Instructor: Bump; <mailto:bump@mail.utexas.edu>; Office: PAR 132 Office phone: 471-8747

Computer-Assisted Instruction Substantial Writing Component

11-12:30 PAR 104; office hours: Tu. 6:30-9 PM TH 3:30-4 and by appointment.

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“Larger universities must find ways to find ways to create a sense of place and to help students develop small communities within the larger whole.” Carnegie’s Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities (http://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf)

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Our goal will be to adapt the discovery learning method promoted by the College of Natural Sciences to reading and writing. Active learning, has been used in English courses to explore the inner world, but, like the natural sciences, we will start with the outer world. Hence for us “World Literature” will mean primarily literature of the world around you here on and near campus: the sense of the “world” as your “sphere of action or thought; the ‘realm’ within which one moves or lives” (OED).  And we will expand the sense of “literature” as well: all of your world will be your text. We will approach it as  semioticians, those who study all signs, linguistic and non-linguistic, including art, architecture, landscapes (geography), material culture (archeology), etc. Hence, some class meetings will devoted to drawing and writing about nature, buildings, and works of art, on campus,  at the Japanese garden in Zilker Park, and buildings downtown. In this way, you will enhance your awareness of U. T. as your Alma Mater by becoming more conscious of your sense of place and the genii locii or "ghosts" who inhabit places.

We will write answers to basic questions such as “what is this?” “where did it come from?” and “why is it here?” Identifying objects around us as palimpsests, we will trace their layers of meaning through corridors of time back to various eras and places. For example, questioning fossils in Waller Creek will lead us back to the origins of life on earth and forward to the writings of Darwin and Tennyson and to the contemporary debate between evolution and creationism.; The carved griffins on the mantle in the Littlefield House will inspire us to trace the roots in our own culture of the antimodernism that is sweeping the Islamic world and is so threatening to us. In the process we will become familiar with the concept of "Gothic," and its key principle of "Truth to Nature."

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Readings

Discovery learning applies to the inner world as well, of course. In the first semester we will begin with the questions “Who am I?”; “What am I doing here?” ; and “Where am I going?” We will read Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man;  Hardy’s Jude the Obscure;  Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson, and Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass  as commentaries on undergraduate life, as well as selections from Newman and others on the purpose of university education. Then places on campus will lead us to selections from the Bible, Wordsworth, Blake, Mill, Pater, Dickens, Tennyson, Darwin, Lawrence, Arnold, Forster, Dobie, Ruskin, Hopkins, Browning, Pater, Pugin, Hugo, Yeats, Thomas, Forster, Watts, Taniguchi, Jones, Eiseley, Lopez, Oliphant, Barney, Wolfe, and Harrigan. In the second semester, unless students vote otherwise, reading the griffins will lead us to antimodernist art, architecture, and literature, guided by some of the same authors and by Adams, Morris, the Rossettis, and others. The course will conclude with a focus on Gothic in Gawain and the Green Knight, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Students will also do presentations on murals and paintings in the second semester.

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Projects can be devoted to creating virtual worlds of U.T. or Oxford. Some students will enlarge the places and genii locii of our virtual world known as the MOO.* All students will create two multimedia writing projects on paper or on the web, of at least five to seven pages each, which can be combined to make a longer project. In any case, they must be extensively revised. The basic question is “How Would My Life Be Different and How Would It Be Similar if I Attended U. T. in Earlier Times or One of the English Universities Whose Seals Appear on the West Wall of the Main Building.” Most initial comments on the projects will be made in Blackboard Discussion format by the other students, with the instructor then focusing on polishing subsequent hard copies for word choice, punctuation, etc.

Rewriting (the secret of almost all great writing) and preparing almost perfect final drafts will be stressed. For these activities, good time managment is crucial. It will be rewarded and procrastination heavily penalized.

Another basic principle of this course is reading. The first test of reading throughout the course will be the ability to read directions and suggestions for assignments, and especially the ability to search through details and “read the fine print,” as they say.

