Colby College
English 115 Section Descriptions
Fall 2008

A:    TR 11:00 - 12:15 am    Memory and Memoir. We will examine the memoir as a literary genre as well as a means of personal, familial, and cultural exploration in works by writers from Anais Nin and Vladimir Nabokov to Orhan Pamuk and Elizabeth Gilbert. To what extent does memory construct "reality"? How does memoir "factualize" events, transforming subjective experience into inscribed narrative and even serving as a catalyst for change? As counterpoint, we will examine recent faked memoirs by Margaret Selzer and James Frey and the controversies they provoked. Class assignments will focus on rhetorical modes of narration, cause-and-effect, description, and argument in memoir through discourse, peer workshops, quizzes, and short essays, with special emphasis on writing style and revision.    Harrington, P. B:     MW 9:30 -10:45 am     Food For Thought.    We will examine our cultural relationships with food through both canonical and contemporary food writing. Possible tangents include intersections with environmental literature, questions concerning sustainable consumption, and the industrialization of organic food.     Stokes C:    MWF 10:00 - 10:50 am    Ways of Knowing/Ways of Writing: A Self Study in Literacy. Students review and build on the reading, writing, and critical thinking strategies they carry with them and consider ways that culture shapes their access to and concept of literacy. They come to realize that conducting research can be a process of discovery. But most important, they discover, often for the first time, what reading, writing, and research are really about: entering the conversation by knowing when and where to use their own ways with words, understanding the conventions of the discourse in their communities, and grasping the ideas of others in order to shape ideas of their own.    Hawkins D:    MW 11:00 -12:15 pm    Literature of Place and Landscape.    EN 115 argues that writing is a dialectical process that offers new ways of seeing and understanding. Reading fiction, essays and poetry, students will learn to interpret texts critically, to communicate effectively about complex issues, and to synthesize argument. Students will develop their persuasive and rhetorical strategies as writers. The focus for reading and writing will be an investigation into the ways American writers use place and landscape in their art. Students will explore the nature of landscape as physical, social, and intellectual and consider what it suggests about American culture and ideas.    Megan E:    TR 1:00 - 2:15 pm    Memory and Memoir. We will examine the memoir as a literary genre as well as a means of personal, familial, and cultural exploration in works by writers from Anais Nin and Vladimir Nabokov to Orhan Pamuk and Elizabeth Gilbert. To what extent does memory construct "reality"? How does memoir "factualize" events, transforming subjective experience into inscribed narrative and even serving as a catalyst for change? As counterpoint, we will examine recent faked memoirs by Margaret Selzer and James Frey and the controversies they provoked. Class assignments will focus on rhetorical modes of narration, cause-and-effect, description, and argument in memoir through discourse, peer workshops, quizzes, and short essays, with special emphasis on writing style and revision.  Harrington, P. F:    MW 1:00 - 2:15 pm    First Year Writing: Haiti: Origins and Identities.   Perhaps the most basic questions that writers face are "why?" and "for whom?" This course is designed, first, to encourage self-consciousness about first-year writers' default positions in relation to voice and argument. We develop both skills of argumentation and fluency with grammar by considering a set of highly charged and urgent questions in relation to Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Our readings focus on victims and heroes, including the question of how these identity categories arise and can be resisted: successive units on child slavery in Haiti; the rise and fall of the populist president, Aristide; vodou; and the younger generations of children of Haitian emigrants, whose parents fled oppression and poverty, relocating around the world. Frequent short assignments and essays; research paper on vodou; presentations; group work.    Thorn G:    MW 2:30 - 3:45 pm     Literature of Place and Landscape.    EN 115 argues that writing is a dialectical process that offers new ways of seeing and understanding. Reading fiction, essays and poetry, students will learn to interpret texts critically, to communicate effectively about complex issues, and to synthesize argument. Students will develop their persuasive and rhetorical strategies as writers. The focus for reading and writing will be an investigation into the ways American writers use place and landscape in their art. Students will explore the nature of landscape as physical, social, and intellectual and consider what it suggests about American culture and ideas.    Megan H    TR 9:30 - 10:45 am    Between the Lines This course will focus on developing students' writing by engaging with differences among visual, textual, and oral forms of communication. It will ask how meanings are shaped both directly and indirectly in and across these forms. For instance, how do we "read" an image? What is conveyed by color? What is the difference between a literary source and the visual rendering of it in a film adaptation? What messages are sent by the soundtrack of a film? In exploring these questions, students will write several short papers and one longer paper, participate in group writing workshops, revise their work, and take a final examination.    Keller I:    TR 11:00 - 12:15 pm    Coming of Age across Cultures.    Primary focus on the cultivation of college-level writing through in-class writing workshops, peer reviews, and conferences. These skills will be developed in conjunction with analysis of texts (fiction and nonfiction) that address the process of coming of age from various cultural perspectives. Texts include "The Story of My Body" by Judith Ortiz Cofer, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie, "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston.    Szeghi J:    TR 1:00 - 2:15 pm    The Art of the Personal Essay.    This course focuses on how prose style shapes the articulation of personal voice and persona in writing essays. Students will learn to shape personal voice more actively in their writing through the analysis and imitation of essays written by a range of essayists. Class exercise and assignments will include: the study of rhetoric and implied argument; exercises in prose analysis, expository writing, and imitation; an intensive review of grammar and syntax in standard American English; and strategies of successful academic writing across the College. Assessment is based on daily quizzes, an examination, the completion of several short essays, and the completion of a final and more substantial "personal essay."    Mazzeo