English 113 Expository Writing I Variants
Fall 2011

Course Descriptions

113.01 Your Travels, Your Stories
Peschiera,Pablo MW 8:30 AM 10:20 AM

The theme of this course is travel, so we will read travel essays, and write travel essays. Some writers write about distant places, some write about places not so far away. Some writers contemplate their landscapes and experiences, reflecting on history and their relationship to place and people, while others move through their landscapes and experiences quickly, like a hero in an action movie or a detective in a mystery novel. All of them share these qualities of good writing: 1) an understanding of the contexts writing, 2) critical thinking about what they’ve observed and experienced, 3) evidence of the writing process, 4) and a knowledge of the conventions of standard English. We will read both for enjoyment and to discover the qualities of good writing. We will write about what interests us in our world, and our experiences, and revise our essays to polish them as much as necessary. We can write about places we’ve visited, or places we’d like to know more about, and you’ll have options with each essay assignment. But Most importantly, this course is designed to help you become a better writer.

113.02 Crime and Punishment
Hemenway,Stephen MTWF 12:00 PM 12:50 PM

Did your mom or dad or grandparents take this same course from me? I have offered it for 40 years; only the books and faces have changed. This is your chance to play Erin Brockovich or James Bond or Ralph Nader or Agatha Christie, hot on the trail of clues leading to the exposure of past or current problems of law and order, cops and robbers, race and gender, crime and punishment. Readings, written exercises and experiments, compositions, research projects, interviews, discussions, and classroom capers will focus on such significant issues as prison conditions, crimes against women and minorities, biological terrorism, drinking laws, the Holocaust, environmental crimes. With luck and skill, you may write the perfect crime or, at least, the perfect expository essay.

Several classes will be devoted to writing workshops where you will read and comment on early and polished drafts of papers by class members. TV programs and occasional films may supplement the reading material. Four credit hours.

113.03 Stephen King
Verduin,Kathleen MTWF 2:00 PM 2:50 PM

Is Stephen King a “good” writer—or is his tremendous popularity just a sign of the depraved tastes of contemporary America? Should his fiction be considered “literature”—and does it belong in the college classroom? Does he engage—intellectually, morally, spiritually—any serious issues, or should he be discredited as trash? These questions will underlie our discussions, and we will concentrate on two of King’s novels, The Shining and The Green Mile, to try to sort out his concepts of human nature, American culture, the tradition of gothic horror, and the question of good and evil. We’ll also take in a few film versions of King’s work. But we will also consider King as a fellow writer, involved as we are in thinking, studying, doing research, and learning to convey meaning through words. Lots of reading, writing, conversations. Not for the timid.

113.04 Writing Workshop 2011
Lewison, Mark MW 2:00 PM 3:50 PM

It takes practice and it takes patience to hone writing skills. In this workshop-oriented section of English 113, we explore your interests and experiences to develop a series of essays during the term. We also use several novels and the textbook Concise Guide to Writing as a baseline for our work together. Often, you will find, the writing process is not magic, it's mechanics -- plus a dash of inspiration. With the benefit of the instructor's longtime experience as a writer and editor in the workplace, you will learn about crafting communication for today's audiences, from on paper to online, and from the academic essay to the casual-yet-concise communication of websites and blogs.

113.05 Writing Your Life
James,David MW 3:00 PM 4:20 PM

Relative freedom of choice, plenty of interaction among peers and between students and prof, and multiple opportunities to revise writings before final evaluation will headline this workshop-driven writing course. Choices will include what to write about and how much to revise after initial submissions. With final works to be collected in a portfolio at semester’s end, students will not only learn more about themselves by writing, but also about the worlds of others around them and how to communicate effectively in various modes (narrative, informative, investigative, and persuasive), for various audiences (informal to formal), and to serve various purposes (to entertain, inform, persuade, inspire). The course’s readings and activities will suggest many options and inspire creative possibilities. People who like, or are willing to learn to like, examining and expressing what is important to them; who, with acclimation and practice, will not be bashful about discussing such things in critically thoughtful ways; and who do not procrastinate will thrive best in this self-motivated course.

113.06 Socially Engaged: Making a Difference with Words
Childress,Susanna MW 3:00 PM 4:50 PM

We’ve all seen bumper stickers that appeal to our sense of right and wrong or make a plea for our allegiance to one cause or another (A personal favorite: “If you love Jesus, work for justice. Anybody can honk.”)But how capable are bumper stickers of addressing complicated, serious issues? What kind of writing might call us to attention, offer a compelling argument, or ask us to consider our way of life and the impact we have on one another?

