Instructor:Dr.
Stephen doCarmo
Office: Dooling 253
Phone: 1651
E-mail: stephen.docarmo@desales.edu
Hours: M&W 3:00-4:00;
Tu&Th 1:45-3:15
Required
Text
Maasik, Sonia, and Jack
Solomon, eds. Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture
for Writers. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's, 2000.
Course
Description
English 104, according to
the DSU Bulletin of Information, is "a continuation of English 103."
And English 103 is "an intensive development of the communications skills
required for college learning: thinking, reading, speaking, listening,
researching, word processing, and – most especially – writing. This
course," the Bulletin also says, "is an absolute requirement for
the college."
Prerequisite
English 103
Objectives
English 104 is intended
to give you more practice at the all-important college and professional
skills introduced to you in English 103: reading, critical thinking, speaking,
researching, and writing. Our goals then, quite simply, are to
Evaluation
There are four big components
to your final grade. They are...
1. Four polished
essays (each worth 15% of your final grade);
2. Two in-class
writings (each worth 5% of your final grade);
3. Reading quizzes
(collectively worth 15% of your final grade);
4. Class participation
(worth 15% of your final grade).
Each of your polished essays will correspond to a unit of readings from Maasik and Solomon's Signs of Life in the USA. I'll give you a topic for each essay that, while pretty general and non-prescriptive (coming up with a nice, specific, well-honed thesis will be your job), will relate directly to issues addressed in the readings.
You'll need to incorporate some amount of outside research into your third and fourth essays. Your third should use at least one published article or essay not included in Signs of Life, and your second should use at least two. We'll spend some amount of class time over in Trexler learning how to do basic research -- and letting you actually do it.
While, like I said, I'll provide essay topics giving you lots of latitude in creating your essays, each essay should follow some basic guidelines, listed here in (more or less) order of importance:
Final drafts of essays should be typed (or word processed, more specifically). The first three should be at least four pages long each and the fourth should be at least six. Essays should be done in 12-point font with one-inch margins all around. Each one should have a good title. You should also have your name and the title of the course in the upper left-hand corner of your first page. There's no need to be any fancier than that, though (e.g. no title sheets or plastic covers, please).
I'll give each of your polished essay an A-F grade, with +'s and -'s possible. Due dates for essays are on the course schedule below.
You'll do your two in-class writings towards the end of our third and fourth units. I'll give you reasonably loose and interpretable topics for each of them -- topics pertaining to our readings and class discussions from whichever unit we're finishing. Your job will be to write a short, cogent, well-constructed essay in response to that topic, most probably making some use of direct quotes from articles we've read. You'll have a full class period (an hour and fifteen minutes) for each of your in-class writings, and stuff like spelling, punctuation, and grammar, though it shouldn't be disastrous, won't count nearly as much as originality of thought and good organization around a clear central thesis.
I'll give each of your in-class writings an A-F grade, with +'s and -'s possible. The dates you'll be taking them are on the schedule below.
Reading quizzes will always be unannounced, but I'll go ahead and tell you now you can count on taking eight to ten of them over the course of the semester. They'll be five questions long each and will test your familiarity with important ideas from the articles assigned for that day's class. My quizzes aren't nit-picky or detail-oriented -- but you will need to read the assignments reasonably carefully, from beginning to end, to do well on them.
I'll grade your quizzes on a 1-5 scale. Get four of the five questions right, and you get a 4 (an "B," basically; a 5 would be an "A"). Get one or none right and you get a 1 (an "F"). At the end of the semester I'll drop your lowest quiz grade, average all the others, and translate the final result into a four-point-scale.
The final thing you need to worry about is your participation grade. How can you be sure to get a good one? Stay up on the readings. Come to class regularly and share your ideas with others, both in big- and small-group discussions. Be respectful when others are speaking. Come to at least two draft-developing conferences with me over the course of the semester. Give your fellow students good feedback on their rough drafts. And always, always bring a complete rough draft to class on the days you've got one due (see the schedule below). Nothing will wreck your participation grade quicker than not having a rough draft when you're supposed to. And at 15% of your final grade -- more than enough to make a difference -- your participation grade is one you don't want to mess with.
All the grades I give you over the course of the semester will be translated, when it comes time for me to calculate your final grade, into a four-point scale. It'll work like this: A = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0, B- = 2.7, C+ = 2.3, C = 2.0, C- = 1.7, D+ = 1.3, D = 1.0, D- = .7, F = 0.0.
