Syllabus – WRIT 105C

WRIT 105C, Winter 2022

Instructor: Dr. Kevin Rutherford

Email: kjr@ucsb.edu

Office Hours: T 1-2pm, W 2-3pm, and by appointment

Zoom Meeting ID: 676 383 1237 (https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/6763831237)

Course Overview

Writing 105C focuses on creative nonfiction, a genre of creative writing that merges the techniques of narrative storytelling with journalism, exposition, and/or academic and intellectual discourse. In this course, you will write in a variety of nonfiction modes, which might include personal essays, travel narratives, memoir, profiles, or a research-based article-length piece (among many other options). You will conduct primary research, such as interviews, surveys, and observations, as well as secondary research through websites, articles, books, and other media. You will develop advanced writing skills that are applicable to upper-division courses throughout the university.

I also hope it will be a course you find personally and academically enriching and – maybe most importantly – in which you have some fun.

Course Expectations and Goals

This course is heavily based in interaction with one another, and in order to get the most out of it, you should be an engaged participant in that interaction. Additionally, because we all can learn from one another, you will be encouraged to share your own perspectives and experiences with and about your and others’ writing. Ultimately, this class should be yours, and you will get out of the class what you put into it.

So, the outcomes of this course are for you to:

understand the range of scholarship, craft, and practice in the field of creative nonfiction
produce pieces of creative nonfiction based on personal experience and that integrate research from primary and secondary sources
produce texts in a variety of creative nonfiction subgenres
understand the ethical issues confronting writers of creative nonfiction
attribute sources correctly and incorporate them effectively in writing
write clearly and effectively, using language appropriate to the particular subgenre

Required Materials

This course includes a book: The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green (ISBN: 978-0593412428). All other material will be available on this website.

Generally, other than the required book, you will need:

access to our course website: https://writ105c.andmuchmuchmore.com/
access to our shared Google Drive
access to OWL at Purdue

Grading

We will be using contract grading in this course. Contract grading avoids the uses of grades and/or numbers on assignments. For more information on contract grading and a more granular breakdown of the requirements for grades in the course, see this page.

Essentially, in this class, your final course letter grade will be determined by your labor: completing assignments and participating in the course. This doesn’t mean that quality of work matters less, as we will regularly discuss the quality of your writing. Rather, we will focus on improving writing through hard work and collaborative efforts (instead of comparing the quality of your work to your classmates or an abstract notion of standards).

When it comes to evaluating writing, my goal is to create opportunities for receiving and providing feedback that will foster your growth as a thinker and writer. That is, we will try to create a class where you, your classmates, and I function as allies and collaborators, rather than adversaries working against each other for grades or approval by teachers. Taking grades out of the class, I hope, will allow you freedom to take risks and really work hard. Taking risks (even if they don’t pay off in our favor) can show us our weaknesses, misunderstandings, and provide opportunities to grow and change.

Furthermore, since I won’t be assigning a number or letter grade to anything and since my feedback will be less frequent than your peers’, this makes your colleagues’ and your own assessment and revision advice all the more valuable. This will help you listen carefully to colleagues’ differing judgments and build self-assessment strategies that function apart from a teacher’s approval. I want you to learn to assess the worth of those judgments for your work and make informed, careful decisions in your writing that you can explain to others. Such assessments will require time and critical thinking.

If you’re looking to game the system and do the least amount of work to get the highest possible course grade, this is not the class for you. If you genuinely want to improve yourself as a writer and reader, are willing to apply effort toward that improvement, and accept the idea that your labor in service of that goal has value, then this is the class for you.

The Short Version: Getting a B

The standard grade for this course is B. You earn a B if you put in time and effort, do all required major assignments, participate in all (or nearly all) of the weekly work, and meet with me individually at least once during the quarter. Grades of B depend on you having one missing participation notebook at most, having one late assignment at most, one make-up assignment at most, and no missing assignments.

Assignments

WRIT 105C consists of weekly short writing and collaborative work, three major assignments, and optional extra work. Each of these elements is described on its own page (accessible from the menu on this site and linked below).

Weekly Work

Group Discussion: At the beginning of the quarter, I’ll be sorting people into small discussion groups. (There should be 4 or 5 people in each group.) You’ll be meeting with your group once a week, in some synchronous environment – in person or over Zoom (or Skype, Discord, Slack, FaceTime, WeChat, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, etc.). These meetings will involve everyone in the group meeting together for an hour or so and discussing readings and assignments.
Participation Notebooks: Each week, you will submit a participation notebook after you meet in small groups (by the end of the day Friday of each week). In this notebook, you will briefly cover your group discussion. Some weeks I may also ask you to include specific additional writing in your participation notebook: the results of a brainstorming session, a major assignment prompt rewritten in your own words, a few sentences responding to a specific question about a reading, etc.
Commonplace Book: Commonplace books are notebooks that serve as a catch-all kind of space for thinking about writing. Authors, scholars, students, philosophers, etc. have historically used these books to write down pieces of information, passages they’ve read, sentences they enjoy, ideas they have, inspiration, etc. For the purposes of this class, you will be keeping a commonplace book where you discuss reading/writing/language you’ve encountered that week. You might discuss paragraphs that you enjoyed reading, examples of writing you want to emulate, parts of conversations that you heard, or other random but significant texts that you come across throughout the week. These should be submitted by the end of the day each Friday. These entries should be substantial – 500 or so words – so I suggest that you add to your commonplace throughout the week.

