141Uws-32A-1 : True Or/And False? Spring 2014

141UWS-32A-1 : TRUE OR/AND FALSE? SPRING 2014

141UWS-32A-1 : True or/and False?

Class location –Brown 115

Gordon Ruesch, Instructor -- 781 325-8136

Office/Tutorial Hours: M W Th 10-12 and by apt., meet in Library /office--Rabb 223

True or/and False?—Course Description

“Truth, Even unto Its Innermost Parts”—Whose truth, which parts? What’s behind the contemporary notion that “the truth” can’t be known because—in truth—only “truths” are there? Is it quantum physics? Internet deceit? Postmodern hangover? Through a wind-whirl reading tour, we’ll use our exploration of commentary new and old to sharpen academic reading, writing, and critical reasoning skills in exercises

ranging from “unpacking” arguments, to pre-writing, brainstorming, graphic-organizing, speed-drafting, reverse outlining, line editing and big-picture revision. Readings on the theme include poetry—samplings from Keats, Dickinson, Yeats, Stevens; philosophy—Plato, Aristotle, Sartre (bad faith), Simon Blackburn (Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed), Sissela Bok (Lying), Richard Rorty (relativism), Stephen Colbert (truthiness); science, psychology and neurology—Freud, Sacks; history--Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s Truth: A

History and a Guide; and literature--Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending and Lauren Slater’s Lying.

Diagnostic Writing Prompt

"Who Owns the Truth?" (agree or disagree)

This brief exercise enables me to get some sense of writing skills, comfort level, and on-the-spot organizing. Almost no one likes such exercises or feels satisfied—so don’t worry. In the allotted time, do your best to articulate your assessment of the view below. Aim for constructing a unified essay with a beginning, middle, and end, in which you express a clear thesis and develop your reasoning with support (example and illustration).

“Truth unto its innermost parts,” the Brandeis motto, presumes that there is a truth and that it is somehow knowable. Other current views propose that there is no one truth, that our views of what is are relative culturally and historically. Just as no one can finally establish what a novel or a musical composition means, the account of what is and what has been is correspondingly fluid. “Facts” are not necessarily facts. (agree or disagree)

Required Course Texts

· The Sense of an Ending –Julian Barnes; Borzi, 2012

Houghton Mifflin

· Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir—Lauren Slater; Penguin, 2001

· Writer’s Help--E-Handbook (Bedford) and Writing in Response

· Write Now (collection of exemplary UWS writing by Brandeis students

· A Good English-English Dictionary

· Numerous shorter readings, supplied

Course Design and Rationale

UWS should help you become familiar with mainstay academic writing formats, scope, and style. Through a series of reading-response and analytic writings of graduated complexity (from one-page summaries to an extended essay using multiple sources), you will have a valuable rehearsal of essential academic writing forms as well as a vigorous writing workout. Our course approach originates partly in the notion that with challenging reading and writing tasks , each writer can realize her or his own new personal best success as a college writer and thinker.

Course Focus on Writing Process

College writing (any writing) is not merely about recording one’s thinking according to a certain academic rubric. Rather, it is about a way of finding out what we think. That is, it is a process we use to closely inspect our reasoning, a means of moving toward greater clarity in our thinking even when we start (as we often do) in a fog, anxious and uncertain. Trusting ourselves to start writing without knowing quite where we are going can be scary; certainly we feel better when we devise a provisional plan, a set of preliminary steps before we start out. We’ll work at trusting the writing process to help us find out what we think and what we have in mind to say.

A Word about Course Texts and Focus:

We will explore our course theme, “True and/or False," in two contemporary novels and a host of short non-fiction essays bearing closely on important contemporary empirical and epistemological problems (can we know? how can we know. These thematic concerns bear closely on our primary engagement as writers with the practice of careful reading, critical analysis, and argumentation. Through these readings, we’ll be honing writing skills by scrutinizing, then practicing punctuation, paragraph structure, argumentation, and response to counterargument. We’ll also rely on our Writer’s Help E-Handbook and the accompanying Writing in Response.

