Academics Clear Writing

Gloria Biamonte
Kyhl Lyndgaard
John Sheehy

Writing well is an essential skill for a Marlboro education. Most courses in most areas require some writing, and all Plans of Concentration require a substantial body of academic writing, that is, writing characterized by clear exposition, careful analysis and cogent argument. Moreover, the ability to write clearly helps us to see more clearly and to think more clearly, not only at Marlboro, but throughout our lives.

The Writing Seminars are designed primarily to develop skills in academic writing, everything from correct sentence structure and paragraph organization to how to delineate problems and questions and then to articulate a coherent argument in response, as well as how to make constructive and properly credited use of primary and secondary sources. Preference for enrollment therefore goes to those who have not yet passed the Clear Writing Requirement, but the seminars are also open to, and well-suited for, those who have passed the requirement but who wish further to strengthen their writing. The courses prepare students for writing across the curriculum, in all areas and disciplines, but they may also serve as introductions to the material or the issues covered in the readings.

WRITING SEMINAR: EXPLORING THE NEW JOURNALISM (HUM1392)
In this course we will read and practice journalism, both as it is traditionally considered—the essay as it has been defined in magazines like The New Yorker, or the expository report as practiced in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal—and in the many variations on traditional journalism that have emerged since the 1960s: gonzo print journalism, various forms of online writing, radio essays, etc. Our goal will be to read (and listen to, in the case of radio essays) as much interesting and provocative journalistic writing as possible, by writers like H.L. Mencken, Jonathan Raban, Hunter S. Thompson, Seymour Hersch, Annie Proulx, Jon Krakauer, Terry Tempest Williams and others. Our goal, in the end, will not be so much to arrive at a narrow definition of journalism as to expand our own writing practice to include a range of styles, voices and modes of presentation. And, as this will be a writing seminar, we will also write a lot, about the journalism we have read, and in journalistic pieces of our own. Discussion of the course texts will alternate with writing conferences, workshops and work on grammar, style and structure. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: VIOLENCE OF HORSES: THE MYTH & REALITY OF THE WESTERN (HUM1391)
“I am ready to die out of nature and be born again in this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. American culture—especially since the end of the Civil War—has always been fascinated with the “western frontier,” a mythical space that has been associated with a (usually violent) psychological and social transformation. The frontier, Frederick Jackson Turner famously announced in 1893, is the crucible wherein Europeans are transformed into that new thing called American. Since Turner made this announcement, the Western—as a literary genre, as a visual iconography, as a political idea—has been one of the dominant frameworks of America’s definition of itself: in hundreds of novels, and in hundreds more films made in the last century, the transformative experience of the West has been an explicit or implicit motif. In this class we will explore the origins of that myth through an examination of some of the ways it has been articulated in literature and film. We will read a number of the older works that helped to define the genre—Turner’s Significance of the Frontier in American History and Owen Wister’s The Virginian—along with various modern renditions by Norman Maclean (A River Runs Through It) Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony) and Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian), among others. We will also watch and discuss a series of classic Western films, including Shane, High Noon, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Unforgiven and others. Our goal throughout will be to explore the various ways the myth of the West has been mobilized, from generation to generation, to speak to changing American concerns and social tensions, and to try to understand, if we can, the way our myth of ourselves inflects, and is inflected by, our reality. Because this is a writing seminar, we will also write a lot about all of this: at least three major papers, along with a research paper. Discussions of the class texts will alternate with writing conferences and work on style, grammar, rhetoric and structure. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: IMAGINING THE PAST: HISTORY AND THE NOVEL (HUM 911)
