, a phenomenon that has resulted in city abandonment, social segregation, environmental havoc, and the reorganization of political power. Are the suburbs, as critics have argued, a place of robotic conformity and racial division? Or are they heterogeneous and human, with a complex cultural fabric of their own? Who lives in suburbia and who doesn’t? How has the mythology of suburbia changed over time? Why are these havens, which epitomize the American dream, often a place of nightmares? What does the geography of suburbia say about those who live there? Is suburbia, as some scholars suggest, declining as people move back to the city? To explore these and other questions, we’ll consider the divide between cities and suburbs; the politics of race, class, and gender in suburbia; suburbia’s impact on national identity; religion’s role in suburban life; suburbia as a teenage wasteland; and several other issues. Prompts for critical thinking and writing may include essays, advertisements, artwork, newspaper articles, music, television, photography, literature, and film.
Section 03 MWF 10:00-10:50 am
Section 05 MWF 11:00-11:50 am
Professor Jason Richards
FYWS 151. First-Year Writing Seminar.
Section 06 MWF 12:00-12:50 pm
Professor - TBA
FYWS 151. “Engage Memphis”
This seminar is part of the “Search in Memphis” Learning Community that will link the college’s historic “Search for Values” program (taught by Professor Bakewell) with this writing seminar course. We will focus on reading material and writing assignments that concern the history and culture of the region around Rhodes College. While reading Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and biblical texts in the Search course, students will be discussing and writing about issues of regional importance and relating the ancient ‘search for values’ to their own personal experiences and academic goals. We will discuss issues related to civil rights, healthcare, environmental sustainability, community development, education, hunger and homelessness. This seminar will help students understand our community neighbors, reach across cultural, racial, and economic barriers, and seek lasting solutions to local issues that are relevant to civic engagement in the Memphis area.
Section 07 MWF 02:00-02:50 pm
Professor Milton Moreland
FYWS 151. Reflections on Satire.
Christopher Hitchens once wrote that “the smug satire of liberal humorists debases our comedy—and our national conversation.” At the same time, however, popular opinion has named Jon Stewart one of America’s most trusted newscasters. This class will focus on the features and functions of satire in the past and present as we use the linked practices of reading, writing, and discussion to develop your critical thinking and compositional skills. The syllabus will pair works by Horace, Juvenal, Jonathan Swift, and Mark Twain with pieces by modern practitioners like Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the writers of Saturday Night Live. What was changed? What hasn’t? What’s really at stake? Swift wrote that “satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody′s face but their own.” We will look at satire itself and generate our own conversations about its place and purpose in cultural discourse.
Section 08 TR 09:30-10:45 am
Section 12 TR 12:30-01:45 pm
Professor Seth Rudy
FYWS 151. First-Year Writing Seminar.
Section 09 TR 11:00-12:15 pm
Professor - TBA
FYWS 151. The New Yorker.
In this section of FYWS 151, we will read The New Yorker, a highly respected and popular weekly magazine with current news, short fiction, poetry, humor, and-most significantly-essays covering a variety of fields, including politics, medicine, the arts, science, history, international relations, religion, business, and music. Our class discussions will focus on analyzing these texts, in particular the arguments they make and the rhetoric they employ. Writing assignments will likewise respond to and critique the reading.
Section 10 TR 11:00-12:15 pm
Professor Rebecca Finlayson
FYWS 151. First-Year Writing Seminar.
Section 11 TR 12:30-01:45 pm
Section 13 TR 12:30-01:45 pm
Section 14 TR 02:00-03:15 pm
Professor - TBA
First Year Writing Seminar 155
Daily Themes (A Special Section of the First-Year Writing Seminar)
This course is reserved for the most advanced first year writers and is not open to Banner Web registration. To be considered for this course, please email a brief letter of interest and a writing sample to finlayson@rhodes.edu no later than October 31.
An alternative to FYWS 151 offered to outstanding first-year writers, by invitation from the Director of College Writing. The course is limited to 12 students who meet as a class once a week and individually with the instructor or in small groups with the Writing Fellow once a week. Students will turn in 4 one-page themes each week. Some research and writing will be required, and students will use their daily themes as the basis for two longer papers: one at mid term and the other at the end of the semester. Students may not take both FYWS 151 and FYWS 155.
Degree Requirement: F2
The New Yorker
Harold Ross, the first publisher of The New Yorker, once projected that his magazine would “hate bunk,” and sure enough, nearly 90 years later, The New Yorker still publishes writing unparalleled in its sophistication, currency, and craft. Each week we will read the latest copy of the magazine and decide, as a class, which articles we want to analyze. Students in the class write critical reactions daily, and few prompts are given, allowing students to explore the subject and rhetoric most provocative to them. Students receive substantial feedback on their daily written work and spend the semester developing both their writer’s voice and rhetorical skills, all the while reading and analyzing some of the best prose stylists in the country. Favorite readings in the past include “Trial by Fire: Did Texas execute an innocent man?”; “The Borrowers: Why rent when you can buy?”; “Drinking Games: How much people drink may matter less than how they drink it”; “The Mask of Doom: A nonconformist rapper’s second act”; and “Getting In: The social logic of Ivy League admissions.” We will read and write about such topics as crime, music, neuroscience, social networking, presidential candidates, celebrities, shopping, and subjects heretofore unimaginable. You should have earned a B+ or higher in your senior English course. FYWS155 meets once each week.
R 02:00-03:15 pm
Professor Rebecca Finlayson