Here's the breakdown of percentages for your final grade, going through it one assignment/factor at a time:
Essay 1: 15%
Essay 2: 15%
Essay 3: 15%
Essay 4: 15%
In-Class Writing 1:
5%
In-Class Writing 2:
5%
Reading Quizzes: 15%
Participation: 15%
Attendance
It's DeSales policy that
freshmen in a class meeting twice a week can't accrue more than four unexcused
absences in it. If you're a freshman in this class, then, your final
grade in the course will drop a third of a letter grade (from a
B to a B -, for instance) with each unexcused absence after your fourth.
Sophomores, juniors, and seniors may take as many unexcused absences as
they like, but they will diminish the "participation" segment of their
final grades by doing so -- radically if they miss more than six class
meetings. And be aware that if you're a sophomore, junior, or senior
on academic probation, you're subject to the same rule as the freshmen.
I'll excuse an absence only
with good reason. If the Dean of Students tells me the university
has officially excused your absence,
that's naturally good enough
for me. If a coach needs you during class time now and then, that's
fine, too -- as long as I get proper
documentation. I may
also excuse an absence if you have a note from a physician saying you were
in no shape to go out the day
you missed or if there's
been a death in your family. Short of any of these things...you should
be in class.
Also, please be punctual.
I'll count two late entrances as an absence, and if you come to class really
late I'll simply leave you down
as absent.
Late
Work
You can't make up reading
quizzes. If you miss a quiz and your absence was excused, that quiz
simply won't factor into your average at the end of the semester.
If you miss a quiz and your absence was unexcused, you have to eat
a zero on it.
You can't make up an in-class writing if you just out-and-out miss it. If you know you're not going to be able to be in class the day an in-class writing is scheduled, talk to me about it and we'll make alternative plans.
Your polished essays you can turn in late at a penalty of one full letter grade per class period. The penalty begins at the end of the class period in which I collected the essay.
Course
Schedule
Tuesday
Jan. 15. Introduction to the course. I'll probably collect
a writing sample from you on this day, too.
Thursday
Jan. 17. Discussion of the introduction to Signs of Life in
the USA (1-19).
Unit One: "Consuming Passions: The Culture of American Consumption"
Tuesday Jan. 22. Discussion of the introduction to the unit (45-55), Laurence Shames' "The More Factor" (55-62), and Anne Norton's "The Signs of Shopping" (62-69).
Thursday Jan. 24. Discussion of Thomas Hine's "What's in a Package" (69-79) and Stuart Ewan's "Hard Bodies" (79-86).
Tuesday Jan. 29. Discussion of Fred Davis' "Blue Jeans" (86-94), Joan Kron's "The Semiotics of Home Decor" (94-105), and David Gowey's "Careful: You May Run Out of Planet" (105-116). I'll also bring you the topic for your first essay on this day.
Thursday Jan. 31. Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your first essay. I'll have brought a sign-up sheet to class before this date.
Tuesday
Feb. 5. Rought draft of essay 1 due. In-class workshopping
on first-essay drafts. We'll be sharing drafts with others in small
groups and doing a big-group critique of one student's draft.
Unit Two: "The Hollywood Sign: The Culture of American Film"
Thursday Feb. 7. Discussion of the introduction to the unit (289-99) and of Robert B. Ray's "The Thematic Paradigm" (299-308).
Tuesday Feb. 12. Essay 1 due, with all drafts, conference notes, brainstorms, etc. Also, discussion of Linda Seger's "Creating the Myth" (308-317), Susan Bordo's "Braveheart, Babe, and the Contemporary Body" (317-28), and Shelby Steele's Malcolm X (328-37).
Thursday Feb. 14. Discussion of Todd Boyd's "So You Wanna Be a Gangsta?" (337-49) and of Jessica Hagedorn's "Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck" (349-57).
Tuesday Feb. 19. Class replaced by a film screening. We'll be meeting in the Air Products room in Trexler -- most likely on this night -- to watch a movie together. I'll give you more information before this date.
Thursday Feb. 21. Discussion of our movie, of Sandra Tsing Loh's "The Return of Doris Day" (357-66), and of Michael Parenti's "Class and Virtue" (366-71). I'll also bring you the topic for your second essay on this day.
Tuesday Feb. 26. Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your second essay.
Thursday
Feb. 28. Rough draft of essay 2 due. In-class workshopping
on second-essay drafts. We'll be sharing drafts with others in small
groups and doing a big-group critique of one student's draft.
Unit Three: "Life on the Margins: Representing the 'Other' in American Culture"
Tuesday March 12. Discussion of the introduction to the unit (599-609), Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon's "Signs of the Street" (609-17), and Peter Doskoch's "The Mind of the Militias" (618-25).
