Okay so I have taught the Crown Core course 27 times in 27 years, courses on AIDS, on Columbus, on Gallileo and Newton, on Jane Goodall and the chimps, on Darwin and on native americans, so the last few years on genetics and cloning and genetically modified chickens … Did you read Oryx and Crake or Frankenstein? … on robots and trans-humanism, I consider it part of my continuing education. And the class was about ethics too. As the students would say "It’s all good!" of course they say it when they really mean "No worries!" which actually means "You are so not Fresh; and I haven’t got time to make the deeply disturbed nature of your misunderstanding clear to you. So it's all good."
In our core class I guess we learned the laws for robots and some fundamentals of genetic counseling, all of which will come in handy for you, I promise. I have the core reader right here somewhere and I do plan on reading it again someday.
But I also taught writing. And in writing we try to get people to have purposes in their speeches and essays purposes that are connected with the purposes in their lives, so I need to get to the thesis as soon as possible.
As I recall I gave a brief speech in your core course while you were pretending to listen in which I said that UC was a public research institution and that the larger purpose, beyond getting you a job, was to serve the people of the state of California by educating you to invent new knowledge and new things and to be a resource for the community. I told you that the people who worked in the dining hall and did the other jobs to make you safe and healthy were also paying something for your education. They deserved your pledge: that you would take the responsibility to be a resource for our state and community. They deserve also that you will help to sustain this university by voting for education and supporting your university.
So the thesis is that we need to invent knowledge and use knowledge to be happy and to make a respectful and successful and happy community. Now you just have to figure out what makes you and your community happy.
I was also the Mayor and I discovered two things about that: (1) the best thing about it was giving your business card to fourth graders and (2), when you are mayor you have to give a lot of speeches for all kinds of events and in those speeches you have to thank people. Be grateful and show it. So let’s say thanks right now. In fact, I want the students to say thanks right now to staff, faculty and their parents; you can wave to them. I will say thanks to you for giving me the greatest job a person can have.
I‘m supposed to give you the advice which I never gave myself, like don’t Text While Driving and be sure to floss and wear long sleeves to your job interviews. I have nothing against tattoos; my father had them and my son. In fact most everyone I know and love has them. But I don’t know how people choose which to get ... and it’s because I am not fresh. I’m not even cool about my slang terms.
I don’t get it and that is integral to what I have to say to you. You do get it. You will get work. You will find happiness in your personal lives. You will be successful. I know you’re saying how can you say that? Well why would I say anything else? I know that you will have plenty of jobs that do not seem to fit your skills. I have had every job imaginable from sales to janitoring to hospitaling. My father told me that every job had dignity and that every skill was an art and could be done in a way that was artful from digging a hole to washing dishes. Of course I had an advantage that most of you do not. I had a child when I was your age. So work seemed like a pretty useful thing. My advice about work is simple: You’re smart enough; now be pleasant and respectful and build that community and you will never be sorry about any job; any moral job can be done with dignity. I didn’t get this job until I was almost thirty years old. So make many copies of your resume and let them say no. Eventually they will say yes. I have seen a statistic that the unemployment rate for people 22-24 is thirty percent down in the last two years. Thanks Obama. Why? well you're smart and you're cheap. But it will take time to invent and shape your job. So don’t get panicky.
But I was going to say something about tattoos or what we call body art. First as I said I don’t really get it. I saw a young woman student last month with a tattoo on her leg that said I Heart Weekends. So this is a generational thing. I mean I get putting your mother's name on your skin or even your favorite symbol like a skull with fire in its eyes or some very nice Japanese Koi but I heart weekends was more than I could process And it is exactly why this woman will be a success in life.
It is a post modern dilemma so let me tell you a post modern joke: It’s from the Marx Brothers and may be apocryphal which only makes it more valid as a source for postmodern thought.
Chico says, There’s a million dollars buried in the basement of the house next door.
And Groucho looks out the window and says, But there is no house next door.
So Chico says, Well then we better build one.
I only have 8 minutes so I can’t explain it to you but to quote the movie “The Song of Bernadette” for the believer no explanation is necessary, for the unbeliever no explanation is possible. Like I said I don’t get it. I can only make it into a modernist realistic parable. It seems to say that if we build schools, then they will be full of geniuses or if we build prisons, they will be full of somebody that we call criminal. So build schools.
In reality the world is full of nonsense and requires the kind of creative and at times magical thinking that builds houses with basements expecting a fortune and it might pull us out of this morass and only you can do it. Because you get the joke and you know why that woman tattooed I heart weekends on her leg. You might think you don't get it, but that’s only the red bull talking. You get it. You are fresh.
So we have to love the irrational if we are going to live in irrational times. What’s irrational? Well we love oil and it is killing us; we love speculation on wall street and it's killing us. We want to stop drug dealers and so we are busting people’s grandmothers and children without papers in Arizona and here. We love family but we do not extend that to gay people. We just invented eBooks that pretend they are turning the pages and everybody is really happy about this. I mean that's irrational.
What else is irrational? A writer in Germany who was persecuted by the Nazis was asked why he did it and he said when events are at their cruelest and most brutal, then it is even more important “to penetrate the world with love.” Yesterday was Anne Frank's birthday and she said that in spite of everything she still thought people were good. My own father who was interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo forgave his enemies and was himself an enemy of war all his life. It is not always the rational thing that makes change. In fact, loving your enemy is a miracle of irrationality.
Of course we have a model at Crown, Terry Freitas, the student whose name is on our community service award. He was a friend of mine. If I could rename the college for him, I would . He visited with me every few weeks for a few years, and we would talk about the college or the world. It was a blessing to have that opportunity. He was murdered in the jungle of Colombia. But he would have called it a cloud forest or a rain forest. He was an advocate for the indigenous people who were being exploited by oil producers and he was murdered by revolutionary group called the FARC. And he was once a Resident Assistant here at Crown, who worked to make the Core Course more relevant for you.
