Syllabus less drafty

English 1B, Fall 2008
College of Alameda; Professor Wanda Sabir
Course code 42800, Room C-104 9-10:50 TTh
Class Meetings: August 21-Dec. 11; No classes: 9/1; 10/22; 11/11; 11/27-28

Final Exam: 8-10, Tuesday, Dec.16
Drop dates: Sept. 4 (w/refund), Sept. 13 (w/out a W), Nov. 18 (w/W).

Syllabus for English 1B: College Composition and Reading

English 1B is a transferable college writing course. It builds on the competencies gained in English 1A with a more careful and studied analysis of expository writing based on careful reading of selected plays, poems, novels, and short fiction.

Plan to have a challenging, yet intellectually stimulating 18 weeks, which I hope you begin by setting goals for yourself. Make a schedule and join or create a study group. Writing is a social activity, especially the type of writing you’ll be doing here. We always consider our audience, have purpose or reason to write, and use research to substantiate our claims, even those we are considered experts in.

We’re supposed to write about 8000 words or so at this level course. This includes drafts. What this amounts to is time at home writing, time in the library researching, reading documents to increase your facility with the ideas or themes your are contemplating, before you once again sit at your desk writing, revising, and writing some more.

Writing is a lonely process. No one can write for you. The social aspect comes into play once you are finished and you have an opportunity to share.

I thought it might be interesting this semester to look at the global reach of hip hop as we also look at how hip hop has influenced or perpetuated certain views of women. Byron Hurt directs a film, Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes, which looks at mysegeny in hip hop culture. I am still trying to decide on what books we’ll use, so for the moment we will look at essays about genre from scholars and artists, to compare the personal with the theoretical. At each meeting we will listen to an artist or watch a film to analyze the work—is it fair to look at raps literary quality, minus the performance aspect? What happens when we take a song out of context?

As the weeks progress we will develop a list of the key architects of this genre. Why aren’t their names more well known by contemporary fans? Does their absence from popular culture limit or change the nature of hip hop? What is this argument that hip hop is dead? Who is KRS-1 who calls himself “hip hop” and refers to the genre as a nation?

Keep a reading log. Discussion groups will meet each week. Students will also keep a reading log/journal/notes with key ideas outlined for each discussion section, along with vocabulary and key arguments listed, along with primary writing strategies employed: description, process analysis, narration, argument, cause and effect, compare and contrast, definition, problem solving.

Research Project
Your research project will entail finding a social entrepreneur who is an artist, who has been active in his or her community for at least 20 years and have documented resources you can draw from: books, essays, articles, films, music, performances. The paper will be about 10 pages. This will include a works cited page and bibliography. Students will make 5-10 minute presentations of these papers the day of the final. The paper will be due about two-three weeks prior to the presentation. I thought students could look for women in hip hop here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m just not certain if there are enough to go around (smile). We’ll discuss this task further later on.

New Heroes
Visit PBS.org “The New Heroes,” to read about social entrepreneurs. (I’ll show you a few episodes from the series.) Too often people feel helpless or hopeless when there is a lot you can do as an individual as soon as you realize the answer lies inside of you.

Other writing
We will write short essays that reflect themes and ideas discussed that week. Some of these essays will be written in class. The research essay will be an argument. There will be a midterm and a final.

Jot down briefly what your goals are this semester. List them in order of importance.

1.



2.



3.



4.

5.

Presentation 1: Due Tuesday, Sept. 2
Bring in an object that represents hip hop culture. Be prepared to share. Write a brief profile on the object justifying its inclusion in the archives (100 words or so). You will post the written response on the blog. I’ll take photos. (If you were in my class Fall 2007, choose another object.)

Presentation 2: Due Tuesday, Sept. 9
Bring in an object that reflects America, American values, its people, landscape, or history. Write a brief profile on the object justifying its inclusion in the archives (100 words or so). Same as above. It is also a cyber-assignment.