Major Assignments

Your major assignments in this class will consist of three essays. Each will have a different focus (broadly chosen by me, but specifically chosen by you) and be written in different genres (chosen by you from a list I’ll provide). You can find more information on the assignment pages for each, but here’s a short preview:

Person Essay: In the first essay, you will be writing about a person. That person might be you (in which case this essay may be a memoir or personal narrative), it might be someone you know (in which case this essay might be literary journalism), or it might be someone you don’t know (in which case it might be more like traditional biography or research journalism).
Place Essay: For the second essay, you’ll be writing about a place. You might use a place you have history with to discuss an event in your life (in which case this essay might be a memoir), you might talk about a place you’ve visited (so the essay might be something like travel writing), or you might meditate on some natural setting (so you might write nature writing).
Thing Essay: Finally, you’ll write about a thing. You might use something to discuss your history or experiences (so, a thing-based memoir), or to make a researched argument (something like a journalistic essay), or to discuss something like food or art.

Extra Work Options (or EWO)

As I mention above, the standard grade in the class is B. If you want to work toward an A in the class, you’ll need to do more than just the major assignments and weekly work – you’ll need to write some things above and beyond the standard expectations. To get an A, you will need to choose three of the four options below in addition to the major assignments above. These EWOs can be done in any order and can be attached to any of the major assignments. All of the options except the revision/reflection are submitted at the same time as the major assignment. (The revision/reflection is due by the end of week 9 at the latest.) See the Extra Work page for more information on each of these options, but here’s a short version:

Publication Venue Analysis: Where can you publish your writing? This EWO asks you to investigate potential publication venues, including the submission process and potential additions/revisions to your work.
Research Reflection: What sorts of research did you do? This EWO asks you to outline your research process, discuss your sources, and elaborate on your use of the research.
Multimedia Submission and Reflection: How else could you present your work? This EWO asks you to submit your major assignment as something other than text on a page. You might create a website, an audio essay, or a video essay instead of a written essay. You’ll also write a very brief explanation/justification of the decision.
Deep Revision & Reflection: How can you improve your work? This EWO asks you to seriously and deeply revise a major assignment – for a new audience, to make a different argument, to use a different style, or otherwise to make radical changes to the piece – and to explain how/why you made those changes. (This EWO is due by the end of week 9; obviously, you can’t turn in a substantial revision of a piece at the same time you turn it in for the first time.)

Policies

Keeping Up To Speed: The schedule and assignment prompts are on the course website at https://writ105c.andmuchmuchmore.com/. Keep in mind, the course schedule is subject to change based on the needs and interests of the class, as well as what is going on in the world. You are responsible for regularly checking the schedule for updates. I do my level best to communicate all the logistics of the course (deadlines, updates, changes, procedures) through email and in class. Please, for your sake and mine: check your email; read emails from me completely; while we’re online, watch the weekly videos. I have found that 99% of confusion in my online/hybrid classes happen because people haven’t watched (and paid attention to) emails or videos. I usually limit myself to one email and (while we’re online) one overview video per week, so it’s not taking up that much of your time.

Late Work: As part of the contract grading approach, you may find deadlines slightly more forgiving than in other classes. Refer to the contract grading page for further explanation of late work and how it affects your grade, but the short version is that an assignment is “late” if it is turned in within 48 hours of the deadline, and it is considered a “make-up” assignment if it is turned in afterward. You can turn in one “late” and one “make-up” major assignment and still get a B in the course. However, if you are aware beforehand that you will need more time, please get in touch with me! Though I have created deadlines, I am also aiming to be flexible: please keep me updated as soon as you can. Do your best to let me know in advance if you anticipate needing extensions or other accommodations so that I can try to work with you.

Complete Work: Major assignments and weekly work are considered “complete” if they satisfy the criteria in their prompts. For example, if an assignment requires you to write a memoir, and you instead spend your essay discussing interviews you’ve done, that assignment would not be considered complete. Similarly, if you write a last-minute and ill-considered draft that does not seem to be a good-faith effort to satisfy the prompt, that would not count as a “complete” assignment, and I would ask you to try again. (Contract grading means that in that case, the assignment would only count as “late” or “make-up” rather than receiving a lower grade.)

Respect: While we will often engage in vigorous and lively debate in this class, personal insults or attacks on an individual person’s race, class, gender, sexuality, or disability will not be tolerated. In other words, be courteous and respectful to those around you.

Academic Integrity: Two key features of academic integrity are honesty and truthful representation of self. My assumption is that work you submit is your own original work — that is, produced by you, and for this class. You should identify any of your work which is collaborative with others, or which is borrowed from others, or which is your own work from other contexts. In other words, you should credit others’ contributions to your work. You should not claim to have written any writing that is not your own. To do so is considered plagiarism, a serious violation of the principle of academic integrity. If you have doubts about whether you are using your own or others’ writing ethically, ask me. All students are required to carefully read and familiarize themselves with the following guidelines: https://judicialaffairs.sa.ucsb.edu/CMSMedia/Documents/academicintegflyer.pdf

Resources

Campus Learning Assistance Services (CLAS) offers the opportunity to improve your writing in several ways, including one-on-one tutoring sessions. For more information, visit the MyClas website, http://my.ucsb.edu/clas.
Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) is committed to providing timely, culturally appropriate, and effective mental health services. All registered students are eligible for services at CAPS. You can find their site at http://caps.sa.ucsb.edu/. Please take care of your whole self while you’re in college (and afterwards). We all need help to do that sometimes.
Disabled Students Program (DSP) provides a wide array of academic support services to eligible students with documented disabilities. These services include note takers, readers, sign language interpreters, facilitation of access, and adaptive computing equipment. If you have a disability and would like to discuss accommodations, please contact them directly and/or me as soon as possible.
Don’t be afraid to rely on one another for the questions you have regarding the readings, the work we’re doing in class, etc. You all, both individually and as a collective, embody a vast bank of knowledge and experiences.
Finally, me: I will do all I can to assist you in succeeding in this course. Feel free to meet with me during my office hours or another scheduled time. Email is a reliable way to contact me and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner.