—Spring 2009—
WRT 205
Critical Inquiry and Research: People of Faith and Social Activism
T J Geiger Section 202
005 HBC HBC 204
Phone: 443-1091 Tues/Thurs: 8:00-9:20
tgeigeri@syr.edu--(preferred mode of contact) Office Hours: Wed 2:30-3:30
If I could write I’d set all the words free to follow you/Tell you wonder, tell you secrets and solitude…
—Sam Phillips “If I Could Write”
Anyone writing honestly creates and solves new problems every time he sits down at his desk. Nobody can solve them for him in advance and no teacher had better try.
—Wallace Stegner
Text of pleasure: the text that contents, fills, grants euphoria; the text that comes from culture and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading. Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain boredom), unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.
—Roland Barthes The Pleasure of the Text
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
—Kenneth Burke The Philosophy of Literary Form
Course Description
Welcome to Writing 205, Syracuse University’s sophomore level writing course focusing on research as critical inquiry. At its best, research affords us an opportunity to experience the “bliss” of Barthes’ quote—to simultaneously acknowledge the limits of our understanding (maybe accompanied by shame or trauma or anxiety), and to seize the opportunity to complicate and enrich our understanding. And at the same moment that research brings us up against voices, discourses, ideas and worldviews that are strange and seemingly incomprehensible, it also provides us with the opportunity and inspiration to work with and within new discourses, ideas and worldviews.
This course recognizes that we all now compose in an informationally rich environment, so it’s extremely important that we grow comfortable with (and adept at) asking researchable questions and locating, evaluating and writing research. Good questions, rather than making us vulnerable or revealing our ignorance, trigger active engagement with ideas and issues and concepts. Our good questions will inspire us to gather more information, so we will learn to access information on the web, in databases, at the library, and through primary research such as interviews and surveys. We will evaluate our sources knowledgeably and critically. We will locate ourselves in the middle of complex and competing claims, and produce texts in various genres (white papers, proposals, reports, arguments, analyses, explanations, summaries, “samples,” etc.) that advance our collective understanding of these claims and arguments.
Course Goals
Goal #1: Students will compose texts that investigate a focused topic of inquiry that raises issues of diversity and community and that offers multiple points of entry based on their interest and expertise.
Goal #2: Students will develop a working knowledge of strategies and genres of critical research.
Goal #3: Students will learn critical techniques of reading through engagement with research-based texts.
Course Inquiry
Some of the voices participating actively in the contemporary Burkean conversation about what policies governments should adopt and what values a society should hold come from communities of faith. Regardless of what political or religious affiliations a person claims, if any at all, it seems unlikely that anyone would deny that religious traditions function as powerful social forces throughout history and in the contemporary moment.
Some questions we will consider include: How do religious motivations fuel or participate in social change movements and activism? What have been the contributions of religious communities and organizations to civic society and governmental policy? How have diverse faith communities answered the question, “What does it mean to work for justice from our religious perspective?” How does religious identity intersect with (and/or diverge from) race, class, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, and ability to construct the grounds for social change movements? How does religion interact with other socially derived and historically situated motivations for activism? Who benefits from such activism? What does it mean to think of religion as a “disruptive” social force?
During the first four weeks, we will dive right into some of the messy, confusing, and always interesting intersections of faith and social change activism. Additionally, we will use a “spotlight approach” designed to let us see how scholars employ a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. These first few weeks will also allow us to establish a common vocabulary for scholarly discussion about these important and sensitive intersections, identify research topics, and generate research questions for ourselves. From this intense and early work, you will write an inquiry essay in which you begin to carve out space for yourself in this discussion.
Here are some questions we can begin to explore during the first four weeks: What does it reveal about presidential politics that two major uproars of Barak Obama’s public life center around his association with pastors Jeremiah Wright (a black liberationist) and Rick Warren (a social justice-minded evangelical)? How is it that the Islamic injunctions prohibiting same-sex relations in Iran actually end up legitimizing and enabling transgender subcultures as well as sexual reassignment surgery? What does the desire of subjects in the documentary Trembling Before G-d to be both frum (Orthodox Jews) and gay and lesbian reveal about how culture, sexuality, and identity intersect? How does Soulforce (a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Christian organization) participate in the legacies of the Civil Rights movement by conducting Equality Rides that entail civil disobedience at Christian colleges and universities that expel LGBT students who come out?
Later in the course each of you will write an individual sustained research essay analyzing a religiously motivated social change movement or a social change movement that draws significantly on religious frames to achieve its goals; you will choose the specific focus of this essay. In the final unit you will collaborate with several peers on a multi-media sampling and juxtaposing project. Throughout the semester we will practice and refine research strategies, analyze complex concepts, read information rhetorically, write informal and formal texts, work collaboratively, assess our writing, and keep a research portfolio.
None of you will be doing this work alone or in isolation. I will guide and prompt and assist you through every phase of the course, and your classmates will share their ideas and experiences and expertises as well.
Course Texts and Materials
(the handbook is available in the SUB and Follett’s Orange Bookstore)
Blakesley & Hoogeveen. The brief Thomson Handbook
Christian Smith. Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movement Activism
Various pdfs available on blackboard
approximately $20 for copy expenses over the course of the semester
I will mount course materials on blackboard—http://blackboard.syr.edu/—with great regularity. You will need your Mymail ID and password to access our course and I ask that you check your syr account at least once a day, since it is the only email address blackboard provides me to communicate with you.
Grading
| Unit 1: Entering (20%) Portfolio (10%) | An essay of 6 pages in which you enter the conversation initiated by course readings, and present a focused and critical analytical review of the texts. |
| Unit 2: Sustained Research Essay (30%) Portfolio (10%) | A 10-12 page research essay explaining and analyzing a particular subculture, making use of the texts and theories of unit 1, but building on that foundation through further primary and secondary research. Unit work includes an annotated bibliography. |
| Unit 3: Collaborative Research Project (30%) | A multi-media group project in which group members create a sustained analysis or argument. Unit work includes collaborative written product as well as a group presentation. |
Attendance & Participation
Attendance and active engagement in the course is critical. Your absences will affect your classmates’ work as well as your own. All the work is designed to develop your research skills and will feed directly into your writing.
Each unit calendar will outline the following weeks’ assignments, but we may shift assignments around or change direction occasionally as it seems appropriate, necessary, or interesting. If you must miss a class, you are responsible for making up the work and getting yourself back on track. Please realize that you cannot make up class time.
If you miss the equivalent of three weeks of classes or more without any official documented excuse you will not be able to pass the course. I don’t anticipate any of you will be in that position, however, so let’s all agree to do the work, come to class, learn a lot, and make the course a meaningful experience.
Communication with Instructor
I reserve 9-10am MWF, 2-3pm TTh, and 1-2pm Sat for responding to student emails and phone calls. However, I’m not likely to get phone messages late on Friday until Monday morning. While I may check email on Sunday, do not expect a response to emails sent at or after 2pm on Saturday until Monday between 9-10am.
Student Writing
All texts written in this course are generally public. You may be asked to share them with a peer, the class, or with me. It is understood that registration for and continued enrollment in this course constitutes permission by the student for the instructor to use any work resulting from the course.
But even more importantly, SAVE ALL YOUR WORK. It is all meaningful. Date and save every text—formal and informal—including notes, free writes, brainstorms, drafts, etc. You will have a difficult time properly citing research, assessing your work, and writing a final bibliographic essay you haven’t saved all of your writing.
Commenting on Student Work
You will engage in great deal of formal and informal writing over the course of the semester. How I respond to this work will differ depending on whether it’s a freewrite or an annotated bibliography or a brief synthesis paper or a unit essay. Sometimes I will return short assignments with a sentence or two at the end, asking a question or responding with a comment about the ideas in the piece and their development. Sometimes I may return them with no comments, but with a check on top and will use your writing to inform how we discuss something in the next class meeting (and I try to make the connections between your writing and how they shape our class agenda clear). In endnotes to rough and final drafts of your essays, after identifying those elements of your work that are strong and praiseworthy or show promise, I will call your attention to areas where you could extend or complicate your thinking and development as well as issue you challenges to consider for future writing. Sentence level, usage, and grammar concerns do matter, and we will work on those issues—but they are concerns for late in the writing process. I’m not in the business of “fixing” papers because your writing is not broken.