There’s a quote from Terry in one of websites devoted to him and to his companions where he says “We are doing this work so that people can listen to singing.” I would carve that into the crossbeam over the college office.
I have to add that he did not go into this forest as an avatar. More’s the pity. He went in the flesh. I am not sure what you will be asked to do: go to war as a drone warrior or to live in the world as sims or enhanced creature or to stuff golf balls in oil wells with a remote operated Vehicle. But we all have our jungles or cloud forests: maybe in medicine or engineering new things for people or the corporate jungle or the oceans, even a neighborhood can be a jungle and all of these places have to be penetrated with love and we have to work so that people can hear the singing.
I had my moments in various jungles some of them quite dark, but I want to tell you about one of them. The earthquake in 1989. Maybe you were a year old. The town fell down and like those people in the gulf, I hated the government. I could either get pretty angry and cynical or try to change it, So I became a commissioner and then I was invited to run for council and I became a councilmember in 1998 and the Mayor in 2000-01. Even a small coastal city can be a dangerous jungle or a miraculous cloud forest. It is a human endeavor and we need to go about this work in the same spirit I spoke of: we need to penetrate these jungles with love and we have to work so that people can listen to singing.
I want to remind you that I was invited to run for office. Someone said you should do this. And that was the moment when I thought that I could do this. It is important to invite people, to ask them to do something, and to tell them that you believe that they can do it. In a dark time we get cynical and we become certain of defeat but that is the time when we should be penetrating the world with love and that means we should be inviting people to take action and to live creatively. We should be inviting the children out there to come to the university, We need to tell them we want you to be here. We invite you to be a dedicated scientist and to go to med school and to start a business and to create your family. To save the planet and to bring justice to someone even if it is in the smallest circumstance: Justice needs to be everywhere and the health of the planet is everywhere.
We don't forget you when you leave. You can write to me at timfitz@ucsc.edu or look at the blog: timfitz.blogspot .com. I will put my notes for this speech on the site. This year two students from twenty or so years ago wrote to me and said that I probably did not remember them. That was not true. I don't always get the names right, but a little coaching and it comes back. Even if you were not in my class or in core at all I would like to hear from you. Something about making the world into a caring and respectful place. Remember there is no job that lacks dignity if it is a moral job.
But that is twenty years from now. Right now, go build that house, the one with the million dollars in basement.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Writing 2 Syllabus Spring 2010
Writing 2 Comp & Rhet Spring 2009 Tim Fitzmaurice timfitz@ucsc.edu
MWF Sect 14 at 2pm & Section 15 at 3:30pm Kresge 325 BLOG: timfitz.blogspot.com OFFICE: Crown 111, 459-2483 Office Hours: Wednesday 12:30-1:30 and by appt.
Required Texts: (All are at the Baytree Bookstore.)
1. Gilligan, Violence; 2. Ainsworth, 75 Arguments; 3. Khadra, The Attack; 4. Pape, Dying to Win
Required Work:
1. Write five formal essays, and revise two of them thoroughly.
2. Attend every class meeting and participate in discussion.
3. Meet with the Instructor twice.
4. Do the in-class assignments, including oral report, and submit all assignments on time.
5. Submit a portfolio of all of your work at the end of class. We have no final exam.
If you will be absent, please let me know as soon as possible. Call or email.
Academic Honesty
It is important that you write your essays yourself without help from unknown sources. I need to know how you are doing your work. Be sure to give credit for every quote you use and every idea you borrow. Put quote marks around the words and use a parenthesis at the end to tell me where you found it. If you use other people’s ideas, you need to tell where you got those ideas. Good writers quote others. So this won’t make your writing weaker. It will make it stronger.
Essay Format
On essays for this class please use white paper and black ink. Do not give me cover sheet or title pages. Leave space in the margins for my marks, double space. Avoid unusual type fonts. Write your name, the class, and the date in the upper right corner of the page. Make sure the date is accurate. Write revision if it is a rewrite. Give every essay a title. Put a page number on each page, and staple the essay in the upper left hand corner. I can comment on emailed essays, but I need a hard copy to mark the essay. I expect you to provide this.
Assignment for our next class.
Interview and write a profile, no more than two pages, of another student in our class. You will be asked to introduce this student to the rest of the class, giving us two truths and a lie on the first day.
Assignment for discussion on Wednesday and for submission on Friday.
Write a brief (3 pages) response to the question: What is violence? Use a story from your experience to start the essay, something you have seen either in your life or in your reading or on the media. It could be school violence or sports violence, any incident that can help you to explain to me what violence is. Then tell me if violence is a natural thing or a social thing. Nature or nurture: Do we learn it or do we just express our biological aggression? I will give you an article from the famous and controversial socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson to help you begin this discussion. I expect you to quote him three times at least in the course of this essay.
Calendar for Writing 2, Spring 2009 Tim Fitzmaurice Crown 111 UCSC
I may make changes to this arrangement. 459-2483 timfitz@ucsc.edu
Week 1 March 29/ 31/April 3 Introduction
Profile of another student due on Wednesday. Essay on Violence: Nature or Nurture? Due on Friday (2 pages+).
Read Ainsworth Chapter 5 over the weekend and write a response to the essays, as assigned (p. 196, p. 224, p. 240, p. 247, p 249). One page telling me what the thesis was and how successful the argument was for you. Choose at least two essays.
[Prepare for the future! Visit the jail assignment. You are required to visit the jail or to tell me why you cannot visit. You can make your appointment for any Sunday by going online at the County Sheriff site: http://www.scsheriff.com/ click on Corrections and then go to Public Jail Tours. You need to fill out a form and get permission to visit. So do it soon and go with a friend. A limited number can go on any one day. So book your tour right away. If you do not have California ID, I need to put your name on a list. Please talk to me.]
Week 2 April 5/7/9 Purpose and thesis.
Discuss this week the essays in Chapter 5 of Ainsworth.
Due: Friday an opening thesis and strategy for essay 1 on Security and Liberty.
Week 3 April 12/14/16 Organizing your essays: Strategies
Discuss this week the essays in Chapter 7 of Ainsworth.
Due a draft of essay1 on Monday.
Read Ainsworth Chapter 7 and 9.
Week 4 April 19/21/23 Structure of paragraphs: Coherence
Discuss this week the essay in Chapter 9 of Ainsworth.
Library Visit TBA Start reading Khadra and Pape this weekend
Week 5 April 26/28/30 Sentence grammar and subordination
Due: Due Essay 2 on either Chapter 7 or 9 of Ainsworth.
Monday film.
Read Khadra and Pape on suicide terrorism
Week 6 May 3/5/7 Style and logic
Discuss Khadra and Pape this week.
Due: a revision of Essay 1 or 2 by May 6th
We will arrange the groups for the oral presentations and essay 5.
Week 7 May 10/12/14 Research and citation
Due Essay 3 on Terrorism on Monday.
Monday film. “Lock Up/ Lock Down”
Discuss Gilligan and incarceration. It would be good to visit the jail before we get to this conversation. Read Gilligan, the first hundred pages.
Week 8 May 17/19/21 Writing assignments in different disciplines
Read Gilligan (the rest of it) to use in conjunction with the essay 4 on Incarceration.
Due Friday Essay 4 on Incarceration.
Week 9 May 24/26/28 (Monday is a holiday) Revision
Oral Presentations
Due: a revision of an essay.
Week 10 May 31/June 2/4 Instruction ends June 5; no final exam Holiday Monday.
Oral Presentations
Due essay 4 final draft and portfolio containing your work from this quarter. The portfolio contains all of your essays in the draft and final form. It should also contain the other writing we did in the class, daily writing, the profile, and other responses. You can rewrite everything if you wish to try to improve your grade.
Essay 1: On Security and Liberty
Write an essay about the problem of freedom and security after 9-11. In an era of terrorism and the limiting of civil freedoms, an era of surveillance, suicide bombings, torture and war, can we have security without sacrificing freedoms, like privacy rights and freedom of expression? What do we need to understand about this? I will give you a two-page handout for this essay. Use Essays from Ainsworth in Chapter 5 as the foundation for this essay.
Essay 2: On Violent prejudices
Read the Chapters 7 & 9 in 75 Arguments that discuss issues of identity and marriage. You can include essays from other Chapters as well. No Web Sources please. I will give you a longer version of this essay assignment. Write a four-page+ essay with references to at least three essays from our text. You have choices for this essay:
1. On Identity and Race: based on essays in Chapter 9.
2. On Marriage: Based on readings in Chapter 7.
Essay 3: Why suicide Bombing?
Write an essay that discusses the nature of the suicide bombing and your best understanding of the theories of what drives the suicide bomber.
Please refer to the film “Paradise Now,” the book Dying to Win and the novel The Attack.
Essay 4: An essay on Crime and Punishment.
Visit the county jail. Read and cite the book by Gilligan and the film, “Lock Up/Lock Down.” Then discuss the effects of jail and punishment on offenders. And how we might improve our approach to solving problems of violence.
Essay 5: A research essay on some topic concerning the community, including gangs and youth, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, Violence against women, international violence, media and sports violence. You are asked to do your own research into the topic and to present the information with your group. The essay does not have to be the same as the presentation.
Oral presentation due in Week 9 or 10. Your oral presentation topic will be the same as your fourth essay topic. You will get your topic assignment in class. You will work with four or five other students on this topic. Each writes their own essay.
Revisions will be periodically assigned, but you can revise at any time and rewrite until you are satisfied with result.
Formatting and citing.
All of our essays are four to six pages long in the final draft. I expect you to cite your sources and provide a list of sources at the end of the essay. I expect all essays to be typed, double spaced, on white paper and stapled, with page numbers on each page and the correct date. You may only use the sources that I suggest for your essays. I do not trust the web sources. So use any outside source, particularly those, with caution. You can use wither MLA or APA style. If you want an exception any of the “rules” I have just enumerated—like the limits on sources—then ask me.
I recommend that you think about doing the essays in the following way:
1. Begin with an example or story that shows the importance of the issue. This story can come from your own experience or observation. It can be a look at someone you know or it can be drawn from our reading. Analyze it briefly.
2. Write a thesis. The community needs to understand something about the issue and to act in some way. That’s the simplest version of an argumentative thesis.
3. Spend some time defining the topic and its main terms and ideas. Use quotes from our text or observations you have made about the topic. Support the thesis, your purposeful goals, with examples and with logic, with facts, and with quotation of sources.
4. Talk about the obstacles to accomplishing these purposes and why they exist
5. Talk about the best way to solve these problems, if there is a solution.
6, Good essays end by looking at why your point of view is crucial and why it will help us address the problem. If the problem is ignored, the society will be worse.
Writing Process
1. Assert your Purpose and thesis
2. Gather facts and arguments to develop the essay. (logic, examples, quotes, facts)
3. Determine who the Audience is and what they need. (tone of voice, diction)
4. Draft the essay.
5. Revise the larger structures and overall strategies, including paragraphs.
6. Revise the smaller sentence level style.
7. Edit and fix the grammar, usage, spelling and punctuation errors.
Purposes depend on what we know, what we believe, and what we want to do.
A famous Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, once said that in this world we can accomplish three purposes: (1) to be aware of the facts and of reality, (2) to understand what these facts mean, and (3) to act compassionately or to make the world better based on our knowledge. Some of our essays are just about the facts and most of them are about how to understand the facts and the some about what we need to do.
So when you think about your topic try to describe the facts (1) what you and your audience need to know about it. Then talk about (2) how to understand it, the theory behind your point of view. In college we are mostly concerned with making sense of something, with understanding. The third goal is (3) to act to do something about it. In a way that goal is political. It means we have to make our world better.
Everyone is different. We all see the world in a unique way. Our understanding and out purposes are shaped by our values and by our ideology. In school we study different disciplines to discover what our unique point of view might be. Some of us are artists and some engineers and some economists and some psychologists and some sociologists. You cannot borrow your purpose from someone else.
What is violence? Are we experts on the topics we write about?
No. We are curious intellectuals. I am aware that we all have different backgrounds and knowledge of these topics and that the essays you write this quarter will be based on partial knowledge and first impressions of thinkers in the field. Your essays are judged on how well you use this foundation to write intellectually capable essays reflecting the insights of a reasonable person. We are not thoroughly versed in the theories about violence and what causes it. So the essay is based on your experience in the world and on your reading and observations in various media.
For your essay on incarceration, for example, you can use the essay you wrote in the first week of this quarter. You wrote a short piece based on reading a short essay on the biology & violence by Edward O. Wilson, a highly controversial socio-biologist. You can look at Gilligan’s theories in his book. In class we will discuss theories of where violence comes from and begin to write our own perspectives on it.
Writing 2 Section 13 and 14 Spring 2010 Tim Fitzmaurice
ESSAY 1: On Security and Liberty Due Monday April 12th.
Write an essay about the problem of freedom and security after 9-11. In an era of terrorism and the limiting of civil freedoms, an era of surveillance, suicide bombings, torture and war, can we have security without sacrificing freedoms, like privacy rights and freedom of expression? What do we need to understand about this?
John Stuart Mill says in our reader that self-government “is not government of each by himself (sic), but of each by all the rest” (199). Mill says
…the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. (204)
In other words, individual freedom of action can only and should be limited if it is a threat to others. The rest of his essay is committed to asserting individual freedom, but this part asserts the necessity of limits. People can’t be permitted to hurt others. In fact, he later says that we are answerable for doing evil “not only by our actions but by our inactions” (206). So we must be not actively hurt anyone and not passively allow people to be hurt. He binds individual freedom and the safety of all very closely together.
Do we need armies, police, laws? To respond to terrorist threat can we limit people’s freedoms? Can we invade their privacy? Surveillance, torture, profiling, strip-searches, militarism, border control? Should we reduce freedom of action for safety?
Matthew Brzezinski asks in his essay how much should our security cost us: “How Far Should We Go?” (224) It has led to surveillance, torture, a denial of habeas corpus, a lack of judicial oversight on search warrants. Can we tolerate this loss of civil protection? And he says the cost will be even higher in the future
… domestic security will dwarf every other kind federal spending: education, roads, subsidized housing, environmental protection. More than that decisions we make about how to protect ourselves—the measures we demand, the ones we resist—will take over our political discourse and define our ideas about government in years to come. (239)
In effect, for Brzezinski, our way of thinking about democracy is and will be shaped by our history. What about the effects of people coming across the border? In Silko’s essay, the fear of intruders has changed the way we look at migrant workers and every dark skinned person. Security is racialized. She says, “’Immigration,’ like ‘street crime’ and ’welfare fraud,’ is a political euphemism that refers to people of color” (245). So our response to terror is a complex problem. We need to understand it. That is your assignment to tell me how we as a community should understand this problem and respond to it. Use the essays in Chapter 5. The chapter ends, incidentally, with Mona Charen, a conservative voice, saying “if we err on the side of civil liberties instead of security, hundred of thousands or millions of Americans could die” (251).
Hints about writing this essay.
What do you think and how do you support your argument, with these texts, with your observations, with logical argument? I want to suggest that at heart the question is simple. It is almost inevitably a kind of balancing act. The challenge in this assignment is to strike your balance and to put the arguments in order. So what is the structure of an essay like this? Bring a draft of your thesis and some supporting ideas & quotes on April 10th.
Opening: What example makes your argument significant and focuses on your eventual point. It could be a personal account of 9-11. It could be a paraphrase from the essay or an observation of someone else responding to an incident in the war on terror, a soldier, a bombing victim, someone whose rights were infringed because of the new emphasis on controlling people, searching or border protection or airport surveillance or interrogation. The essay starts with a strategy introducing the fundamental focus and topic.
Thesis: Then you need a thesis or purposeful way of asserting your controlling idea. This section is notable for breaking out of the opening narrative or statistics or cases or whatever strategy to become theoretical and analytical and large in scope—what does everyone need to know to understand or to do about this situation? A straightforward thesis could say something like -- We as a society need to understand this phenomenon and take certain actions.
Body: The next challenge is the way you might develop or support your argument. It depends on what strategies you think you need to use to persuade people or to explain the phenomenon. Define it. Quote the texts to tell me what the problem is and how some people see it.
I need to see where the issue is. In this instance, you can show this by looking at different points of view in the essays Charen’s perspective: Get real! We need safety first. Who cares about the “inconvenience” of surveillance or tough border controls? Or Emma Goldman’s notion that “War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battles; therefore they take boys from one village ... and let them loose like wild beasts against each other” (216). Or Silko’s notion that our homeland security rules are not just inconvenient, but are bound up with racism and a “police state” (244).
Remember that this where you assert what you need to say about the matter. It depends on how you read these people and other essays in our book. DO NOT USE ANY WEB SOURCES. But feel free to go to any other essay in our textbook. I like the essays on law and obedience and civil disobedience in Chapter 6. I welcome references to the essays in Chapters 1 and 11.
The essay needs to speak about those who disagree with you. Find the opposing views, quote fairly, analyze them, and respond to their arguments if possible.
Ending: Essays end with a sense of the lesson to be learned from the argument. If we agree about this then we can move forward in a positive direction. If we do not understand this properly we are going to hell in a hand basket—whatever that is. And you can close the circle by returning to your opening example or strategy in some way.
MWF Sect 14 at 2pm & Section 15 at 3:30pm Kresge 325 BLOG: timfitz.blogspot.com OFFICE: Crown 111, 459-2483 Office Hours: Wednesday 12:30-1:30 and by appt.
