Sections
WRI 101 K: M-W-F | 10:30 – 11:20 | Chambers 1086.
WRI 101 L: M-W-F | 11:30 – 12:20 | Chambers 1086.
As an experiment in writing communities, both sections with be supported by this single WordPress site. While there may be differences in pacing and attention, both sections should expect to follow the same schedule of readings, discussions, and activities. More importantly, both sections will host their blog responses and Writing Projects on this site. All writing will be open to either section, and you might consider making it a practice of reviewing not only the written responses of your immediate classmates, but also those of your virtual peers. Our community of writers will therefore be heterogeneous in nature, and as the semester unfolds, we may experiment more directly with the opportunities afforded by this platform (e.g. at some point in the semester we may undertake a peer-review of Writing Projects across the sections).
Course Requirements
This course requires that you attend our sessions regularly and actively. You must complete the reading, writing, and listening activities according to our schedule, and come to class prepared to thoughtfully engage not only with the texts themselves but also with the ideas, questions, and comments of your peers. Our classes will be conversation and multi-modal (we will discuss, read, write, and listen together). Classes will therefore require a high degree of commitment on your part. Students will earn the highest grades by participating fully in the class, doing all of the assignments, and showing consistent engagement with our texts and the contributions of others. The success of the course and your successful performance in it depend upon your participation and contributions. Assessment includes frequent low-stakes writing, longer formal projects, occasional individual and group presentations, and various experiential activities (details TBD). If I feel there is a need to test our reading, I will add reading quizzes to the assessment, but at the outset I do not expect this to be necessary.
WRI Statement
In this course, students will complete numerous low-stakes writing assignments (e.g. blog posts, Response Papers, discussion outlines, etc.), as well as four major writing projects. Because learning to write well (in traditional as well as emergent modalities) is an on-going and collaborative process, all major writing assignments (and many of the smaller low-stakes assignments as well) will be subject to a series of process drafts and peer revision. In the first project, students will begin writing about sound and voice as objects of critical study. The second project asks students to analyze the function of sound and/or voice in a specific literary, cultural, artistic, or cinematic text, and the third project asks students to explore issues of acoustic ecology. The fourth project asks students to apply sound-studies discourse to texts and/or conditions of the contemporary social and technological moment.
Writing in this course will occur on three distinct but related “tiers”: I will ask you to compose large, academically oriented projects (the “top” tier), but I will also ask you to complete a series of smaller, less formal “Responses” (the “middle” tier) and to respond to various note-taking prompts in class and as well as on your own time (the “bottom” tier). The top tier will be graded on the letter-scale; the middle tier will be graded on a scale of 0 – 10 (10 being the highest), and the lowest tier will be graded as part of your Participation and Attendance. I expect that these various forms of writing will inter-relate and interpenetrate—that the note-taking, close-reading, and close-listening skills that you acquire in the lowest tier will inform your writing in the middle tier, and that both tiers will influence the larger projects assigned throughout the semester. I will ask you to write at these various levels across the semester (sometimes concurrently), and will make clear my expectations for each.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism, the act of presenting another person’s work as your own, is a serious academic offense. This includes copying someone else’s paper, or buying one off the Internet. This course adheres to the policies and guidelines set forth in the Davidson College Honor Code, which you all have signed as a condition of your matriculation. I believe there is a difference between attribution (giving credit to other writers and thinkers when you either rely upon them or use their work in your own writing) and citation (the actual mechanics of working with other sources in your writing). In my experience, students are often more nervous about citation; they worry about punctuation marks and bibliographical formatting. These mechanics are important, but if they are “the letter of the law” when it comes to academic integrity, then attribution is its spirit. In short, you participate in a community of academic writers and in a field of discourse by practicing good-faith attribution. Errors in mechanics can be researched and corrected; errors in attribution are more egregious and will correspondingly be more severely penalized. And as always, ask before you submit a project if you have questions about any or all of the above.
Accommodations
The college welcomes requests for accommodations related to disability and will grant those that are determined to be reasonable and maintain the integrity of a program or curriculum. To make such a request or to begin a conversation about a possible request, please contact the Office of Academic Access and Disability Resources, which is located in the Center for Teaching and Learning in the E.H. Little Library: Beth Bleil, Director, bebleil@davidson.edu, 704-894-2129; or Alysen Beaty, Assistant Director, albeaty@davidson.edu, 704-894-2939. It is best to submit accommodation requests within the drop/add period; however, requests can be made at any time in the semester. Please keep in mind that accommodations are not retroactive.
Learning Outcomes
The goals of the Writing Program and the learning outcomes of WRI 101 include:
- Reading texts closely and critically for analytic and rhetorical purposes;
- Making fair and effective use of the work of others;
- Drafting and revising arguments; and
- Drawing upon multimodal and archival resources (visual, auditory, textual, digital) to serve specific rhetorical goals.
For further detail about these goals, please visit the Writing Program website.
