English 201 Sections

English 201 / For Students

Section Descriptions, Spring 2007

The descriptions on this page provide an overview of the sections being offered in the current semester. Descriptions of sections that have been offered in the past give an even broader view of the variety and depth of intellectual challenge that can be found in English 201. You can also browse sample syllabi. (please note that sections vary from semester to semester)

Writing Wrong-ish, Section 13
Instructor: Cindy Au

In this course, we will be examining some of our psychoses about writing and our identities as writers in an increasingly connected global and technological society. We'll consider the rules of writing as they've been passed down to us, how they've changed, and how we might be able to get around them, hopefully generating some interesting writing pieces as a result. This class is student centered, and most, if not all, ideas for essays will be self-generated.

Rhetorics of Network Culture, Section 7
Instructor: Scot Barnett

In recent decades, network theory has emerged as a novel and productive site of trans and interdisciplinary study. Bringing into conversation fields historically and epistemologically disconnected within the modern university—including the natural and biological sciences, computer science, cybernetics, social science, cultural studies, geography, urban planning, philosophy, film, and literature—network theory provides a unique interpretive lens through which to (re)examine, critique, and participate in today’s increasingly connected culture.

Though we will touch on some of network theory’s uses within and across the above mentioned disciplines, we will be most concerned in this course with the following question: what can network culture teach us about writing and rhetoric in the 21st century? As the production and distribution of information begins to exceed the limits of what we generally understand as language (e.g. linear alphabetic text), how we receive and interact with information changes as well. In this course, we will read a range of texts introducing and extending our understanding of network culture, along the way producing and experimenting with a number of writing/inscription technologies, including weblogs, webpages, and multimedia presentations. Our goal for this course, then, is two fold: 1) to identify and evaluate the rhetoric(s) of our emerging network culture, and 2) to produce digital and multimodal "texts" that acknowledge and work within (and beyond) these rhetorics. (Scot's course website.)

Seeking the Cause
, section 2
Instructor: Maria Bibbs

Info coming soon.

Section 14

Instructor: Rasha Diab

Info coming soon.

[Description of Rasha Diab's course from 2005-06. ]

Where We Are, section 5
Instructor: David Grant

This English 201 course explores the idea of “place” and places that are meaningful to us: Why do we like certain places? What makes places desirable? How do we represent certain places and what other kinds of cultural symbols are those representations indebted to? Like all 201 courses, this focus is designed to help you practice writing skills, including planning, drafting, revising, and proofreading. This section does so with an eye toward professional writing since many of you may be thinking more about writing as a job skill rather than as an academic exercise.

The bulk of your work will consist of a semester-long, self-directed, professional project on a place of your choosing. This involves a service learning component that requires 10 -15 hours of volunteer time. This is largely offset by non-scheduled class time in conferences, etc. You will write a proposal for the project, an in-class presentation on your proposal, and a mid-term progress report. All of these writings will be included in your summary portfolio of at least 25 pages of finished (not drafted) writing.

Writing New Media and Participatory Culture, section 3
Instructor: Rick Hunter

This section of English 201 will focus on computer technologies' social and ideological roles in the creation of texts. We will use various multimedia software to compose multimodal projects (texts) and consider how we define writing, in traditional print and new media, as a situated practice. Further, by working in multiple modes, we can compare how the materiality of a medium affects the message communicated.

In addition, we will look at issues regarding participatory culture, relying heavily on the work of Henry Jenkins (Director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies graduate program) as a lens for our research and discussions regarding appropriation, sampling, and intellectual property & copyright; fan production, knowledge communities, & collective intelligence; and transmedia storytelling and contemporary mass media marketing techniques.(Rick's course website)

Instructor: Tim Laquintano, section 1

Info coming soon.

James Baldwin and the Ethcs of Imagination: The Development of a Writer's Voice, section 9
Instructur: Leah Mirakhor

This course will focus predominately on the writings of James Baldwin, with intermittent essays by other writers on writing. Ethical discussions of our humanity, in academic circles, are often dismissed or relegated to the abstract, the utopian, or to the relativistic. But Baldwin was committed to prodding at these questions of our collective humanity through his writing. For Baldwin, writing and the writer, always have a message. His sense of responsibility to questions surrounding our humanity is at the core of “What writing is.” Our task will be to examine, poke, prod, and wrestle with some of these questions: How do we remain true to our experiences and still not limited by them? What gates might this writing unlock? Basically, What can our writing do? What places might we take it? And, What relationships might this sort of writing force us to have with the world we live in? Baldwin experimented with various genres. Using his experience as a model, we will also move attempt to explore some of these questions through different forms of writing: journals, essays, discourse analysis, ethnography, creative non-fiction, and letters. Additionally, we will read various creative non-fiction stories, writers on writing, and Iranian-French writer/artist, Marjane Satrapi’s bestselling comic book memoir, Persepolis.

