policies ENGL511 READING & WRITING THE MEMOIR
|
Need to be in touch with me?
LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com |
SUMMER 2014 Office Hours:
are by appointment. |
COURSE DESCRIPTION
What memoir is and what memoir isn't is a topic of conversation among writers and readers both and has been for some years (this is particularly true right now when the genre is, as is all nonfiction, enjoying great popularity among readers of all sorts). And what a memoir is or isn't is, also, the topic of this course. Most generally, memoir, as a sort of sub-genre of creative nonfiction, is concerned with the recounting of one writer's life--or some parts of it there of. But that's just a start. What makes it not fiction, what makes it not autobiography gets at the heart of what memoir, in the end, has the potential to be. We might not every pin down exactly what makes something a memoir, but we will leave with a rich sense of that potential.
This course will ask you to think about what it means to read memoir (critically and carefully) and what it means to write memoir (as, as most of us are, relatively new writers of the genre). It will also ask you a third thing: what does it mean to teach memoir? Nonfiction is a significant genre in the new Common Core and, thus, is worth thinking about alongside fiction and poetry as a genre in our classrooms. But, before we do that, this summer is a time to indulge your inner writer, your summer reader, and, eventually, the teacher you will return to being in the fall.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
By the end of this course you will:
TEXTS
Beth Kephart Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir
Francine Prose Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
Mary Karr The Liar’s Club: A Memoir
Lucy Grealy Autobiography of a Face
Nick Flynn Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir
Terry Tempest Williams Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
And selected handouts.
REQUIREMENTS
Attendance. I am uncomfortable having to add an attendance policy to a graduate class, but experience tells me I have to. Additionally, this course is a five week summer class for which you will receive 3 full graduate credits. Each class is the equivalent of a week’s worth of classes during a regular semester. And we are a small class. Your absence makes it harder for all of us. Thus:
Informal Writing. Informal writing does two things in this class. First, it gives you a place to reflect on the reading we will do in class. Two, it gives you a place to draft your own memoir, to do real work as a real writer. There are two kinds of informal writing that you will do for class (complete details for both are available elsewhere on the website):
Reader/Writer Responses: These two to three page, double-spaced, typed informal responses cover two topics: your reactions, musings, thinking on, and analysis of the texts we will read and what it makes you think about your own writing of your own memoir. I would also suggest a third topic for discussion: what this makes you think about teaching memoir and nonfiction.
Writer’s Notebooks: Writer’s Notebooks are rough drafts of your Memoir. Each week you will draft 3 to 5 rough pages (we’ll give some time each class period to writing for this reason). You’ll bring in two copies of this material—in whatever state it is in—each Thursday of class. You’ll workshop one copy with your classmates, and you’ll turn one copy in to me for feedback.
Workhopping & Book Club. The reciprocal work of the informal writing assignment is talking about the texts you are reading and writing, thus Workshopping and Book Club are in class activities. Each Thursday of class we will have a workshop of our collective writing from our Writer’s Notebooks. We’ll practice different sorts of workshopping leading up to a whole class workshop that you might find in a traditional MFA.
I use the term book club to loosely describe the rangy conversation we will have once everyone is done with the book. There is, unfortunately, no wine involved, but snacks are encouraged. Each week one or two folks from class will co-lead the discussions of the books. Folks will use their Reader/Writer response documents to help fuel conversation. We will use this time to talk about characteristics of the genre and to think about how we would teach the genre in our different classrooms.
Formal Writing. There are two formal writing assignments, both due at the end of the five weeks, that reflect the two chief goals of this class: writing or own memoir and teaching our students to read (and possibly write) them. Complete information about these two formal assignments are available elsewhere on this website.
Memoir: You will have roughly four weeks to draft and revise your own memoir. Along the way to that final memoir, which we will assemble into a class publication and that you will read from to the class, we’ll spend class reading and talking about the essential qualities of good memoir, where it is possible to go wrong, how to attend to the big issues and small, writerly details (craft) of a piece of writing. You’ll get feedback from me and your colleagues. This summer, these five weeks, is your time to be a writer first and everything else that you are second.
Memoir in our Classrooms: Taking into consideration that the new Common Core stresses reading and writing nonfiction, and considering, also, that the college classroom demands quality reading of nonfiction texts much more often than fiction, the other major assignment of the summer is to develop an assignment you might do in your own classroom—regardless of grade level—around memoir. You’ll select a text to read and design an assignment sequence that produces some kind of written finished product. During the last week of the class, we’ll focus on what these assignments could look like. And final drafts of the assignments will be presented to the class. Print materials related to the assignment will also be shared.