Thursday March 14. Essay 2 due, with all drafts, conference notes, brainstorms, etc. We'll also be meeting in Trexler Library on this day to do a tour of the place and to learn how to do basic research.
Tuesday March 19. Discussion of Evelynn Hammonds' "Race, Sex, AIDS: The Construction of 'Other'" (625-36), Gigi Anders' "Beauty and the Battle" (636-40), and Kevin Jennings' "American Dreams" (640-45).
Thursday March 21. Class replaced by a film screening. We'll be meeting in the Air Products room in Trexler -- most likely on this night -- to watch a movie together. I'll give you more information before this date.
Tuesday March 26. Discussion of our movie, of Andrew Calcutt's "The End of Adulthood?" (645-53), and of Bernard Lefkowitz's "Don't Further Empower Cliques" (653-57). I'll also bring you the topic for your third essay on this day.
Tuesday April 2: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your third essay.
Thursday
April 4: Rough draft of essay 3 due. In-class workshopping
on third-essay drafts. We'll be sharing drafts with others in small
groups and doing a big-group critique of one student's draft.
Unit Four: “American Icons: The Mythic Characters of Popular Culture”
Tuesday April 9: Discussion of the introduction to the unit (657-666) and of Michael Eric Dyson’s “Be Like Mike? Michael Jordan and the Pedagogy of Desire” (667-676).
Thursday April 11: Discussion of Gary Engle’s “What Makes Superman so Darned American?” and of “N’Gai Croal and Jane Hughes’ “Lara Croft, the Bit Girl” (702-705). You’ll also, in the first part of this class period, be taking a survey that DSU’s Associate Academic Dean Rosemarie Giltrap will come in and distribute to you.
Tuesday April 16: Discussion of Andy Medhurst’s “Batman, Deviance, and Camp” (686-701), Emily Prager’s “Our Barbies, Ourselves” (706-709), and Gary Cross’s “Barbie, G.I. Joe, and Play in the 1960s” (710-15).
Thursday April 18: Class replaced by a film screening. I’ll let you know what we’ll be watching – and when and where – before this date.
Tuesday April 23: Discussion of Roy Rivenburg’s “Snap! Crackle! Plot!” (716-720), of Jenny Lyn Bader’s “Larger than Life” (720-732), and of our movie from last week.
Thursday April 25: Your second in-class writing. You’ll have the whole period to work on it.
Tuesday April 30:Rough Draft of Essay 4 due. In-class workshopping. We’ll be sharing drafts in small groups and doing a big-group critique of one student’s essay.
Thursday May 2: Course evaluation and more workshopping on your fourth-essay draft.
Your fourth essay will
be due in my office (Dooling 253) by class time on Tuesday May 7th!
How to Credit a Writer Whose Idea You Want to Use in Your Own Essay
You can do this:
In an essay entitled “Blue
Jeans,” writer Fred Davis argues that an individual’s clothing can serve
as a “vehicle for the expression of status ambivalences and ambiguities”
(67). Loosely speaking, he is saying our clothes can send mixed messages
about our identities.
Since I’ve given the author’s name in my “introduction” to his quote, I don’t have to put his name in the parenthetical citation at the end. All I need to put is a page number.
Or you can do this:
One prominent cultural critic,
in an essay entitled “Blue Jeans,” notes that an individual’s clothing
can serve as a “vehicle for the expression of status ambivalences and ambiguities”
(Davis 67). Loosely speaking, he is saying our clothes can send mixed
messages about our identities.
In this case, I’ve put the writer’s name in the parenthetical citation at the end of the quote because I didn’t mention his name in my “introduction” to the quote.
Or you can do this:
It is true that an individual’s
clothes can allow him to send ambivalent or ambiguous messages about his
social status (Davis 67). Fashion has long been a way for us to send
mixed signals about our identities.
Even though I haven’t directly quoted Davis – that is, used his exact words – I’ve still given him credit here because I’ve borrowed and paraphrased his idea.
BUT YOU CAN’T DO THIS!:
An individual’s clothes
can allow him to send ambivalent or ambiguous messages about his social
status. Fashion has long been a way for us to send mixed signals
about our identities.
Here I’ve borrowed Davis’s idea, but I’ve given him no credit whatsoever. You can’t do this, of course, because it amounts to plagiarism.Prompt for the First Essay
Please write a roughly four-page essay in response to one of the following two topics:
1. We’ve read essays from both Thomas Hine (“What’s in a Package”) and Stewart Ewen (“Hard Bodies”) suggesting that consumerism has somehow "gotten loose" from places like the mall and the grocery store and infected, I guess you could say, aspects of our lives we might not usually think of as consumerized. My question, then, is this: to what extent do you think consumeristic attitudes and behaviors have gotten out of the mall and the grocery store and into, say, our professional lives, our love lives, our family lives, or our social lives – and if this has happened, how concerned should we be?