Writing on the Walls: The Politics of Literacy in a Multicultural Society, section 8
Instructor: Mira Shimabukuro

What does it mean to be literate in a multicultural society? As the class focus, this question will guide our activities as we search for possible answers by 1) reflecting on our varied experiences with language; 2) exploring the diverse histories of your linguistic inheritances and affiliations; 3) debating the social implications of linguistic segregation; and 4) contemplating the limitations of language itself when it comes to public expression and communication. In order to do this, you will be asked to enter into conversation with a multi-ethnic, and multi-faceted, range of perspectives on contemporary social, cultural, and political issues that impact the choices we make when we sit down to write. As we consider these choices and their implications, you will be asked to do both formal and informal writing, give feedback in both full class and small group workshops, one-on-one conferences, and multiple revisions. By the end of the semester, you should be able to fashion a tentative and qualified answer to the course question, and articulate how you might enable yourself to continue “bettering” the writing you do in this diverse and dynamic society where we all must find ways to write on, through, and past the walls of our lives.

Cultural Locations of Writing and Reading: Producing and Consuming Texts in Society, section 4
Instructor: Katy Southern

Every day, each of us reads and writes. The routine, normalized nature of these activities often renders their power invisible, eliding the discursive and rhetorical power of language production and consumption. In this section of English 201, we will explore the ways literate practices are part of our personal histories, cultural histories, present lives, and future.

Our course readings will cover the following categories: personal literacy narratives, the power and politics of literacy, authorship and audiences, the materiality of reading and writing, and technologies of reading and writing.

In your writing, you will create a narrative of your own literacy practices, perform a rhetorical analysis, conduct a collaborative ethnographic report of literate practice, and develop your own project related to writing studies, reading, literature, rhetoric, print culture, technology and media studies, or another related subject.

Section 10
Instructor: Christine Stephenson

Info coming soon.

(Syllabus taught by Christine Stephenson, fall 2005)

Medical Ethics: Practices, Procedures, Famous Cases: Thinking and Writing the Medical
section 12
Instructor: Christopher Syrnyk

From Mr. Syrnyk's letter to his students this semester:

As we make our way through this semester, I will ask each of you to think of ways to make sense of how this course works for you as a writer, while attempting to improve as a writer: consider this course your own intellectual journey—in writing. As we go, you might think, for example, what would make everything better fit together: all of the writing assignments, the different skills and strategies, for we will focus on different aspects of Style, as it were, and these elements of style, if fortunate, will make their way into your writing this semester. You might likewise consider how this class and our ideas connect to other classes you are taking, your major, or future profession: how each part of your education informs your experiences as a lifelong learner, and how all learning experiences connect you to the world outside this class. Lastly, you might think about your own experiences with writing, or “English classes,” such that what you found troubling in the past, you could work toward understanding now, through reflective writing practices, through revision, more thoroughly, more fluidly, in the present.

Section 11
Instructor: Danielle Warthen

As a class we will be looking at media and how we, as an audience, receive the messages that the media delivers to us. The goal of this course is to move outside of our “comfort zone” – to look at media through a different lens to see how media as we know it today is formed and how, subsequently, our own opinions are shaped. We, as a class, will learn how to delve deeper into the messages that we are inundated with on a daily basis (be it from TV, newspapers, magazines, the internet, radio, etc.) in order to analyze why and how communication is distributed in this country and what the implications of US media are on the consciousness of the “American public.” We will examine how we read media in order to examine how it is that we write ourselves. Your writing, then, will focus on examining how it is that you are placed and place yourself within the media of the nation and the world.

Professor Michael Bernard-Donals - Chair
Professor Jane Zuengler - Associate Chair
Professor Jacques Lezra - Director of Graduate Studies
Professor Sherry Reames - Undergraduate Director