Mares - Fletcher 313 x6238                       Office Hours: TTh 3:00-4:00

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is designed to encourage creative and critical thinking and to help you to continue to improve your skills as a writer and reader. You will gain more experience in expressing your ideas and engaging with those of others.  Close reading and analysis, creating and supporting arguments about texts, revising, and research skills will be stressed.

You will be reading, discussing, and writing about stories, novels, and essays that concern the experience of being in another country. The characters we will focus on are all, for various reasons, uprooted or displaced.  They are not traveling simply for pleasure or for business or educational reasons. They are fighting wars or fleeing from them; they are looking for work, greater freedom, or spiritual purpose.  We will explore how and why being in another country changes their sense of themselves and of the world.  How do they respond to their new situations?  What happens to their ideas of home, their connection with the past? What risks do they run? What do they gain?  Understanding their situations and how they relate to our own lives and times will provide us with ample opportunities for reflection, research, and writing.

REQUIRED TEXTS

André Aciman, ed. Letters of Transit

Maxine Hong-Kingston, China Men

Selected short stories by Ernest Hemingway (U.S.), Elizabeth Bowen (Ireland/England), William Trevor (Ireland), Flannery O’Connor (U.S.),  Saadat Hasan Manto (Pakistan), Robert Olen Butler (U.S.),  Bharati Mukherhjee (India/Canada/U.S.),  Jhumpa Lahiri (India/England/U.S.), Sandra Cisneros (U.S.), Emma Donoghue (Ireland)

(Course packet on reserve in the Library)

RECOMMENDED TEXTS

John Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace

Diana Hacker, A Writing Handbook

REQUIREMENTS

Regular attendance and careful preparation for class; active and thoughtful participation in class discussions, including regular written questions on the readings; two 4-5 page papers, each to be revised at least once, based upon instructor's comments (and optional third revision of second paper, based upon peer reviews); a one-page research proposal; a 6-8 page paper requiring research and documentation; optional revision of researched paper, based upon in-class peer reviews and optional meeting with instructor; an abstract of your researched paper; an in-class oral presentation of your abstract; a final exam.

EVALUATION

If all requirements are met, this will be the approximate breakdown of the final grade: first paper = 10%; second paper = 15%; researched paper = 25%; abstract and oral presentation= 15%; attendance and contributions to class (questions on the readings and other contributions to class discussions, the library workshop, quizzes, peer reviews, and any other informal writing assignments) = 15%; the final exam = 20%.  To pass the course, you must turn in all of the work. Students are expected to adhere to the Honor Code in all of their work for this course.  Plagiarism is a violation of the Honor Code and will be treated with the utmost seriousness.  If you have any questions about what constitutes plagiarism, ask me. Don’t wait until Nov. 8, when we will go over types of plagiarism in class.

Grades on revised papers will be averaged with grades on the originals, but will be weighted more heavily if the revisions are especially extensive and effective.

When your essays are returned to you, you are responsible for carefully going over my comments and for asking me about anything you don’t understand.  Feel free to come and talk with me if you are not clear about how to improve your work or about any other problem you may be having with the class.  Don’t put off seeing me until it’s too late.

Mon., Sept. 12  - 1st paper

Wed., Sept. 28 - revised 1st paper

Mon., Oct. 10 - 2nd paper

Mon., Oct. 17– proposals for researched paper 

Fri., Oct. 28 - revised 2nd paper

 Thurs., Nov. 17 - researched paper due in class

Tues., Nov. 29 - revised papers

Tues., Dec. 6 - abstracts of researched paper due in class

Tues., Thurs., Dec. 6, 8 - oral presentations

Dec. 11–16 – Exams

LAST UPDATED: 31 October 2005