Oral Presentations and Readings:

Facilitating class discussion of readings in our friendly, low-anxiety seminar format helps students gain confidence and comfort invaluable in semesters to come. After choosing selections from a sign-up sheet, student partners will be responsible for leading discussions on individual chapters from . You will meet outside of class with your partner to devise strategies that draw classmates into focused, insightful discussion of readings.

Key Course Skills

We’ll also observe requisite protocols for incorporating and crediting source support and develop a sense of possible variations in essay structure, sentence form, and paragraph organization well beyond the five-paragraph high school formula. Writings assignments of graduated complexity will hone skills in summarizing, paraphrasing, properly crediting sources, knowing when to quote or paraphrase, developing effective thesis-first introductions, devising effective paragraph structure and variation, using transition devises to link paragraph sections smoothly, and especially, editing for clarity and precision, honing proofreading and critical skills through peer review exercises.

The Instructor’s Role

I see myself as your writing coach, trying to encourage you toward your best performance. I need to encourage, inspire, sometimes cajole, even coerce. I need to be able to see your strengths as a writer and also help you achieve your improvement goals (each writer will help me identify individual goals in the first tutorials of weeks three and four.) I also will help you advance toward your personal best by offering close analysis of your writing at the global level (big picture: content, thesis, structure, argumentation; local level: sentence mechanics, rhythm, word choice, grammar. At my best, I need to encourage you to discover a legitimate confidence about your best. I need to help each of you glimpse the next level of excellence within your reach, then help you motivate you. I can’t get you there, but I can guide you toward on how best you can get yourself there, and, how after this semester, you can sustain your growth as a writer and continue to reach for a new writing level of personal best.

Syllabus/Assignments Outline

We’ll undertake three major papers, along with a host of shorter exercises. The major papers prepare writers for UWS expectations, as described on the Brandeis web page:

Close-Reading Essay

The close-reading essay requires students to slow down and read their given text(s) carefully, whether those texts are a work of art, a public space, or another piece of writing. The goal is to recognize the move from observation to analysis in the writing process.

Lens Essay

With the lens essay, students will take a piece of critical or theoretical writing and use it to examine another text in order to create an analytical dialogue between the two texts.

Extended Essay with Multiple Sources

In this more elaborate culminating exercise of the semester’s skills, writers will develop a focus of interest from the semester’s reading to explore, interrogate, and develop a line of critical inspection and discovery. Topic focus and scope of inquiry will be negotiated individually in tutorial with the instructor, then gradually developed and sharpened at designated progress checks. Using skills acquired in the previous essay assignments, including careful close-reading, textual analysis through a given theoretical or critical lens, and crafting a strong argument, students will integrate their selected source-text illumination to create a polished and thesis-driven final essay.

How Much Work?

We will be writing every week, sometimes for a new assignment, sometimes for a revision, or for one of the many preliminary exercises accompanying each major paper (total: two major papers and one longer final project, an extended essay with multiple sources). You should expect to write a lot. The pace and workload must be manageable, certainly, so I’ll look for a reasonable timetable once I see how people are doing. If we were to do only a modest writing load, you’d agree, the gain in skill would be correspondingly modest; conversely, a full workout gets us gains in competence, confidence, and academic success that stand to be great.

Using Writer’s Help Online: Before class, in preparation for each “Five-Minute Skills Review” segment, as well as for other topics announced in class, students need to consult Writer’s Help . Students will sometimes be asked to do Writer’s Help review exercises and send the results to the instructor via Writer’s Help.

Academic Honesty

UWS aims at providing guidance on avoiding academic dishonesty by demonstrating and practicing proper source citations and avoiding illicit use (unquoted, uncredited) of Internet material. Students who submit work incorporating uncited language not their own (that would include work written by mentors, friends, genius siblings, internet Wiki-pickings) will enjoy no benefit of the doubt, so, as a moral and as a practical matter, honesty is essential. Please think carefully if you find yourself confused about what is or is not honest, or if you find yourself tempted by deadline pressures, a desire for A’s, etc. to take the plagiarized way out, expect Draconian (flunk/leave) consequences.