Much fiction takes as its starting point a particular historical moment, and from there evolves into an imaginative re-creation/retrieval of the past. In doing so, authors create dialogues with the past—dialogues that transgress the boundaries of time. In this writing seminar, we will be reading novels that highlight this intersection of history and fiction, memory and imagination, fact and invention. Readings will include: Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother (based upon the 1993 murder of Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl in Guguletu, South Africa), E. L. Doctorow’s Book of Daniel (a rendering of the execution of two American Communists in the 1950s, and their son’s attempt to understand their fate during the radical renaissance of the 1960s), Marcie Hershman’s Tales of the Master Race (an exploration of an imaginary German town during the crucial years of the Third Reich), Geoff Ryman’s Was (a meditation on the lives of several characters entwined by The Wizard of Oz, both the novel and the film), and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (a fusing of history, fairy tale and metafiction that explores the power of imagination to link past, present and future). We will be writing about all of this in several formats: in-class exercises and shorter assignments leading up to two 4-6 page papers and one 8-10 page research paper. Peer response workshops, writing conferences and in-class work on style, revision and editing will alternate with our class discussion of the texts. . Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: PICTURING OURSELVES: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND PHOTOGRAPHY (HUM 1019)
Existing on the border between fact and fiction, autobiographical writing often conceals as much as it reveals. In this writing seminar, we will read autobiographies that create a self in language and in photographs, considering how text and image interact and reflect on one another. Within the context of autobiography, we will explore the point at which photographs enter the text and examine how they act to undercut or reinforce the written narrative. Beginning with two reflections on photography, Susan Sontag’s On Photography and Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, we will then read autobiographies in which words and images work together: Sandra Ortiz Taylor’s Imaginary Parents, Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, N. Scott Momaday’s Names and Wright Morris’s Home Place. Time permitting, we will close our readings with Penelope Lively’s novel, The Photograph. We will be writing about all of this in several formats: in-class exercises and shorter assignments leading up to one 8-10 page research paper. Peer response workshops, writing conferences and in-class work on style, revision and editing will alternate with our class discussion of the texts. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: FEAR ITSELF: POLICY, PARANOIA & AMERICAN CULTURE (HUM1424)
Consider a strange discrepancy. Between 1989 and 2005, nearly every statistical measure suggested that life for the average American was unprecedentedly safe from physical threat, and getting safer: violent crime rates in almost every category declined steadily throughout the ’90s and into the new millennium. Yet during the same period, polls measuring the perceived crime rate consistently showed the same thing: a persistent fear, in almost every segment of the population, that crime was on the rise. Perhaps in response to this fear and others like it, communities across the U.S. participated in the construction of the largest prison system the world has ever seen. At the same time, in response to other perceived threats—those posed by, for example, global terrorism, drugs and illegal immigrants—American lawmakers have challenged long-held notions of civil liberty as they, and we, have restructured the physical and conceptual architecture of American life. Americans have never been more closely watched nor more thoroughly protected: and yet year after year we report feeling less safe. In this course we will examine some of the more pervasive fears in American culture and the policies and social architectures those fears have helped shape. Along the way, we will consider the war on terror and the war on drugs; we will think about the ways immigrants may have come to embody our fear of the outsider, the young our fear of the insider. We will operate largely by considering, and conceptualizing, case studies, but throughout we will ask, again and again, the same questions: What are we afraid of? Why are we afraid? And what, if anything, should we do about it? And, as in any writing seminar, we will write about all of it: expect at least three major papers, culminating in a research paper of your own design, and weekly shorter writing assignments. Expect to read a lot and to write more. Discussions of the text will alternate with work on writing: conferences, writing workshops and discussions of style and structure. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES (HUM852)
This will be a “linked” writing course—that is, the course will be linked to three other classes in the curriculum, and you will draw your ideas, your reading and your paper topics from one of those classes. In the writing seminar, we’ll focus on the writing itself, and we’ll cover every aspect of it, from idea to structure to grammar. The course will involve a great deal of formal and informal writing, and lots of in-class and out-of-class exercises designed to move you toward your larger papers. The writing work we do in class will alternate with work on the papers you do for your other classes: you’ll take every paper through a series of drafts before submitting it in the linked class, and we’ll spend time doing peer reviews, workshopping drafts and working one-on-one in writing conferences. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: COMICS OF THE SELF: READING GRAPHIC MEMOIRS (HUM1254)