Required Texts: (All are at the Baytree Bookstore.)
1. Gilligan, Violence; 2. Ainsworth, 75 Arguments; 3. Khadra, The Attack; 4. Pape, Dying to Win
Required Work:
1. Write five formal essays, and revise two of them thoroughly.
2. Attend every class meeting and participate in discussion.
3. Meet with the Instructor twice.
4. Do the in-class assignments, including oral report, and submit all assignments on time.
5. Submit a portfolio of all of your work at the end of class. We have no final exam.
If you will be absent, please let me know as soon as possible. Call or email.
Academic Honesty
It is important that you write your essays yourself without help from unknown sources. I need to know how you are doing your work. Be sure to give credit for every quote you use and every idea you borrow. Put quote marks around the words and use a parenthesis at the end to tell me where you found it. If you use other people’s ideas, you need to tell where you got those ideas. Good writers quote others. So this won’t make your writing weaker. It will make it stronger.
Essay Format
On essays for this class please use white paper and black ink. Do not give me cover sheet or title pages. Leave space in the margins for my marks, double space. Avoid unusual type fonts. Write your name, the class, and the date in the upper right corner of the page. Make sure the date is accurate. Write revision if it is a rewrite. Give every essay a title. Put a page number on each page, and staple the essay in the upper left hand corner. I can comment on emailed essays, but I need a hard copy to mark the essay. I expect you to provide this.
Assignment for our next class.
Interview and write a profile, no more than two pages, of another student in our class. You will be asked to introduce this student to the rest of the class, giving us two truths and a lie on the first day.
Assignment for discussion on Wednesday and for submission on Friday.
Write a brief (3 pages) response to the question: What is violence? Use a story from your experience to start the essay, something you have seen either in your life or in your reading or on the media. It could be school violence or sports violence, any incident that can help you to explain to me what violence is. Then tell me if violence is a natural thing or a social thing. Nature or nurture: Do we learn it or do we just express our biological aggression? I will give you an article from the famous and controversial socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson to help you begin this discussion. I expect you to quote him three times at least in the course of this essay.
Calendar for Writing 2, Spring 2009 Tim Fitzmaurice Crown 111 UCSC
I may make changes to this arrangement. 459-2483 timfitz@ucsc.edu
Week 1 March 29/ 31/April 3 Introduction
Profile of another student due on Wednesday. Essay on Violence: Nature or Nurture? Due on Friday (2 pages+).
Read Ainsworth Chapter 5 over the weekend and write a response to the essays, as assigned (p. 196, p. 224, p. 240, p. 247, p 249). One page telling me what the thesis was and how successful the argument was for you. Choose at least two essays.
[Prepare for the future! Visit the jail assignment. You are required to visit the jail or to tell me why you cannot visit. You can make your appointment for any Sunday by going online at the County Sheriff site: http://www.scsheriff.com/ click on Corrections and then go to Public Jail Tours. You need to fill out a form and get permission to visit. So do it soon and go with a friend. A limited number can go on any one day. So book your tour right away. If you do not have California ID, I need to put your name on a list. Please talk to me.]
Week 2 April 5/7/9 Purpose and thesis.
Discuss this week the essays in Chapter 5 of Ainsworth.
Due: Friday an opening thesis and strategy for essay 1 on Security and Liberty.
Week 3 April 12/14/16 Organizing your essays: Strategies
Discuss this week the essays in Chapter 7 of Ainsworth.
Due a draft of essay1 on Monday.
Read Ainsworth Chapter 7 and 9.
Week 4 April 19/21/23 Structure of paragraphs: Coherence
Discuss this week the essay in Chapter 9 of Ainsworth.
Library Visit TBA Start reading Khadra and Pape this weekend
Week 5 April 26/28/30 Sentence grammar and subordination
Due: Due Essay 2 on either Chapter 7 or 9 of Ainsworth.
Monday film.
Read Khadra and Pape on suicide terrorism
Week 6 May 3/5/7 Style and logic
Discuss Khadra and Pape this week.
Due: a revision of Essay 1 or 2 by May 6th
We will arrange the groups for the oral presentations and essay 5.
Week 7 May 10/12/14 Research and citation
Due Essay 3 on Terrorism on Monday.
Monday film. “Lock Up/ Lock Down”
Discuss Gilligan and incarceration. It would be good to visit the jail before we get to this conversation. Read Gilligan, the first hundred pages.
Week 8 May 17/19/21 Writing assignments in different disciplines
Read Gilligan (the rest of it) to use in conjunction with the essay 4 on Incarceration.
Due Friday Essay 4 on Incarceration.
Week 9 May 24/26/28 (Monday is a holiday) Revision
Oral Presentations
Due: a revision of an essay.
Week 10 May 31/June 2/4 Instruction ends June 5; no final exam Holiday Monday.
Oral Presentations
Due essay 4 final draft and portfolio containing your work from this quarter. The portfolio contains all of your essays in the draft and final form. It should also contain the other writing we did in the class, daily writing, the profile, and other responses. You can rewrite everything if you wish to try to improve your grade.
Essay 1: On Security and Liberty
Write an essay about the problem of freedom and security after 9-11. In an era of terrorism and the limiting of civil freedoms, an era of surveillance, suicide bombings, torture and war, can we have security without sacrificing freedoms, like privacy rights and freedom of expression? What do we need to understand about this? I will give you a two-page handout for this essay. Use Essays from Ainsworth in Chapter 5 as the foundation for this essay.
Essay 2: On Violent prejudices
Read the Chapters 7 & 9 in 75 Arguments that discuss issues of identity and marriage. You can include essays from other Chapters as well. No Web Sources please. I will give you a longer version of this essay assignment. Write a four-page+ essay with references to at least three essays from our text. You have choices for this essay:
1. On Identity and Race: based on essays in Chapter 9.
2. On Marriage: Based on readings in Chapter 7.
Essay 3: Why suicide Bombing?