*Check it out at Mappa Mundi   (Mac users should use Firefox.) Use "Browse" for now. When you get your password you will be able to converse with the ghosts. Can you find your way to Oxford from U.T. in the MOO?

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Grades. About 50% of the final grade will be determined by the multimedia projects (15% for each first draft -- 150 points each, 10% for each revision -- 100 points each), 14% by the final portfolio of all your work (140 points); 30% by informal writing (300 points); 6 % by class participation (60 points). 900 points (out of 1,000) are required for an A-; 800 for a B-; 700 for a C-; 600 for a D-. Grades are not negotiable: students will receive exactly the grade recorded in the online gradebook in Blackboard, even if it is one point short of the next higher grade.

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Informal Writing includes reading journals posted in Blackboard Discussion Boards, in-class exercises and quizzes, and your individual learning record (LR), short essays that encourage students to set their own goals and become aware of their learning styles and obstacles. The LR includes a personal narrative, an analysis of the learning and writing tendencies of your psychological "type," and short interpretive essays written at midterm and semester's end. Late papers will be penalized.

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 Portfolio. The final portfolio consists of clean copies of your essays (no highlighting, corrections, or extraneous comments), your third-hour reports, learning record, other informal writing, and any other relevant materials.

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Class participation consists of showing up in class on time with the right books, having read the material assigned for that day, and being prepared to talk about it. Students are encouraged to post journal pages about the readings the day before class. In any case, it is important to share in class: one of the goals of the course is better spoken as well as written communication, and learning to listen when others are speaking.

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      More features of my teaching philosophy can be seen at my web site:

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump

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       Printed Texts consist of the Writing Skills Handbook by Charles Bazerman (You must buy this book as my corrections on your essays will be based on its code and you will not understand them otherwise).; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce; The Illustrated Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (Yale); Carroll’s The Annotated Alice (W. W. Norton); and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Students will also immediately need the course anthology, a collection of xeroxed materials from Jenn's, 2000 Guadalupe (basement of the Church of Scientology at 22^nd , 473-8669). It will cost from $40 to $50. Jenn’s takes major credit cards, of course. If you don’t get there within the first few days you might want to call ahead to make sure they have a copy reserved for you (sometimes they do not print them all right away).

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Computer-Assisted Instruction. Because two of the "Five Characteristics of a Successful Student at U.T." are "Good computer skills" and "Strong writing skills"  this course emphasizes computer dexterity as well as writing ability. Students should be familiar with keyboarding, operating systems, word processing, electronic mail, and web-browsing. Students will be expected to check their email frequently (maintaining the correct email address in the U.T. Direct system) along with the course Discussion Boards and Online Gradebook. Students are encouraged to download pictures from our class web site and use multimedia to fulfill all the writing requirements and ultimately collect everything on one portfolio web site.

You will be required to use U.T.'s Blackboard software to receive and send email several times a week, to post and reply to journals and projects on its Discussion Boards, and to convert your writing documents into hypertext, multimedia projects and upload them to U.T.'s Webspace system. Other courses will also require the use of Blackboard and perhaps Webspace, but this course goes beyond introducing you to these programs. We will be using a Virtual World of U.T. and Oxford to explore the college experience. This virtual world is a MOO (a multi-user, object-oriented environment) which evolved from the old Dungeons and Dragons text-based adventure games. Probably about half of the students in the course will make their projects part of this virtual world, by writing about places in it and/or creating "bots" (robots), characters who seem to be able to carry on a conversation with a visitor to the virtual world.

HTML. If students are going to do advanced web projects, they must have or acquire basic HTML skills on their own in the first month. Website project students should expect to spend a considerable amount of time outside of class, sitting in front of a computer, and may also find it useful to attend some of the free classes and workshops on various technical topics offered by ACITS, TeamWeb, or the General Libraries. See http://www.utexas.edu/computer/classes/http://www.utexas.edu/cc/training/handouts/tutorials.html#internet

 

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