Statement on Plagiarism
The academic community requires ethical behavior from all of its participants. For writers, this means that the work we claim as ours must truly be ours. At the same time, we are not always expected to come up with new ideas; we often build our thinking on the ideas of others. We are expected, however, to credit others with their contributions and to clearly indicate the boundaries of our own thinking. In cases where academic dishonesty is detected (the fraudulent submission of another's work, in whole or part, as your own), you may be subject to a failing grade for the project or the course, and in the worst case, to academic probation or expulsion. For a more detailed description of the guidelines for adhering to academic honesty in the College of Arts and Sciences, go to http://www-hl.syr.edu/cas-pages/PromAcademicHonesty.htm
Special Needs
If you require consideration for a special need or circumstance of any kind, please see me. And I invite all of you to make use of the Writing Program’s Writing Center on the ground floor of HBC; it is staffed by consultants with experience in a range of learning situations.
Calendars
WRT 205: Unit 1 Calendar
HO=Handout (print ALL handouts and bring them to class with you for the day you are to have read them)
DR=Disruptive Religion
Note: If there is no instruction to post a writing activity in the Homework sections to Blackboard or to submit it via Digital Dropbox, print it out and bring it to class.
WEEK ONE:
Tues, 1/13 Introductions. Go over syllabus. Groups read and discuss Smith on the study of disruptive religion. Whole group discussion. Model active reading and asking good questions.
HOMEWORK:
o Read and Annotate “Correcting a Curious Neglect” (DR). This reading will help establish pressing and guiding issues for course inquiry. Read not for mastery or facts, but inventively for questions and ideas. To that end, choose a key quote or passage (two or three sentences) from “Correcting” that you would like our class to discuss. Choose one organization mentioned in the article that piqued your interest to do “quick-n-dirty” research on — go to the organization website or do an internet search or go to library database you’re familiar with. Write one page worth of material about what you find. Be prepared to present your findings at the next class. Skim the webpages about Soulforce and watch the clips linked to in announcements on Blackboard. These items will provide context and background for one form of gay Christian activism and will prepare you for additional reading before class next week. Identify four binaries you see at work in the Soulforce clips. Choose one of those binaries to freewrite about for ten minutes—post your identified binaries and freewrite to Blackboard by class time on Tuesday 1/15. Read and annotate “Beyond Complicity” (HO).
Thurs, 1/15 Examine some selected quotes. Continue establishing a vocabulary for our inquiry. Research reports. Discuss the importance of reader situatedness. Begin in-class the “analyzing the self” activity. Watch Jihad for Love clip. Begin a discussion of rhetorical analysis in terms of audience. Sign up for a “course expectations and paper brainstorming” conference for the next week.
HOMEWORK:
- Read the Unit 1 Assignment Sheet and come to class with questions or confusions about it. Complete “analyzing the self” activity. Read and annotate “Radical Islamic Insurgency” (DR). This essay focuses on a specific, national religious movement for change and provides a history for some elements alluded to in Jihad for Love. Write a brief, one-page paper explaining why “Radical” fits in the section of DR it’s in, and then apply in 250 words one of the italicized “Religious Assets for Activism” (pages 9-22) (for example, Geographical dispersion) from Smith’s “Correcting” to “Radical.” Post these two short writing assignments to the Blackboard forum “Radical Responses” by 12pm Sunday 1/18. If you get stuck on how to approach these writing assignments, you might use the questions on the “Reading Rhetorically” handout as a guide. These assignments require that you understand the arguments/claims in “Radical” and the concept you choose from “Correcting” well enough to apply it—even if you’re not really sure, try something out! Watch Jihad for Love clip again—link in Announcements on Blackboard. The ideas in the clip bring us into global arena of gay and lesbian Islamic practice and activism. Read and annotate “Transing and Transpassing against Sex-Gender Walls in Iran” (HO). With this text, we make Iran the center of our attention once again, but this time to think about how the anti-gay policies of the Islamic Iranian state legitimize transsexuality as well as participate in a transnational traffic of terms and ideas. Fill out the “Reverse Engineering” handout. This will get us started thinking about how authors use sources to build arguments.