“When I was a little kid,” writes Scott McCloud, “I knew exactly what comics were. Comics were those bright colorful magazines filled with bad art, stupid stories and guys in tights.” With these words, McCloud launches into his exploration of the art-form of comics—a form whose potential and “hidden power” we will explore in this writing seminar. Using McCloud’s Understanding Comics as our starting point, we will examine how several contemporary graphic artists—Art Spiegelman, David B., Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, Howard Cruse, Ann Marie Fleming and others—use words, pictures and narratives to tell stories of their lives. We will be writing about all of this in several formats: in-class exercises and shorter assignments leading up to one 8-10 page research paper. Peer response workshops, writing conferences, and in-class work on style, revision and editing will alternate with our class discussion of the texts. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: CRIME & PUNISHMENT (HUM1279)
Great Britain’s incarceration rate is quite high by world standards: 142 of every 100,000 Britons are currently in jail. That number in China is 118, in France 91, in Japan 58 and in Nigeria 31. The United States, by contrast, currently imprisons 744 of every 100,000 citizens. In other words, one out of every 135 Americans is currently serving time in jail or prison. Nearly half of the resulting prison population—more than two million people—is African American, while African Americans make up only 12 percent of the U.S. population. According to a United Nations study, in the world outside the United States there are currently 12 minors serving life sentences in prison. In the U.S., there are more than 2,000. In this seminar we will examine the reality of crime and punishment in the United States. We will begin by studying cases, to build a sense of the principles and practices behind criminal law and criminal sentencing. Then we will move to the deeper level: we will examine the reasoning for and against the death penalty as it is practiced in the United States, and we will see how legal theory has worked itself out in Supreme Court decisions on death penalty cases. We will then examine the larger system itself, asking a simple question: how did the U.S. find itself with the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world? How are we to judge the costs and benefits of American crime and punishment? And, as in any writing seminar, we will write about all of it: expect at least three major papers, culminating in a research paper, and weekly shorter writing assignments. Discussions of the text will alternate with work on writing: conferences, writing workshops and discussions of style and structure. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: THE ART OF THE ESSAY (HUM1217)
Virginia Woolf describes the essay as a form that “must lap us about and draw its curtain across the world.” But what, she questions, “can the essayist use in these short length of prose to sting us awake and fix us in a trance which is not sleep but rather an intensification of life—a basking, with every faculty alert, in the sun of pleasure?” Her answer is a simple one: “He must know—that is the first essential—how to write.” From David Quamman’s “The Face of the Spider” to Scott Russell Sanders’ “Looking at Women” to Wallace Stegner’s “The Town Dump” to Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” to George Saunders’ “The Braindead Megaphone,” we will explore how contemporary essayists—in personal essays, nature writing, literary journalism and science writing—look closely at everyday objects, practices and experiences. We will analyze what makes these essayists effective, entertaining and enlightening. And, of course, we will be writing about all of this in several formats: in-class exercises and shorter assignments leading up to two 4-6 page papers and one 8-10 page research paper. Peer response workshops, writing conferences and in-class work on style, revision and editing will alternate with our class discussion of the essays. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: WAR & RUMORS OF WAR (HUM1057)
The 20th century was the bloodiest century in history: for the first time technology made it possible for armed forces to engage in routine attacks on civilian populations, to kill indiscriminately and from a distance, to destroy entire cities from the air, to threaten the annihilation of humanity itself. Our experiences with war in the last century have set the stage for the wars we fight today; more than that, our responses to today’s conflicts are predicated on ways of thinking about war, and about human conflict generally, that developed in the preceding century. In this course we will attempt to understand the wars of the last century, and the ways of thinking they have engendered, by looking at various cultural reactions to them: these will include books like Heller’s Catch-22, Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel, James Crumley’s One to Count Cadence, films like The Best Days of Our Lives, Full Metal Jacket and Breaker Morant and more. And, of course, we will write about all of it: expect at least three major papers, culminating in a research paper, and weekly shorter writing assignments. Discussions of the text will alternate with work on writing: conferences, writing workshops and discussions of style and structure. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: WAYS OF TELLING—READING WRITTEN & VISUAL NARRATIVES (HUM1394)