Attendance and Grading

Class attendance is required. Missing class means missing discussions on which writing assignments depend. Should an emergency arise, please notify me before class by email or telephone. Necessarily, students who are late or absent learn less and take lower final grades. Missing three sessions means automatic email to academic dean. Course grades come from quizzes, in-class exercises, from class preparation and participation, and, primarily, from grades on writing. Revision is encouraged, but must be negotiated after we discuss your revision plans. (Revision does not equal fixing grammar.)

Grade Components

35% grade = Quizzes, attendance, class participation, in-class writing, use of tutorials, class presentations

35%=Close-Reading and Lens Essay Revisions

30%=Extended Essay with Multiple Sources

Learning Disabilities Act

Please let me know of any special learning circumstances; I’ll make appropriate accommodations.

Class Agenda and Assignment Schedule

Week One

Jan. 13 Writing diagnostic; introduction of syllabus, course goals and procedures

Diagnostic Prompt

This brief exercise enables me to get some sense of writing skills, comfort level, and on-the-spot organizing. Almost no one likes such exercises or feels satisfied—so don’t worry. In the allotted time, do your best to articulate your assessment on the view below. Aim for constructing a unified essay with a beginning, middle, and end, in which you express a clear thesis and develop your reasoning with support (example and illustration).

Who Owns the Truth?

Jan. 15 Introduce syllabus and course themes, design;

Reading: class handout by Umberto Eco, "Absolute and Relative."

Jan. 16. Annotating assigned readings

Writing assigned: Close-Reading Warm Up:

Assignment One--Dr. M L King Speech Analysis.docx

Essay reflections on Dr. Martin Luther King's “I have been to the mountaintop" speech

Suggested length: 2-3 pages; two printed copies due in class on Wednesday, January 22.

1. Recall our class's initial writing prompt asking you to meditate on whether you thought there was “one truth” or multiple relative truths.

2. Now, read the handout from class by Umberto Eco, "Absolute and Relative." Do your best to gain familiarity with how Eco construes the meaning of these two categories. Although your essay is not primarily about Eco's essay, you may find it useful to make reference to his analysis of relativism and absolutism.

3. Next, listen to the King's "I have been to the mountaintop" speech as you follow along by reading the text of the speech distributed in class. As you read, annotate those references in the speech that seem to you connected either with absolute or relative values.

4. Now that you have accomplished these preliminaries, you are ready to address the actual writing task: decide what kind of description you can convey to your readers about whether or not King's references to absolute and relative values is or is not a significant element in his argument and message. If you think the references are thematically significant, explain this significance, supporting your claims with well-selected illustrations and examples from the text. I have devised this assignment partly as a way of paying homage to King and especially because these reasonings about absolute or relative truth loom large in King's overarching thesis. You need not agree with this premise, though: if you do not think that King's focus on these two kinds of truth is of primary significance in the speech, say what you think is most significant in King's primary message.

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Alternative assignment variation, extra-credit version;

1. Start by listening to and reading along with the text of King's 1963 "I have a dream" speech. Annotate the text for King’s references to absolute and relative values.

2. Next, repeat the same kind of inspection of King's last speech, "I have been to the mountaintop." Follow the instructions for analysis as described above. Once you have a prepared both speeches, write-up your analysis of the differences and\or similarities and between the two; do your best to articulate the deeper significances revealed by the differences/continuities that you note in King's message and also in his method of delivery between these two crucial addresses. Feel invited to speculate about differences in historical contexts, in King’s evolving philosophy and his changing strategies and state of mind.

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A note of caution for either version of the assignment: you are indeed invited to quote as needed from King's speech for your close analysis. Avoid compiling a mere inventory of points of likeness and differences; instead, develop an essay that tries to elucidate the deeper significances of King's speech(s) according to your analysis. In your last stage of developing the essay, make sure that you craft an introductory section that will help readers understand your thesis and your rationale for developing the essay. Also be sure to construct a final section that provides closure for the essay project as a whole.