WEEK TWO:
Tues, 1/20 Discuss Unit 1 Assignment. Share and build on analyses of “Radical.” Start analysis of claims in “Transing.” Group discussions and extensions of “Reverse Engineering.”
HOMEWORK:
o Listen to or read the NPR story on feminist appropriations of the mikvah (ritual bathing) and watch the segment about liberation theology—links in Announcements. Then read and annotate “Women in the Menstruation Huts” and “Popular Religion, Protest, and Revolt” (DR). Fill out the “Initial Research” handout.
Thurs, 1/22 Share initial research. Working with the library databases and SUMMIT. Interrogating shared texts. Sign up for paired conferences to discuss drafts.
HOMEWORK:
- Decide which three of our shared readings you will use for your paper. Generate (or choose from those we created or those on the syllabus) two possible questions for interrogating your texts. Post your choices of texts, your questions, and a short paragraph about why these questions and texts interest you to the Blackboard forum “Unit 1 Questions” by 5pm Friday 1/23. Read “Maner” (HO) to help you think more about your research for your first paper and extend the conversation we’ve begun in class. Write and post to the Blackboard forum “Interrogating Texts” by 5pm Sunday 1/25 a 250-word analysis of one of your chosen texts using one of your questions.
WEEK THREE:
Tues, 1/27 Revisit/clarify expectations for the essay. Group activity extending and complicating homework. Briefly discuss introducing sources. Sign up for individual conferences.
HOMEWORK:
o Identify three instances of sources being introduced in either “Beyond Complicity” or “Popular Religion” that you would like to try out in your essay. Extend and build upon what you’ve written toward your essay to a three-page draft. Bring three copies with you.
Thurs, 1/29 Practice introducing sources. Peer review.
HOMEWORK:
- Compose a four-page draft and bring three copies to class.
WEEK FOUR:
Tues, 2/3 Peer review. Whole class discussion and group activities for introductions and conclusions.
HOMEWORK:
o Read Revise and bring the most recent version of your essay with you to class.
Thurs, 2/5 Titling essays. Charting sentence variety. Building portfolios.
HOMEWORK:
o Final draft and portfolio due. Submit your final essay via Digital Dropbox by 5pm Tuesday 2/10 and bring your portfolio ready to turn in at the beginning of class.
WEEK FIVE:
Tues, 2/10 Teaching feedback. Collect Unit 1 Portfolios. Discuss Unit 2 assignment. Begin watching Trembling Before G-d.
WRT 205: Unit 2 Calendar
HO=Handout of an long article on Blackboard (print ALL handouts and bring them to class with you for the day you are to have read them or otherwise worked with them)
DR=Disruptive Religion
BB=Blackboard
Note: If there is no instruction to post a writing activity in the Homework sections to Blackboard or to submit it via Digital Dropbox, print it out and bring it to class.
WEEK ONE:
Tues, 2/10 Collect Unit 1 Portfolios. Introduce the focus of Unit 2. Begin watching Trembling Before G-d. Randomly assigned topics.
HOMEWORK:
o Compose responses to prompts in “Trembling Responses” (HO). We will use the claims you generate here as the basis for a “circle of voices” activity and then focus in on a few claims you generate.
Thurs, 2/12 Circle of voices with “Trembling Responses.” Class focusing of claims. “Where do you stand?” activity. Whole class discussion of Trembling. Research reports. DR selections and discuss the AB Guidelines. Teaching feedback.