Write an essay that discusses the nature of the suicide bombing and your best understanding of the theories of what drives the suicide bomber.
Please refer to the film “Paradise Now,” the book Dying to Win and the novel The Attack.
Essay 4: An essay on Crime and Punishment.
Visit the county jail. Read and cite the book by Gilligan and the film, “Lock Up/Lock Down.” Then discuss the effects of jail and punishment on offenders. And how we might improve our approach to solving problems of violence.
Essay 5: A research essay on some topic concerning the community, including gangs and youth, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, Violence against women, international violence, media and sports violence. You are asked to do your own research into the topic and to present the information with your group. The essay does not have to be the same as the presentation.
Oral presentation due in Week 9 or 10. Your oral presentation topic will be the same as your fourth essay topic. You will get your topic assignment in class. You will work with four or five other students on this topic. Each writes their own essay.
Revisions will be periodically assigned, but you can revise at any time and rewrite until you are satisfied with result.
Formatting and citing.
All of our essays are four to six pages long in the final draft. I expect you to cite your sources and provide a list of sources at the end of the essay. I expect all essays to be typed, double spaced, on white paper and stapled, with page numbers on each page and the correct date. You may only use the sources that I suggest for your essays. I do not trust the web sources. So use any outside source, particularly those, with caution. You can use wither MLA or APA style. If you want an exception any of the “rules” I have just enumerated—like the limits on sources—then ask me.
I recommend that you think about doing the essays in the following way:
1. Begin with an example or story that shows the importance of the issue. This story can come from your own experience or observation. It can be a look at someone you know or it can be drawn from our reading. Analyze it briefly.
2. Write a thesis. The community needs to understand something about the issue and to act in some way. That’s the simplest version of an argumentative thesis.
3. Spend some time defining the topic and its main terms and ideas. Use quotes from our text or observations you have made about the topic. Support the thesis, your purposeful goals, with examples and with logic, with facts, and with quotation of sources.
4. Talk about the obstacles to accomplishing these purposes and why they exist
5. Talk about the best way to solve these problems, if there is a solution.
6, Good essays end by looking at why your point of view is crucial and why it will help us address the problem. If the problem is ignored, the society will be worse.
Writing Process
1. Assert your Purpose and thesis
2. Gather facts and arguments to develop the essay. (logic, examples, quotes, facts)
3. Determine who the Audience is and what they need. (tone of voice, diction)
4. Draft the essay.
5. Revise the larger structures and overall strategies, including paragraphs.
6. Revise the smaller sentence level style.
7. Edit and fix the grammar, usage, spelling and punctuation errors.
Purposes depend on what we know, what we believe, and what we want to do.
A famous Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, once said that in this world we can accomplish three purposes: (1) to be aware of the facts and of reality, (2) to understand what these facts mean, and (3) to act compassionately or to make the world better based on our knowledge. Some of our essays are just about the facts and most of them are about how to understand the facts and the some about what we need to do.
So when you think about your topic try to describe the facts (1) what you and your audience need to know about it. Then talk about (2) how to understand it, the theory behind your point of view. In college we are mostly concerned with making sense of something, with understanding. The third goal is (3) to act to do something about it. In a way that goal is political. It means we have to make our world better.
Everyone is different. We all see the world in a unique way. Our understanding and out purposes are shaped by our values and by our ideology. In school we study different disciplines to discover what our unique point of view might be. Some of us are artists and some engineers and some economists and some psychologists and some sociologists. You cannot borrow your purpose from someone else.
What is violence? Are we experts on the topics we write about?
No. We are curious intellectuals. I am aware that we all have different backgrounds and knowledge of these topics and that the essays you write this quarter will be based on partial knowledge and first impressions of thinkers in the field. Your essays are judged on how well you use this foundation to write intellectually capable essays reflecting the insights of a reasonable person. We are not thoroughly versed in the theories about violence and what causes it. So the essay is based on your experience in the world and on your reading and observations in various media.
For your essay on incarceration, for example, you can use the essay you wrote in the first week of this quarter. You wrote a short piece based on reading a short essay on the biology & violence by Edward O. Wilson, a highly controversial socio-biologist. You can look at Gilligan’s theories in his book. In class we will discuss theories of where violence comes from and begin to write our own perspectives on it.
Writing 2 Section 13 and 14 Spring 2010 Tim Fitzmaurice
ESSAY 1: On Security and Liberty Due Monday April 12th.
Write an essay about the problem of freedom and security after 9-11. In an era of terrorism and the limiting of civil freedoms, an era of surveillance, suicide bombings, torture and war, can we have security without sacrificing freedoms, like privacy rights and freedom of expression? What do we need to understand about this?
John Stuart Mill says in our reader that self-government “is not government of each by himself (sic), but of each by all the rest” (199). Mill says
…the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. (204)
In other words, individual freedom of action can only and should be limited if it is a threat to others. The rest of his essay is committed to asserting individual freedom, but this part asserts the necessity of limits. People can’t be permitted to hurt others. In fact, he later says that we are answerable for doing evil “not only by our actions but by our inactions” (206). So we must be not actively hurt anyone and not passively allow people to be hurt. He binds individual freedom and the safety of all very closely together.
Do we need armies, police, laws? To respond to terrorist threat can we limit people’s freedoms? Can we invade their privacy? Surveillance, torture, profiling, strip-searches, militarism, border control? Should we reduce freedom of action for safety?