EVALUATION
Portfolios. The system of evaluation for this class is a portfolio model. The portfolio allows me the chance to give you credit for the things that grading individual papers will not let me do: this system, a portfolio system, allows me to count effort and revision and improvement. I think a system like that is particularly beneficial in a course like this because writing like this will be a new experience for many of you. A system like this makes room for you to develop as a writer—it makes room for failures and eventual successes.
This means that while you will receive extensive feedback on all of your writing, you will receive letter grades at the midpoint (week three) and at the end of the semester. At the end of week three and the end of week five you will put together materials representative of your performance in the class to that point. You will receive a grade letter outlining your entire performance in the class and a letter grade that reflects that performance. Because this is a summer course, the midpoint check in will be very modest and the final portfolio will include the bulk of your materials. Complete information about portfolios is available elsewhere on this website.
How You Will Be Graded. Even though you will not be getting letter grades on everything you turn in, you will receive extensive comments on your writing that should both give you a sense of the quality of your work as well as a way to begin to revise and improve your writing. At the midterm check in and the end of the five weeks you will receive a final grade. These two letter grades will be based on the following criteria:
Breakdown of assessment percentages. Different assignments require different amounts of effort. The percentages that accompany each of the requirements in this class should give you an indication of the time and energy that each should take up in your student life.
Reader/Writer Responses 15%
Writer’s Notebooks 20%
Memoir (final draft) 25%
Memoir in our Classrooms
(assignment & presentation) 20%
Portfolio cover letters & materials 10%
Workshop & Book Club
participation 10%
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. If you are caught plagiarizing in this class, you will fail that project without possibility of making it up; you’ll be sent before the disciplinary board of the college, and you will fail the class.
Students with learning disabilities. Students who need special accommodations due to a documented learning disability must come to see me with written documentation of the specific disability and suggested accommodations. We can discuss specific accommodations at that time.
Electronics Policy. I'm not against technology at all, but there is a time and place for it. You don't need to turn your phone off, but, should you get a call, be thoughtful about whether or not you should really answer it. Also, no texting in class. Excessive abuse of this policy will earn you absences.
What memoir is and what memoir isn't is a topic of conversation among writers and readers both and has been for some years (this is particularly true right now when the genre is, as is all nonfiction, enjoying great popularity among readers of all sorts). And what a memoir is or isn't is, also, the topic of this course. Most generally, memoir, as a sort of sub-genre of creative nonfiction, is concerned with the recounting of one writer's life--or some parts of it there of. But that's just a start. What makes it not fiction, what makes it not autobiography gets at the heart of what memoir, in the end, has the potential to be. We might not every pin down exactly what makes something a memoir, but we will leave with a rich sense of that potential.
This course will ask you to think about what it means to read memoir (critically and carefully) and what it means to write memoir (as, as most of us are, relatively new writers of the genre). It will also ask you a third thing: what does it mean to teach memoir? Nonfiction is a significant genre in the new Common Core and, thus, is worth thinking about alongside fiction and poetry as a genre in our classrooms. But, before we do that, this summer is a time to indulge your inner writer, your summer reader, and, eventually, the teacher you will return to being in the fall.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
By the end of this course you will:
- Understand the characteristics of memoir (specifically) and nonfiction (generally) as genre;
- Have practiced and developed as a writer (generally) of memoir (specifically);
- Develop teaching materials on reading and writing memoir and nonfiction (taking into consideration the Common Core) that you can bring back to your own classrooms.
TEXTS
Beth Kephart Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir
Francine Prose Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
Mary Karr The Liar’s Club: A Memoir
Lucy Grealy Autobiography of a Face
Nick Flynn Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir
Terry Tempest Williams Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
And selected handouts.
REQUIREMENTS
Attendance. I am uncomfortable having to add an attendance policy to a graduate class, but experience tells me I have to. Additionally, this course is a five week summer class for which you will receive 3 full graduate credits. Each class is the equivalent of a week’s worth of classes during a regular semester. And we are a small class. Your absence makes it harder for all of us. Thus:
- Your attendance to and participation in is expected every class.
- Work is due the day it is identified as due on the syllabus. Late work will not be accepted. If you will not be attending a class, be sure to get work to me prior to the class it is due.
- Excessive absences—more than three—will cause you to fail the course.
- Excessive lateness will add up to equal one or more absences.
Informal Writing. Informal writing does two things in this class. First, it gives you a place to reflect on the reading we will do in class. Two, it gives you a place to draft your own memoir, to do real work as a real writer. There are two kinds of informal writing that you will do for class (complete details for both are available elsewhere on the website):
Reader/Writer Responses: These two to three page, double-spaced, typed informal responses cover two topics: your reactions, musings, thinking on, and analysis of the texts we will read and what it makes you think about your own writing of your own memoir. I would also suggest a third topic for discussion: what this makes you think about teaching memoir and nonfiction.