HOMEWORK:
- Read and annotate “Operation Rescue.” So far, we’ve looked primary at texts that look at “progressive” movements at the intersections of sexuality, politics, and religion. With this article we examine a fairly “conservative” group and issues of intra-group identification. Read to understand the argument and to identify the kinds of research the author uses. Read your selected chapter from DR. Compose an annotate bibliography entry for that chapter handout using the guidelines we discussed in class and that you downloaded from BB—bring 6 copies to class (one for each group member and me).
WEEK TWO:
Tues, 2/17 Small group presentations of Talking Annotated Bibs. Identify claims and sources in “Operation Rescue.” Watch clip from Jesus Camp. Focused whole class discussion putting the clip and the article in conversation. Return Unit 1 portfolios; papers in Dropbox by 5pm.
HOMEWORK:
o Conduct quick-n-dirty research about the topic I assigned you in class. Download and read the Unit 2 assignment sheet. Write down any questions you have about it and bring them to the next class. Read Margaret Kantz’s “Teaching Students to Use Textual Sources Persuasively.” Reply to prompts in “Thinking Further with Kantz” (HO).
Thurs, 2/19 Research Reports. Generating possible research questions. Brainstorming possible avenues for primary research. Go over the research proposal assignment.
HOMEWORK:
- Compose your research proposal (using the guidelines discussed in class). Post your proposal to BB by 1pm Sunday 2/22. Based on kinds of research you think you might do, I will structure some class time around how to do some kinds of primary research as well as why certain kinds of research work well to address particular questions. Locate two sources you think you might want to use for your paper. Fill out “Double-Entry Pages” for one of these sources so that you begin collecting material that you might use and figuring out what you might say back to it. Design some means of doing primary research around your topic. This might include going to discussion board, interview an interested person in-person or by email/phone, conducting a survey, etc.
WEEK THREE:
Tues, 2/24 Discussion of primary research. Continue to discuss how researchers can make claims. Practice making claims and writing thesis statements. Practice dialoguing with sources and reading rhetorically.
HOMEWORK:
- Conduct (if at all possible) your primary research design. Re-read “Operation Rescue” with particular attention to the source work (introducing, responding, contextualizing, and citing). Read and annotate the selection on sources from Writing Analytically (HO). Write a 500 wd response applying the principles of “conversing with sources” from WA to two of your sources. Be very specific in your references to the texts: quote from them as you provide examples; make very clear your connections between sources. Please bring to class the sources you work with.
Thurs, 2/26 Share the results of your primary research. We will continue our work of dialoguing with scholarly sources.
HOMEWORK:
o Write four to five pages toward your essay expanding on the conservation you started having between and among your sources. In particular, take up one or two key ideas and work with them. The pages you write for this assignment should reflect your efforts to make claims and dialogue with your sources.
WEEK FOUR:
Tues, 3/3 Work with sample student essays. We will work toward more complex thesis statements.
HOMEWORK:
o Write a six- to seven-page draft of your essay taking up one or two key ideas and working with your sources. The pages you write for this assignment should reflect your efforts to make claims and dialogue with your sources.
Thurs, 3/5 Work with and extend your homework. Work toward making claims.
HOMEWORK:
o Over Spring Break, think and reflect. Revise and extend some if possible. Bring to class on 3/17 three copies of the two-page section you most want feedback on. Print and bring copies of the sample student essays from Blackboard.
WEEK FIVE: SPRING BREAK
WEEK SIX:
Tues, 3/17 Discussion of sample essays. Peer Review.
HOMEWORK:
o Revise your paper and bring three copies of the two-page section you most want feedback on.
Thurs, 3/19 Mini-peer review. Titling your essay. Questions about portfolios.
HOMEWORK:
- Revise and finish essay 2 and your portfolio.
WEEK SEVEN:
Tues, 3/24 Submit Portfolios. Papers due to Digital Dropbox by 5pm.
Unit 3 Calendar
Tues, 3/24 I’ll introduce you to the unit 3 collaborative project. Based on several factors, I will assign you to groups and you will pick group research topics from the list I provide. You and your group mates will spend time on line and in library databases doing a quick scan of your topic for homework.
