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English 101: Expository Writing

General Description

Eng 101: Expository Writing
Faculty. Max: 16

Content: Intensive writing course. Introduction to rhetorical principles, and practical exercises in critical analysis, research protocols, exposition, and argumentation on selected themes and issues. Specific topics and readings vary: consult descriptions for individual sections.

Texts: A rhetoric handbook and a good college-level dictionary may be required or recommended. Consult descriptions for individual sections; check with your instructor before buying texts.

Particulars: Students can expect to produce drafts and revisions of 4 to 6 substantial papers, including possibly a research assignment, as well as journals, summaries, and other exercises (approximately 60-75 pages of writing altogether). Consult descriptions for individual sections. Evaluation of students will include their performance in all phases of the course--writing assignments, exercises, and participation in class discussion and writing workshops--but will emphasize in particular the quality of finished writing with respect to careful thought, insightful analysis, effective argument, clear exposition, sophisticated style, and sensitivity to audience.
Completion of English 101 with a passing grade fulfills the Freshman Writing Requirement. No other writing requirements may be satisfied by English 101.

Eng 101 (000): Expository Writing: Writing about the U. S. South
Bailey, MWF 8:30-9:20

Content: This course will consider how the South figures in the national imagination. Although the South long has been identified as the nation’s benighted region, talk of a modern South has been circulating more recently, a South—replete with shopping malls and professional sports teams—that has purged itself of all things backward, uncivilized, and violent. Fred Hobson calls these competing claims a “war of southern mythologies,” and this course will focus on the role of language in this war by examining a number of texts that take the South as their subject, including an autobiography (Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream), short stories (by James Baldwin and Dorothy Allison), essays (by H. L. Mencken and Fred Hobson), films, and advertisements.

Eng 101 (001): Expository Writing
Ladd, MWF 9:35-10:25, Max: 16

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Eng 101 (002):Repetition, Rebellion and the American Suburb
Giannini, MWF 10:40-11:30, Max: 16

Content: This course will consider instances of adolescent angst and the mid-life crisis in the modern American suburb. We will ask what it means to come of age in a land of conformity, as well as speculate on how adolescents, housewives and husbands cope with the arrival of psychological and emotional isolation. Some of the material covered in class will include The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, American Beauty, and Fun with Dick and Jane. We will also read two novels and several short stories by Rick Moody, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, and Patricia Highsmith.

Particulars: Several short response essays (2-3 pgs), one presentation, one midterm (4-5 pg) and one final (4-5 pgs).

Eng 101(003): Expository Writing
Silva, MWF 11:45-12:35, Max: 16

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English 101 (004): Expository Writing
Hanggi, MWF 12:50-1:40, Max: 16

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Eng 101 (005): Expository Writing: Asian American Life and Writing
Kim, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max:16

Content: This course prepares students to write college-level prose, and will focus on argumentation, exposition and style. Students will develop their reading and writing skills in individual assignments, discussions and workshops. Throughout the semester, we will read various kinds of Asian American texts, including novels, and explore themes such as: what constitutes Asian American experience and what distinguishes Asian American writing?

Texts may include: Helen Zia’s Asian American Dreams; Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker and A Gesture Life; and others.

Particulars: four papers for a total of approximately 25 pages, several short in-class writings and homework assignments, attendance and active participation.


Eng 101 (006): Fairy Tales Across Culture
Kader, TT 8:30-9:45, Max: 16

Content: In this course we will explore the roots of the modern fairy tale and uncover a sinister genre wholly unlike the sanitized retellings created by Disney. Starting with Grimm’s Fairy Tales, we will investigate three primary figures that recur throughout much fairy lore: the maiden, the witch, and the fairy. We will approach these figures and the tales in which they appear with a number of questions in mind. For example, how do we define these figures? Who or what might they represent in real life? And what are the consequences when life and fairy lore overlap?

Texts: Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. New York: Washington Square Press, 2003. Yeats, William Butler. Ed. Irish Fairy and Folktales. New York: Modern Library, 2003. Bourke, Angela. The Burning of Bridget Cleary. New York: Penguin, 2001. Supplementary texts on electronic reserve

Eng 101 (007): Expository Writing
, TT 10:00-11:15, Max: 16

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Eng 101 (008): Expository Writing
, TT 11:30-12:45, Max: 16

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Eng 101(009): Expository Writing: American Protest and American Revolution
Wendt, TT 1:00-2:15, Max: 16

Content: Rhetoric and democracy developed side by side in ancient Greece, for obvious reasons: to exercise isegoria, or the right to speak in Assembly, citizens needed to know how to create and deliver persuasive speeches; by the same token, without an Assembly of citizens to convince, there would have been little need for those in power to develop rhetorical skills.  In this class, we will explore how democracy and rhetoric have intersected at important moments in American history.  Readings will focus on speeches and other historical documents from the Revolution and Constitution, Abolitionism, and Women’s Suffrage.  This course is part of the Program in Democracy and Citizenship.

Eng 101(010): Expository Writing: American Protest and American Revolution
Wendt, TT 2:30-3:45, Max: 16

Content: Rhetoric and democracy developed side by side in ancient Greece, for obvious reasons: to exercise isegoria, or the right to speak in Assembly, citizens needed to know how to create and deliver persuasive speeches; by the same token, without an Assembly of citizens to convince, there would have been little need for those in power to develop rhetorical skills.  In this class, we will explore how democracy and rhetoric have intersected at important moments in American history.  Readings will focus on speeches and other historical documents from the Revolution and Constitution, Abolitionism, and Women’s Suffrage.  This course is part of the Program in Democracy and Citizenship.

Eng 101(011): Expository Writing
, TT 4:00-5:15, Max: 16

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Eng 101(012): Expository Writing
, MWF 3:00-3:50, Max: 16

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Eng 101:(013): Expository Writing
, TT 1:00-2:15, Max: 16

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