By drawing on a variety of texts and genres, this course will center around works that look to expose and explore issues of social justice—or injustice, as the case may be. You’ll read essays and articles, watch documentaries, and welcome guest speakers. Written assignments will highlight the act of writing as potentially powerful and creative forces for social change. By connecting with a local non-profit organization throughout the semester, your writing projects will involve research on asocial issue addressed right here in Holland, Michigan; you’ll have the opportunity to work with these non-profits as an activist-writer and help them connect with others in the area by, for example, creating a website or a Facebook profile. Such engagement will provide a springboard for you to explore in writing what you come to believe and value through your “field work.” You will keep a weekly journal, hone your skills in grammar and reading analysis, and write and rewrite a handful of essays.

Bumper stickers may catch our attention, but can a single phrase call us to action? In this course, you’ll go “beyond the bumper sticker” to learning the art of responding thoughtfully, meaningfully, and thoroughly to tough social issues in our world—starting right outside your dorm door.

113.07 "Who Are You" The WHO Had It Right
Clark, Linda TR 3:00-4:50

Though forty years or more have traveled by – mostly in the fast lane – we could still say that in 2011 much insightful language we might use to describe ourselves and our life views may be expressed in song titles of The Who from the 1960’s and 1970’s. “Who Are You?” continues to have more importance than just as a “CSI” theme song, and consider “Don’t Get Fooled Again,” “How Can You Do It Alone?” “Disguises,” and “I Don’t Even Know Myself.” This expository writing course may allow you to articulate a little of who you are and what you have to say while adding to your preparation for the academic writing requirements at Hope College. Stressing the methods of the writing workshop process, our work will focus on clarity, depth of thought, voice, organization, and language effectiveness. Plan to read a variety of essay samples, write both formally and informally, engage in critical evaluation of your own products and those of others, research and cite thoroughly, and make valuable contributions within the group. Hopefully the class will help with the realization that sincere, fluent thought and writing can occur “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.”

113.08 American Lives
Dykstra,Natalie TR 8:00 AM 9:20 AM

This course explores American lives, our American lives, by focusing on several key themes: religious belief, the American Dream, and the many meanings of citizenship. We say that one of our founding values is separation of church and state. But what does this mean? How do we understand religious belief in relation to politics, education, and our responsibilities as citizens? What is the American Dream, how did it develop over time, and who is included in it and why? Who is a citizen and what does citizenship require of us? To engage these questions and more, we will be drawing from history, literature, film, and art. The main task of this course is to learn to write clearly, persuasively, and with authority in preparation for your future courses. Class time is devoted to lively discussion and writing workshops. Come join us!

113.09 The American War in Vietnam
Emerson,Derek TR 9:30 AM 10:50 AM

The American War in Vietnam was a controversial time in the United States. While soldiers were entrenched in a deadly war in Vietnam, the population at home was torn apart in their views on the war. In this class we approach the conflict through the words of those actively involved, with one novel by an American solider and one by a North Vietnamese soldier. In between we read many smaller excerpts from other writers, discuss different viewpoints, write responses to specific questions, and research and write other papers.

113.10 Funny You Should Ask
Vissers, CarlaTR 9:30 AM 10:50 AM

The great Albert Einstein once described himself as someone with “no special talents . . . only passionately curious.” And Eleanor Roosevelt claimed that “at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity."

In this course we’ll explore exploration and question questioning. What role does curiosity play in our modern lives? Are there such things as “good” curiosity and “bad” curiosity? Why do some people seem more naturally curious than others?

You’ll read a fair amount in this class, but you’ll write even more, including journal entries, in-class response to prompts, and five essays of various lengths and rhetorical purposes, mostly on topics of your own choosing. At least three of the essays will require significant research, and all five will go through a process that entails drafting and revising in a workshop setting.

113.11 Seminar in Academic Writing
Cole,Ernest TR 9:30 AM 10:50 AM

This course will orient you to the world of expository writing and will provide a solid preparation for the written assignments you will encounter throughout your course work at Hope College. Our work together will emphasize writing as a process and it will focus on exploring, planning, and organization of complex ideas, editing and revising of drafts, and developing writing skills through effective means of organization, support and justification of ideas. As such, students will read intellectually intriguing essays, engage in writing workshops that focus on developing a clear and coherent expository style of writing, craft individual and critical responses, construct unified and coherent paragraphs, and contribute to the dialogue that about writing that would emerge from our classroom responses. By the end of the semester, you should have generated at least 28 pages of polished prose.