Writer’s Notebooks: Writer’s Notebooks are rough drafts of your Memoir. Each week you will draft 3 to 5 rough pages (we’ll give some time each class period to writing for this reason). You’ll bring in two copies of this material—in whatever state it is in—each Thursday of class. You’ll workshop one copy with your classmates, and you’ll turn one copy in to me for feedback.
Workhopping & Book Club. The reciprocal work of the informal writing assignment is talking about the texts you are reading and writing, thus Workshopping and Book Club are in class activities. Each Thursday of class we will have a workshop of our collective writing from our Writer’s Notebooks. We’ll practice different sorts of workshopping leading up to a whole class workshop that you might find in a traditional MFA.
I use the term book club to loosely describe the rangy conversation we will have once everyone is done with the book. There is, unfortunately, no wine involved, but snacks are encouraged. Each week one or two folks from class will co-lead the discussions of the books. Folks will use their Reader/Writer response documents to help fuel conversation. We will use this time to talk about characteristics of the genre and to think about how we would teach the genre in our different classrooms.
Formal Writing. There are two formal writing assignments, both due at the end of the five weeks, that reflect the two chief goals of this class: writing or own memoir and teaching our students to read (and possibly write) them. Complete information about these two formal assignments are available elsewhere on this website.
Memoir: You will have roughly four weeks to draft and revise your own memoir. Along the way to that final memoir, which we will assemble into a class publication and that you will read from to the class, we’ll spend class reading and talking about the essential qualities of good memoir, where it is possible to go wrong, how to attend to the big issues and small, writerly details (craft) of a piece of writing. You’ll get feedback from me and your colleagues. This summer, these five weeks, is your time to be a writer first and everything else that you are second.
Memoir in our Classrooms: Taking into consideration that the new Common Core stresses reading and writing nonfiction, and considering, also, that the college classroom demands quality reading of nonfiction texts much more often than fiction, the other major assignment of the summer is to develop an assignment you might do in your own classroom—regardless of grade level—around memoir. You’ll select a text to read and design an assignment sequence that produces some kind of written finished product. During the last week of the class, we’ll focus on what these assignments could look like. And final drafts of the assignments will be presented to the class. Print materials related to the assignment will also be shared.
EVALUATION
Portfolios. The system of evaluation for this class is a portfolio model. The portfolio allows me the chance to give you credit for the things that grading individual papers will not let me do: this system, a portfolio system, allows me to count effort and revision and improvement. I think a system like that is particularly beneficial in a course like this because writing like this will be a new experience for many of you. A system like this makes room for you to develop as a writer—it makes room for failures and eventual successes.
This means that while you will receive extensive feedback on all of your writing, you will receive letter grades at the midpoint (week three) and at the end of the semester. At the end of week three and the end of week five you will put together materials representative of your performance in the class to that point. You will receive a grade letter outlining your entire performance in the class and a letter grade that reflects that performance. Because this is a summer course, the midpoint check in will be very modest and the final portfolio will include the bulk of your materials. Complete information about portfolios is available elsewhere on this website.
How You Will Be Graded. Even though you will not be getting letter grades on everything you turn in, you will receive extensive comments on your writing that should both give you a sense of the quality of your work as well as a way to begin to revise and improve your writing. At the midterm check in and the end of the five weeks you will receive a final grade. These two letter grades will be based on the following criteria:
- Meeting all of the requirements described above;
- The quality of your written work, including how successful your revision work is;
- The quality of your effort in the class, in workshops, in class discussion, in your groups, in conferences, and in general;
- Your demonstration of a willingness to try new things, think in new ways, and explore different perspectives as both a reader and a writer.
Breakdown of assessment percentages. Different assignments require different amounts of effort. The percentages that accompany each of the requirements in this class should give you an indication of the time and energy that each should take up in your student life.
Reader/Writer Responses 15%
Writer’s Notebooks 20%
Memoir (final draft) 25%
Memoir in our Classrooms
(assignment & presentation) 20%
Portfolio cover letters & materials 10%
Workshop & Book Club
participation 10%
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. If you are caught plagiarizing in this class, you will fail that project without possibility of making it up; you’ll be sent before the disciplinary board of the college, and you will fail the class.
Students with learning disabilities. Students who need special accommodations due to a documented learning disability must come to see me with written documentation of the specific disability and suggested accommodations. We can discuss specific accommodations at that time.
Electronics Policy. I'm not against technology at all, but there is a time and place for it. You don't need to turn your phone off, but, should you get a call, be thoughtful about whether or not you should really answer it. Also, no texting in class. Excessive abuse of this policy will earn you absences.