2. By now you’ve watched a bunch of authors do “semiotic” readings of a number of different pop-culture goods and phenomena: Anne Norton has weighed in on the mall and the Home Shopping Network; Thomas Hine has discussed packaging; Stuart Ewen has gone to the gym; Fred Davis has considered blue jeans; Joan Kron has talked about home decor; David Goewey has tackled SUVs.... So you take a shot at it now. Choose some big consumeristic trend currently playing itself out among your peers and explain either its connotative meanings or its unspoken ideological beliefs. Or both.
Additional Requirements and Pointers
Be sure to bear in mind my criteria for judging essays. (They’re in your syllabus.) Let me go ahead and add here, though, that first-person, or “personal,” writing is fine in this class. Go ahead and use the word “I” throughout. Tell me about your own experiences whenever they’re pertinent or will help you support a claim. Just don’t get glib on me. That you can write in the first person about your own experiences doesn’t mean you should get too casual. Clear, focused, thesis-driven writing is our goal here, and even your “personal” writing should work toward those ends.
Be sure also to make some
use of ideas from at least a couple authors we’ve read during this unit.
When you quote those authors (and you should, at some point), be sure to
introduce their words: don’t just leave them floating on the page by themselves.
And be sure also to put a Signs of Life page number in parentheses
immediately after any direct quote – or any close paraphrase – you use
in your essay.
Prompt for the Second Essay
Choose a movie or related group of movies and write a four-page essay discussing it as either (1) an expression of some facet of American ideology, (2) a metaphor for some American cultural preoccupation, or (3) an enactment of some long-established archetype(s).
Additional Requirements and Pointers
You can presume semi-familiarity on your readers' part with the movie(s) you're discussing. That means you don't need to burn up big segments of your essay reciting a movie's story or explaining its premise. You should, though, remind your readers of important details in the movie that they may or many remember without a big of a memory jog.
Try to re-watch the movie(s) you're writing about before you start drafting your essay -- that way you can write about it/them authoritatively and can even directly quote dialogue from it/them when necessary.
You should be sure to incorporate ideas from (and at some point directly quote) at least one of the readings from the unit we've just completed.
As with your first essay, first-person ("I") writing is fine as long as it doesn't lead you to bee too casual or glib. In fact, it's even encouraged. You might want to write about the first time you saw a movie, or tell about conversations you've had about it with friends, or things you've heard people say about it.... Feel more than free to do those things
Bear in mind again my criteria
for judging essays; they're printed in your syllabus. Your rough
draft is due Thursday Feb. 28th; the final draft is due Thursday March
14th, after spring break.
Prompt for the Third Essay
Please write a four to five-page essay in response to one of the following two topics.
1. Examine some “marginalized” or “othered” group of Americans from an ideological perspective. If the group you’ve chosen seems primarily self-marginalized, you might want to think about what “mainstream” beliefs, values, or principles that group rejects or revises, and why. If the group you’ve chosen seems forcibly marginalized, you might want to ask what its members represent that the mainstream – with its own beliefs, values, or principles – can’t stomach, and why. One way or the other, though, you should ultimately be working to explain what we can learn about America from this group’s marginalization.
2. Set Kevin Jennings (author of “American Dreams”) and Andrew Calcutt (author of “The End of Adulthood?”) into dialogue for me. Jennings worries that some people in America are systematically victimized, stating that we are locked into a “game, the rules of which [are] such that gays, blacks, poor people, women, and many others [will] always lose to the wealthy white heterosexual Christian men who have won the presidency forty-two out of forty-two times” (643). Calcutt, on the other hand, says we’re hung up on this cult of “victimhood,” and he worries that our “near-worship of victims . . . demonstrates [a] drastic change that has occurred in the mores of the most powerful country in the world, which . . . used to be famous for its ‘heroic culture’” (646). What might these two thinkers have to say to each other if they met? Whose side are you on, and why?
Additional Requirements and Pointers
Be sure to incorporate ideas from at least one source beyond those in your Signs of Life book. My strong advice is that you start your search for sources with Proquest, which is available via Trexler Library’s web page.
You’ll need to include a brief “Works Cited” page at the end of your essay listing whatever source(s) you’ve used. This should be done according to MLA style. Whatever handbook you were required to buy for English 103 will give you instructions about MLA style; just look it up in the index and follow the format provided for listing various types of sources (newspaper articles, magazine articles, books, etc.).