We’ll also take up Jeff Rice’s “The 1963 Hip-Hop Machine: Hip-Hop Pedagogy as Composition,” and I will share a sound clip and ask you to think deeply about the processes of sampling, pasting, and layering.
For homework: please read and annotate David Sibley’s “Introduction” to Geographies of Exclusion (pdf on blackboard). The reading, like Jeff Rice’s essay, is quite dense, though brief; please leave time to read closely and carefully. Come to class with an example of socio-spatial exclusion (that you have experienced, been witness to, or read or heard about). If your topic strikes you as illustrative of some form of socio-spatial exclusion, be prepared to explain how and why. As a group, locate at least three research artifacts specific to your topic (these could include websites, images, creative work—novels, poems, songs, artwork, etc., scholarly articles, articles from popular magazines, newspaper articles…). Be prepared to select a detail from one of your own research artifacts and “sample” it.
Thurs, 3/26 We will continue unpacking Jeff Rice and practice juxtaposing samples, and we will also take up the David Sibley essay. We will also interrogate the definition of “collaborative” writing.
For homework: read and annotate the chapter “Recognising Strangers” from Sara Ahmed’s book Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. This is also a challenging reading, so take your time, don’t get frustrated, and do keep track of what confuses you; I will address confusions in class. Be prepared to make connections between Sibley and Ahmed, and to apply their ideas and claims to your topics.
Please bring to class any of the research materials you are finding specific to your topic.
Tues, 3/31 We will unpack the Sibley and Ahmed essays together. We will also practice sampling and interpreting specific passages from Sibley and Ahmed and juxtaposing them with research artifacts from each group.
For homework: individually write 500 words, putting Sibley and Ahmed and your source material in conversation with one another. I’m interested in seeing you make connections across key ideas and claims, and interpret and apply what you have read.
Thurs, 4/2 We will continue working with Sibley and Ahmed. We’ll also continue practicing sampling and juxtaposing in class. And finally, we’ll imagine the multi-media project: i-movies; power points; etc.
For homework: locate artifacts that are specific to the cultural moment of your topic—song lyrics, album covers, tv programs, movies, newspaper headlines, fashions, international events, domestic political agendas, fads and crazes, sports, etc. Collaboratively write a 500 wd proposal outlining your group’s project—the product you are working toward, the arguments/claims you are building toward, the theoretical material you are drawing on, the ideas you are brainstorming about your presentation, and the role each person intends to play as writer/researcher/presenter. Make time to send the proposal to each member so that you each have an opportunity to contribute to and revise the document.
Tues, 4/7 In class each group will work with their artifacts and create a collage that includes some interpreting of the juxtaposed samples. We will also practice working with sound bites and visuals: each group will either demonstrate (using the computer and projector at the front of the room) or talk us through a creative juxtaposing of a sound bite and a visual.
For homework: each group member should tackle one of the research/writing requirements in the assignment. Locate sources specific to your topic, and bring them to class on Thursday. Also each member of each group will compose two tentative claims based on your research so far. Bring the claims to class.
Thurs, 4/9 We will share all of our tentative claims, and put pressure on them—can they be supported? Are they analytical enough? Do they suggest the complexity of the topic?
For homework: Collaboratively compose a draft of your shared text.
Tues, 4/14 In class we will read and respond to each group’s draft.
For homework: Collaboratively revise your shared text based on the feedback in class.
Thurs, 4/16 I will briefly review the final reflection assignment. Meet with your groups in class to work on final projects and presentations. Please have your Thomson handbook with you.
For homework: Continue to work with group mates on all the required elements of the final projects.
Begin composing your final reflection (this is an individual writing project).
Tues, 4/21 Syracuse Showcase—no class.
For homework: Continue to work with group mates on all the required elements of the final projects.
Thurs, 4/23 First round of group presentations. Course Evals.
Tues, 4/28 Last day of class. Final group presentations.