Grading
Weekly essays: 15 percent
Daily journals: 15 percent
Midterm: 10 percent
Final: 15 percent
Research Essay/Presentation: 20 percent
Portfolio: 15 percent
Peer Reviews from Lab teachers: 10 percent
Participation: 5 percent

The essays, which take their themes from the class: hip hop as global movement, hip hop and women, the aesthetics of hip hop, are practice essays, and are about a fourth of your grade, your midterm and final are another fourth and your portfolio is the final fourth. (Save all of your work.) You can average the grades to see how to weigh the various components. Participation is included in the daily exercises and homework portion of the grade, so if your attendance is exemplary, yet you say nothing the entire 18 weeks, you loose percentage points.

You will also need to plan to spend time weekly in the Writing Lab (L-234-235, 748-2132). It is a great place to get one-on-on assistance on your essays, from brainstorming and planning the essays, to critique on the essay for clarity, organization, clearly stated thesis, evidence of support, logical conclusions, and grammatical problems for referrals to other ancillary materials to build strong writing muscles such as SkillsBank, the Bedford Handbook on-line, Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers on-line, Townsend Press, and other such computer and cyber-based resources. Call for hours. There is also an Open Lab for checking e-mail, and a Math Lab. All academic labs are located in the Learning Resource Center (LRC) or library.

Students need a student ID to use the labs and to check out books. The IDs are free and you can take the photo in the F-Building, Student Services.

Have a tutor of teacher sign off on your essays before you turn them in; if you have a “R,” which means revision necessary for a grade or “NC” which means “no credit,” you have to go to the lab and revise the essay with a tutor or teacher before you return both the graded original and the revision (with signature) to me. Revise does not mean “rewrite,” it means to “see again.”

When getting assistance on an essay, the teacher or tutor is not an editor, so have questions prepared for them to make best use of the 15-20 minute session in the Lab. For more specific assistance sign up for one-on-one tutoring, another free service. For those of you on other campuses, you can get assistance at the Merritt Colleges’ Writing Center, as well as Laney’s.

All essay assignments you receive comments on have to be revised prior to resubmission; included with the revision is a student narrative to me regarding your understanding of what needed to be done; a student can prepare this as a part of the Lab visit, especially if said student is unclear over what steps to take.

Students can also visit me in office hours for assistance; again, prepare your questions in advance to best make use of the time. Do not leave class without understanding the comments on a paper. I don’t mind reading them to you.

English language fluency in writing and reading; a certain comfort and ease with the language; confidence and skillful application of literary skills associated with academic writing. Familiarity if not mastery of the rhetorical styles used in argumentation, exposition and narration will be addressed in this class and is a key student learning outcome (SLO).

We will be evaluating what we know and how we came to know what we know, a field called epistemology or the study of knowledge. Granted, the perspective is western culture which eliminates the values of the majority populations, so-called underdeveloped or undeveloped countries or cultures. Let us not fall into typical superiority traps. Try to maintain a mental elasticity and a willingness to let go of concepts which not only limit your growth as an intelligent being, but put you at a distinct disadvantage as a species.

This is a highly charged and potentially revolutionary process - critical thinking. The process of evaluating all that you swallowed without chewing up to now is possibly even dangerous. This is one of the problems with bigotry; it’s easier to go with tradition than toss it, and create a new, more just, alternative protocol.

Grades, Portfolio
We will be honest with one another. Grades are not necessarily an honest response to work; grades do not take into consideration the effort or time spent, only whether or not students can demonstrate mastery of a skill - in this case: essay writing. Grades are an approximation, arbitrary at best, no matter how many safeguards one tries to put in place to avoid such ambiguity. Suffice it to say, your portfolio will illustrate your competence. It will represent your progress, your success or failure this summer session in meeting your goal.

Office Hours
I’d like to wish everyone good luck. I am available for consultation on Monday mornings 9:30-10:30 a.m. , Wednesday 9:30-10:30 a.m., Wednesday afternoon 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. by appointment in A-200. Tuesdays and Thursdays, if you want to take me to lunch—just kidding, I am available after 12 for appointments if you notify me in advance. All the office hours take place in my office, L-236, except where noted. (I’m inside the Writing Center Lab L-235). I am not on campus on Fridays. (Jot my cell number down in this section.) My office number is (510) 748-2131, e-mail professorwandasposse@gmail.com.