Matthew Brzezinski asks in his essay how much should our security cost us: “How Far Should We Go?” (224) It has led to surveillance, torture, a denial of habeas corpus, a lack of judicial oversight on search warrants. Can we tolerate this loss of civil protection? And he says the cost will be even higher in the future
… domestic security will dwarf every other kind federal spending: education, roads, subsidized housing, environmental protection. More than that decisions we make about how to protect ourselves—the measures we demand, the ones we resist—will take over our political discourse and define our ideas about government in years to come. (239)
In effect, for Brzezinski, our way of thinking about democracy is and will be shaped by our history. What about the effects of people coming across the border? In Silko’s essay, the fear of intruders has changed the way we look at migrant workers and every dark skinned person. Security is racialized. She says, “’Immigration,’ like ‘street crime’ and ’welfare fraud,’ is a political euphemism that refers to people of color” (245). So our response to terror is a complex problem. We need to understand it. That is your assignment to tell me how we as a community should understand this problem and respond to it. Use the essays in Chapter 5. The chapter ends, incidentally, with Mona Charen, a conservative voice, saying “if we err on the side of civil liberties instead of security, hundred of thousands or millions of Americans could die” (251).
Hints about writing this essay.
What do you think and how do you support your argument, with these texts, with your observations, with logical argument? I want to suggest that at heart the question is simple. It is almost inevitably a kind of balancing act. The challenge in this assignment is to strike your balance and to put the arguments in order. So what is the structure of an essay like this? Bring a draft of your thesis and some supporting ideas & quotes on April 10th.
Opening: What example makes your argument significant and focuses on your eventual point. It could be a personal account of 9-11. It could be a paraphrase from the essay or an observation of someone else responding to an incident in the war on terror, a soldier, a bombing victim, someone whose rights were infringed because of the new emphasis on controlling people, searching or border protection or airport surveillance or interrogation. The essay starts with a strategy introducing the fundamental focus and topic.
Thesis: Then you need a thesis or purposeful way of asserting your controlling idea. This section is notable for breaking out of the opening narrative or statistics or cases or whatever strategy to become theoretical and analytical and large in scope—what does everyone need to know to understand or to do about this situation? A straightforward thesis could say something like -- We as a society need to understand this phenomenon and take certain actions.
Body: The next challenge is the way you might develop or support your argument. It depends on what strategies you think you need to use to persuade people or to explain the phenomenon. Define it. Quote the texts to tell me what the problem is and how some people see it.
I need to see where the issue is. In this instance, you can show this by looking at different points of view in the essays Charen’s perspective: Get real! We need safety first. Who cares about the “inconvenience” of surveillance or tough border controls? Or Emma Goldman’s notion that “War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battles; therefore they take boys from one village ... and let them loose like wild beasts against each other” (216). Or Silko’s notion that our homeland security rules are not just inconvenient, but are bound up with racism and a “police state” (244).
Remember that this where you assert what you need to say about the matter. It depends on how you read these people and other essays in our book. DO NOT USE ANY WEB SOURCES. But feel free to go to any other essay in our textbook. I like the essays on law and obedience and civil disobedience in Chapter 6. I welcome references to the essays in Chapters 1 and 11.
The essay needs to speak about those who disagree with you. Find the opposing views, quote fairly, analyze them, and respond to their arguments if possible.
Ending: Essays end with a sense of the lesson to be learned from the argument. If we agree about this then we can move forward in a positive direction. If we do not understand this properly we are going to hell in a hand basket—whatever that is. And you can close the circle by returning to your opening example or strategy in some way.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Writing 20 Winter 2010 Syllabus
Writing 20 Written Discourse Winter 2010 Tim Fitzmaurice
Sections 6 & 7 MWF 2-3:10 & 3:30-4:40 in Crown Classroom 202
timfitz@ucsc.edu, 459-2483
Office Hours: Wed 1 to 2 and by appointment in Crown 111
Required Texts:
Ainsworth, Alan, 75 Arguments: An Anthology.
Albom, M, Tuesdays with Morrie
Canada, fist stick knife gun (You should begin to read these books now.)
Required Work:
1. Write four formal essays, and revise two of them thoroughly.
2. Work with the Writing Assistant regularly.
3. Meet with the Instructor twice.
4. Do the in-class assignments & oral work, and submit all assignments on time.
5. Attend every class and participate in the discussion. If you will be absent, please let me know as soon as possible. Call or email.
Academic Honesty
It is important that you write your essays yourself without help from unknown sources outside of the class. I need to know how you are doing your work. Then I can help you to do it better. You will be assigned to a writing assistant for help in writing and revising your essays for the ELWR requirement. Please tell me if you need other help.
In addition, you need to be careful about quoting sources or using words from other writers. Be sure to give credit for every quote you use. Put quote marks around everything and use a parenthesis to tell me who said it first. If you use other people’s ideas, you need to tell where you got those ideas too, even if you do not quote the exact words. Good writers quote others. So citing sources won’t make your writing weaker. It will make it stronger. But you must give credit.
English Language Writing Requirement (ELWR)
Even if you do not need to satisfy the ELWR, the class still requires that you write four essays and two thorough revisions. If you have satisfied the ELWR already, then tell me what goals you have for this class when we meet. I will try to make sure the class is an effective experience for you.
If you need to satisfy the ELWR Requirement, you have to do a few extra things. In this class we will write four essays and revise two of them. We will use those revisions for the ELWR Portfolio. To pass ELWR this quarter, you have to take an in-class exam for one hour, write a letter to the reader about your writing, and submit two essays (totaling 8 to 12 pages long). Each essay includes two drafts, an original draft with my marks on it and a final revision. The two essays will be from our class this quarter. So you should write every essay with a view to revising it to satisfy the ELWR requirement.
Essay Format
On essays for this class please use white paper and black ink, do not give me cover sheet or titles pages, leave space in the margins for my marks, double space, avoid unusual type fonts, write your name, the class, and the date in the upper right corner of the page, make sure the date is accurate, write revision if it is a rewrite, give every essay a title, put a page number on each page, and staple the essay in the upper left hand corner. I will comment on emailed essays, but I need a hard copy to mark the essay and I expect you to provide this. I do not accept essays by email unless we have some previous agreement. And even then, I expect a hard copy to follow.
Any essay in our texts can be used as source material for any essay you write. But no Web material is allowed. No Google. No Wiki. If you have a question about this—or need an exception—talk to me. But I am pretty clear that you need to stay away from the web.