The handout I gave you earlier this semester about how to attribute sources within the body of your essay teaches good MLA style. You should keep adhering to those instructions.
While you need to use at least one “outside” source, you’re welcome to cite articles you’ve read in your Signs of Life book, too. Working from the second of the prompts given above, in fact, might require you to do it. You don’t need, for our purposes here, to list Signs of Life articles on your “works cited” page, but you should properly attribute those sources within the body of your own essay. Again, the handout I gave you earlier in the semester will remind you how to do this.
You are strongly encouraged, as always, to write in the first person and draw upon your own personal experiences and observations. Kevin Jennings’ essay “American Dreams” is a great example of smart and specific first-person writing; you might want to think of his style as you work.
Bear in mind again my criteria
for judging essays; they're printed in your syllabus. Your rough
draft is due Thursday April 4th and your final draft is due Tuesday April
9th!
Prompt for the Fourth Essay
Please write a roughly six-page essay in response to one of the following two topics:
1. Choose an icon popular among either Americans in general or some definable group of Americans and perform an ideological analysis of that figure. Let me know, in other words, why Americans like that person so much – what principles, values, priorities, and/or ideas we must have in our heads that make this figure so appealing to us. The person can be either a real historical figure or a fictional character – your choice.
2. In their introduction to the unit we’ve just finished, Maasik and Solomon observe that most of our icons in America these days “are constructed for one purpose: to pitch the product” (664). That is, most of the faces we contemporary Americans most easily recognize belong to entertainers, athletes, or fictional characters whose main job is to get us to buy something – a movie ticket, a sporting-event ticket, a CD, a pair of sneakers, a car.... My question, then: Why should or shouldn’t we be concerned about this?
Additional Requirements and Pointers:
You need to cite at least two outside sources beyond those in your Signs of Life book. They should speak to your thesis in interesting and substantive ways. My strong advice (once again) is that you start your search for sources with Proquest, which is available via Trexler Library’s web page.
You should include a brief “Works Cited” page at the end of your essay listing whatever source(s) you’ve used. This should be done according to MLA style. Whatever handbook you were required to buy for English 103 will give you instructions about MLA style; just look it up in the index and follow the format provided for listing various types of sources (newspaper articles, magazine articles, books, etc.).
Any quotations or paraphrases in the body of your essay must have citations at the end of them. See the handout I gave you earlier this semester about how to do this.
While you need to use at least two “outside” source, you’re welcome to cite articles from your Signs of Life book, too. You don’t need, though, for our purposes here, to list Signs of Life articles on your “works cited” page. You should, however, properly attribute those sources within the body of your own essay. Again, the handout I gave you earlier in the semester will remind you how to do this.
You are strongly encouraged, as always, to write vividly and specifically in the first person, drawing upon your own personal experiences and observations. Gary Engle’s “What Makes Superman So Darned American?” (the start of it, at least) might give you a good example to emulate that way.
Bear in mind again my criteria
for judging essays; they're printed in your syllabus. Your rough
draft is due Tuesday April 30th and your final draft is due by noon
on Tuesday May 7th!
In-Class
Draft Critique (for the
fourth essay)
(To be returned to the
person whose draft it assesses!)
Yr name: _____________________ The draft you’re critiquing was written by ___________________.
Is the draft you just read’s thesis, or central idea, sufficiently clear? What is it? Where in the essay is it most clearly stated?
Are there any spots in the essay that don’t relate clearly to the writer’s thesis? If so, where are they, and what would you recommend?
What’s the strongest point in this draft, and why? How could the writer transfer what s/he’s doing well here to other parts of the essay?
How is this writer doing with support for his or her claims? Are there claims in the essay that need to be better backed up, either with textual or “personal” support? Where are they? What would you advise?
How is this writer doing with organization and transitions? Are there spots in the draft where you can’t figure out how one sentence or paragraph grows out of the one before it? Where are those places? What do you advise?
How is this writer doing incorporating other people’s ideas into his or her own? Are there any quotes used in the draft that don’t clearly fit the writer’s point, or that need to have their connection to the writer’s own thoughts better explained? Where are they?
Can you think of any “outside” sources of info and ideas this writer might want to look at but hasn’t yet? Or do you want, maybe, to recommend search terms you think might yield good results?
How strong is this essay’s introduction? What might make it grabbier?
Aside from “make it longer,” what’s the single biggest thing you think this writer should concentrate on to make this essay stronger?