113.12 Perception of Power and Difference
Cho,David TR 12:00 PM 1:20 PM

This section of English 113 will be focusing on the over-arching theme of differing "Theories of Perception, Power, and Difference." Along with examining various issues in Composition and Rhetoric, to help prepare us for writing academic essays, we will also be looking at essays written by individuals like John Berger, Mary Louise Pratt, and Michel Foucault, respectively, to give us a very broad and challenging range of ideas, definitions, terms, to grapple with intellectually, and for their many applications to other academic and "real-life" contexts. These essays can be found in Gail Stygall's Reading Context. Also, in light of Hope College's commitment to researching and teaching on issues of culture, diversity, and race, (Phelps Scholars Program, IDS Courses, Mission Statement), we will also use our essays as a foundation for us to help in considering issues of race, ethnicity, and difference, using Beverly Daniel Tatum's somewhat oxymoronic title, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting in the Cafeteria Together?, along with a novel, John Okada's No-No Boy, which fictionally delves into a very non-heralded portion of American history and letters, namely the "internment" of Japanese Americans across the West Coast, during WWII and afterwards.

113.13 and .16 Rethinking Health
Douglas,Kim TR 1:30 PM 3:20 PM and TR 3:30 PM 5:20 PM

One out of three children born in the year 2000 and after is expected to have diabetes. 70 per cent of 12-year-olds have the beginning stages of hardening of the arteries. Half of all men and one-third of all women are diagnosed with cancer at some time in their life. The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet suffers from what experts label as “diseases of affluence.” So, what can we do? If we have a genetic predisposition for a particular disease, can we make nutritional, exercise, and other lifestyle choices that reduce the chances of the expression of that gene? Everyday, new claims are made about all kinds of diets, fasting, juicing, and exercise that indicate we might even be able to reverse disease. How accurate are these claims? How do we know which claims to believe? How can we make scientifically-informed decisions to preserve our health?

Throughout the semester, we will investigate a topic that is featured in the news and drives many of the cultural and scientific debates of our day—from national concerns about the rise in obesity and food-related diseases like diabetes, to local issues like school lunch programs and farmers’ markets, to family matters like “What’s for dinner?” We will explore controversies around wellness to make educated and intelligent decisions about how to eat and maintain fitness levels so that we live healthy lives. Class activities will involve viewing relevant films, writing essays and conducting collaborative or individual research. Writing workshops and peer reviews will help us revise our essays in order to create a portfolio to showcase our own original writing.

113.14 Writing Workshop
Lewison,Mark TR 3:30 PM 4:50 PM

It takes practice and it takes patience to hone writing skills. In this workshop-oriented section of English 113, we explore your interests and experiences to develop a series of essays during the term. We also use several novels and the textbook Concise Guide to Writing as a baseline for our work together. Often, you will find, the writing process is not magic, it's mechanics -- plus a dash of inspiration. With the benefit of the instructor's longtime experience as a writer and editor in the workplace, you will learn about crafting communication for today's audiences, from on paper to online, and from the academic essay to the casual-yet-concise communication of websites and blogs.

113.15 Crichton's Jurassic Park
Smith,Richard TR 6:30 PM 8:20 PM

Like the movie? Want to read the book? In this course we'll read Jurassic Park and at least one other novel by Michael Crichton, and we'll see the film adaptations of them. We'll use the stories themselves as a way to generate topics for a series of essays; and we'll use novel/film comparison as the basis for a discussion of the sorts of things that control the process of revision. Students will have the opportunity to revise their papers throughout the semester (but not, I think, into cinematographic form).

113.317 Popular Culture
Schoon Tanis, Kathryn MW 3:00 PM 4:50 PM

What’s so popular about popular culture?

What is popular culture? What effect does mass media have on popular culture? What is so popular about popular culture? This is your chance to explore these questions and more: What makes Snooki popular? Are those Real Housewives real or not? Does Oprah’s book club count as literature? And, finally, what are your own tastes and sensibilities when it comes to engaging popular culture?

Using a variety of texts and genres, including various forms of mass media, this course will provide a platform to examine historic and current opinions of popular culture and mass media, taking into account the various factors that influence the creation and dissemination of popular texts. As we engage with the questions surrounding popular culture in class, you will also be honing your knowledge of, and skills in, expository writing. You will spend time drafting and revising writing, talking about your writing, examining the writing of other authors, writing creatively, sharing ideas, and thinking. After all, writing is popular too.