“The mind is its own place, the visible world is another, and visual and verbal images sustain the dialogue between them,” write Wright Morris. When we think about narratives, we most often think of prose—words that tell a story. But what happens when writers—novelists, memoirists and nonfiction writers—integrate images into their narratives— photographs archived in history museums, personal photographs or evocative graphics that merge with the written text? In this writing seminar, we will investigate the elusive dialogue between words and visual images, and consider how we “read” or interpret both prose and pictures. Beginning with Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carry, a genre-bending autobiographical novel that explores the convergence of memory and imagination, we will explore Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Close & Incredibly Loud (a child’s wild vision and wild hurt in confronting the cataclysm of 9/11), Wright Morris’s memoir The Home Place (a photo-text that takes us back to a single day in Wright’s boyhood home in Nebraska) and John Berger and Jean Mohr’s first experimental collaboration The Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor (a deeply moving portrait of a doctor working in an impoverished English rural community). We will consider the point at which photographs enter the texts and examine how they act to undercut, reinforce and/or expand the written narrative. The writing will take several formats: in-class exercises and shorter assignments leading up to two 4-6 page papers and one 8-10 page research paper. Through lots of practice in writing, critiquing and rewriting, we will work toward two of our main goals—to help you find a writing process that works well for you and to allow you to experience the value of language as a tool for thinking deeply and clearly. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: WRITING THE FIRST PEOPLE (HUM803)
In this seminar we’ll be writing about the contemporary Native American experience in North America, and we’ll ask ourselves two questions: first, what does it mean to be “native?” Second, how does the history of conflict between European settlers and indigenous peoples play itself out in contemporary Native American poetry and prose? The reading for the course will range broadly, but will focus mainly on fairly recent work: it will include Dan Cushman’s Stay Away, Joe, James Welch’s Fools Crow and Winter in the Blood, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Michael Dorris’s Yellow Raft on Blue Water, as well as selected poetry by Silko, Richard Hugo and others. Secondary reading will include selections from Gloria Anzaldua, Jane Thompkins and Richard Rodriquez. Lots of writing and talk of writing: three 5-6 page papers and a research paper at the end; discussions of the texts will alternate between paper workshops, work on style and structure and writing conferences with the instructor. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: CAPTIVITY AND FREEDOM (HUM1474)
Have you ever found yourself drawn into a story of abduction and the return of the victim to society? The captivity narrative is a surprisingly flexible, durable and popular genre. At their core, these are gripping stories of survival that also challenge and create our culture and identity. Traditionally thought of as nonfictional accounts of the capture of a white person by Native Americans on the frontier, ending with their redemption, this class will examine many ways to write about and on captivity. The possibility and threat of border-crossing is central to these stories, and issues of race and gender are always present. Several early American captivity narratives will be read, but we will also examine more recent captivity narratives that center on alien abduction, a P.O.W. story and more. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4

WRITING SEMINAR: INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE WRITING (HUM1475)
How can non-specialists make sense of today’s revolutionary advances in technology, mobility, food production and more? In this class, we’ll examine how popular science writers such as Michael Pollan and Elizabeth Kolbert “translate” technical information into stories that anybody can understand and find compelling. We’ll look at a variety of texts that repackage scientific knowledge into accessible, jargon-free narratives, practicing our own hand along the way. Our class is centered on the goal of clear communication driven by curiosity. Prerequisite: None Introductory | Credits: 4