I don’t check my e-mail on weekends so I’d advise you to exchange phone numbers with classmates (2), so if you have a concern, it can be addressed more expediently. Again study groups are recommended, especially for those students finding the readings difficult; don’t forget, you can also discuss the readings as a group in the Lab with a teacher or tutor acting as facilitator. Keep a vocabulary log for the semester and an error chart (taken from comments on essay assignments). List the words you need to look up in the dictionary, also list where you first encountered them: page, book and definition, also use the word in a sentence. You will turn this in with your portfolio.

Students are expected to complete their work on time. If you need more time on an assignment, discuss this with me in advance, if possible to keep full credit. You loose credit each day an assignment is late and certain assignments, such as in-class essays cannot be made up. All assignments prepared outside of class are to be typed, 12-pt. font, double-spaced lines, indentations on paragraphs, 1-inch margins around the written work (see Hacker: The Writing Process; Document Design.)

Cheating
Plagiarism is ethically abhorrent, and if any student tries to take credit for work authored by another person the result will be a failed grade on the assignment and possibly a failed grade in the course if this is attempted again. This is a graded course.

Homework
If you do not identify the assignment, I cannot grade it. If you do not return the original assignment you revised, I cannot compare what changed. If you accidentally toss out or lose the original assignment, you get a zero on the assignment to be revised. I will not look at revisions without the original attached - no exceptions. Some students essays will be posted on-line at the website. Students will also have the option of submitting assignments on-line.

All assignments completed away from class should be typed. Use blue or black ink when writing responses in class. You can annotate your books in pencil.

Textbooks Recap:
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation. Jeff Chang. Picador. 2005. ISBN: 0-312-42579-1

Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop. Michael Eric Dyson. Basic Civitias Books. 2007. ISBN: 0-465-017716-9 (I am making copiesof certain chapters, but I recommend purchasing it.)

Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop. Ed. Jeff Chang. Basic Civitas Books. 2006. ISBN: 10: 0-465-00909-3 (I’m thinking about this book.)

The Coldest Winter Ever. Sister Souljah. Simon & Schuster. 2006.
http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=514298&er=9781416521693

Rules For Writers. Fourth or Fifth edition. Diana Hacker. Bedford/St. Martins. (If you don’t already have such a book.)

Elements of Style (any edition)

I am thinking about:
From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002. Ed. Ishmael Reed. Thunder’s Mouth Press. 2003. ISBN 1-56025-458-0 (but you might have enough with the survey of hip hop music)

The Message: 100 Life Lessons from Hip-Hop’s Greatest Songs. Felicia Pride. Thunder’s Mouth Press. 2007. ISBN-13: 978-1-56858-335-8

The Spoken Word Revolution (slam, hip hop & the poetry of a new generation). Ed. Mark Eleveld. Sourcebooks MediaFusion. 2004. ISBN: 1-4022-0246-6.

Students also need a dictionary. I recommend: The American Heritage Dictionary. Fourth Edition.

Along with a dictionary, the prepared student needs pens with blue or black ink, along with a pencil for annotating texts, paper, a stapler or paper clips, floppy disks, a notebook, three hole punch, a folder for work-in-progress, and a divided binder to keep materials together.

Also stay abreast of the news. Buy a daily paper. Listen to alternative radio:
KPFA 94.1 FM (Hardknock), KQED 88.5, KALW 91.7. Visit news websites: AllAfrica.com, Al Jazeera, CNN.com, AlterNet.org, DemocracyNow.org, FlashPoints.org, CBS 60Minutes.

Index Cards Week 2 August 26-August 28
Please list your contact information: Name, Address, phone number e-mail address, best time to call.

What strengths do you bring to the class? What do you hope to obtain from the course – any particular exit skills? What do I need to know about you to help you meet your goals?