Essay Assignments: (You will receive a full page of description for each of the following assignments. But here is a brief description of what to expect. I may change the assignment significantly if events warrant.)
Essay 1 is on Censorship.
Using the essays provided in Ainsworth, 75 Arguments, especially Chapter 2, please write an analysis of the problem of freedom of expression and its limits. Quote the essays in our texts at least three times for all essays in this course, more if indicated.
Essay 2 is an essay on Identity and Culture.
For this essay we will reach into several chapters in Ainsworth, from Chapter 3, 4, 7 and 9. You will argue that cultural differences need to be understood and either used for happiness and success or modified. Note the essay by Maria Root, “Within, Between, and Beyond Race” or Patel’s “The Media and its representation of Islam and Muslim Women” or Edwards “… Bring me Home a Black Girl” or Sullivan’s “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage.” You can look at culture is many different ways.
Essay 3 will be based on a reading of fist stick knife gun by Geoffrey Canada.
The essay will be supplemented with an oral report on a topic from Canada, wherein you will explain his position on some issue and your view of the same issue.
Essay 4 is on Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
You have a wide variety of options, including
a. Death
Since it is the central theme of the book, it is a common choice of topic. It is challenging to say the least to write about this in an organized way. I recommend simpler concepts.
b. Education.
The book demonstrates a different attitude and approach to education. You could write about rethinking education like this.
c. Choose one of the book’s themes
In class we discussed many of the themes of the book. You could choose one of these themes as well and look at what the book said about it and what you thought about it. The themes include family and forgiveness and love and materialism.
Sections 6 & 7 MWF 2-3:10 & 3:30-4:40 in Crown Classroom 202
timfitz@ucsc.edu, 459-2483
Office Hours: Wed 1 to 2 and by appointment in Crown 111
Required Texts:
Ainsworth, Alan, 75 Arguments: An Anthology.
Albom, M, Tuesdays with Morrie
Canada, fist stick knife gun (You should begin to read these books now.)
Required Work:
1. Write four formal essays, and revise two of them thoroughly.
2. Work with the Writing Assistant regularly.
3. Meet with the Instructor twice.
4. Do the in-class assignments & oral work, and submit all assignments on time.
5. Attend every class and participate in the discussion. If you will be absent, please let me know as soon as possible. Call or email.
Academic Honesty
It is important that you write your essays yourself without help from unknown sources outside of the class. I need to know how you are doing your work. Then I can help you to do it better. You will be assigned to a writing assistant for help in writing and revising your essays for the ELWR requirement. Please tell me if you need other help.
In addition, you need to be careful about quoting sources or using words from other writers. Be sure to give credit for every quote you use. Put quote marks around everything and use a parenthesis to tell me who said it first. If you use other people’s ideas, you need to tell where you got those ideas too, even if you do not quote the exact words. Good writers quote others. So citing sources won’t make your writing weaker. It will make it stronger. But you must give credit.
English Language Writing Requirement (ELWR)
Even if you do not need to satisfy the ELWR, the class still requires that you write four essays and two thorough revisions. If you have satisfied the ELWR already, then tell me what goals you have for this class when we meet. I will try to make sure the class is an effective experience for you.
If you need to satisfy the ELWR Requirement, you have to do a few extra things. In this class we will write four essays and revise two of them. We will use those revisions for the ELWR Portfolio. To pass ELWR this quarter, you have to take an in-class exam for one hour, write a letter to the reader about your writing, and submit two essays (totaling 8 to 12 pages long). Each essay includes two drafts, an original draft with my marks on it and a final revision. The two essays will be from our class this quarter. So you should write every essay with a view to revising it to satisfy the ELWR requirement.
Essay Format
On essays for this class please use white paper and black ink, do not give me cover sheet or titles pages, leave space in the margins for my marks, double space, avoid unusual type fonts, write your name, the class, and the date in the upper right corner of the page, make sure the date is accurate, write revision if it is a rewrite, give every essay a title, put a page number on each page, and staple the essay in the upper left hand corner. I will comment on emailed essays, but I need a hard copy to mark the essay and I expect you to provide this. I do not accept essays by email unless we have some previous agreement. And even then, I expect a hard copy to follow.
Any essay in our texts can be used as source material for any essay you write. But no Web material is allowed. No Google. No Wiki. If you have a question about this—or need an exception—talk to me. But I am pretty clear that you need to stay away from the web.
Essay Assignments: (You will receive a full page of description for each of the following assignments. But here is a brief description of what to expect. I may change the assignment significantly if events warrant.)
Essay 1 is on Censorship.
Using the essays provided in Ainsworth, 75 Arguments, especially Chapter 2, please write an analysis of the problem of freedom of expression and its limits. Quote the essays in our texts at least three times for all essays in this course, more if indicated.
Essay 2 is an essay on Identity and Culture.
For this essay we will reach into several chapters in Ainsworth, from Chapter 3, 4, 7 and 9. You will argue that cultural differences need to be understood and either used for happiness and success or modified. Note the essay by Maria Root, “Within, Between, and Beyond Race” or Patel’s “The Media and its representation of Islam and Muslim Women” or Edwards “… Bring me Home a Black Girl” or Sullivan’s “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage.” You can look at culture is many different ways.
Essay 3 will be based on a reading of fist stick knife gun by Geoffrey Canada.
The essay will be supplemented with an oral report on a topic from Canada, wherein you will explain his position on some issue and your view of the same issue.
Essay 4 is on Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
You have a wide variety of options, including
a. Death
Since it is the central theme of the book, it is a common choice of topic. It is challenging to say the least to write about this in an organized way. I recommend simpler concepts.
b. Education.
The book demonstrates a different attitude and approach to education. You could write about rethinking education like this.
c. Choose one of the book’s themes
In class we discussed many of the themes of the book. You could choose one of these themes as well and look at what the book said about it and what you thought about it. The themes include family and forgiveness and love and materialism.
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