Writing Program: 2008-2009
Description
As a vital part of academic study, personal expression, and civic life, writing merits concerted attention in a liberal education. The Writing Program encourages students to become rigorous thinkers and writers who can construct arguments that matter, craft prose that resonates with their intended audience, and understand how writing and learning cannot be extricated. We offer advanced courses in writing and rhetoric, run the Writing Center, and administer the first-year writing seminars.
All first-year students take one of these writing seminars. Taught by faculty from across the College, the seminars explore a particular theme or field of study while emphasizing writing as a means of inquiry, analysis, and persuasion. The courses come in three varieties: WS-D sections adopt the perspective of a particular academic discipline; WS-T sections focus on a given topic; and WS-I sections prepare students who need extra exposure to academic writing. To help students negotiate the demands of academic writing, courses include practice in critical reading, argumentation, style, and editing; they also stress writing as a process, where the first draft is not the last and where feedback from peers becomes crucial in revising.
Students interested in Creative Writing will find these courses listed under the English Department.
Faculty
Acting Director of the Writing Program and Assistant Professor of English Debora Sherman
Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Consultant to the Writing Program Kristin Lindgren
Francis B. Gummere Professor of English Kimberly Benston
Professor of English C. Stephen Finley
Elizabeth Ufford Green Professor of Natural Sciences Judith Owen
Associate Professor of Anthropology Zolani Ngwane
Associate Professor of Computer Science Steven Lindell
Associate Professor of English Gustavus Stadler
Associate Professor of English Christina Zwarg
Director of the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Teacher Education Program and Senior Lecturer in Education Alice Lesnick
Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nilgun Banu
Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Andrew Fenton
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Rebecca Sheehan
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Maurizio Giammarco
Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing Joseph Benatov
Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing Peter Gaffney
Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing Matt Ruben
Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing Carol Schilling
Visiting Lecturer in Writing Josh Brooks
Visiting Lecturer in Writing Cedric Tolliver
Writing Seminars
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102 Justice: A Cross-Cultural and Cross-National Perspective HU
J.Brooks
An exploration of how concepts of justice and criminality are related to cultural and national identity. We will read fiction, philosophy, cultural criticism, and journalism on a wide range of issues - from the O.J. Simpson trial to principles of Islamic Law to motorcycles gangs in Japan - and then examine questions such as: Are concepts of justice universal? What constitutes a just punishment? Is the American judicial system fair? We will have discussions and debates to hone critical thinking and persuasive argumentation skills and examine aspects of the writing process critical for creating effective essays: from generating ideas and interesting theses, to making sure an essay is focused, to editing for clear and precise prose. This is a first-semester course with individual tutorials that prepares students for a second-semester topic-based or discipline-based writing. Prerequisite: Open only to members of the first-year class as assigned by the Director of College Writing.103 Narratives of Resistance, Change and Activism HU
P. Gaffney
From the Dandi Salt March of 1930 to the 2000 Water Riots in Bolivia, civil disobedience and other forms of resistance have had a major impact on social, political and economic relations worldwide. This course will examine the strategies of a number of suffragist and civil rights movements, with an aim to understanding whether (and how) they have succeeded in overcoming inequality and social injustice with regard to race, gender, class and religion. What does a culture of resistance aim to achieve? Are there many movements, or do all movements strive to achieve the same goal? What are the philosophical (but also practical) differences between violent and non-violent resistance? How do we distinguish the "message" of a movement from the rhetorical strategies it deploys to mobilize support? The course will include speeches, films, songs and texts by Mohandas Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Spike Lee, Che Guevara, Ozomatli, Oscar Olivera and Angela Davis. Prerequisite: Open only to first year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. This is a first-semester course with individual tutorials that prepares students for a second-semester topic-based or discipline-based writing. Enrollment limited to 10 students.116 Illness, Medicine, and Storytelling HU
K.Lindgren
An exploration of the narrative dimension of disease. We will examine the forms that stories of illness take and the purposes they serve, and also how doctors such as Freud and Oliver Sacks have shaped the genre of the case history. Prerequisite: Open only to first year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
117 Reading Culture: Poverty in the United States HU
M.Ruben
Poverty is one of the most persistent problems and controversial issues in the United States. Along with its obvious economic dimensions, poverty has a wide variety of cultural meanings. In fact, the subject of poverty forces us to think critically about how we define and understand the concept of culture. Through a selective critical examination of fiction and nonfiction works addressing the theme of poverty in America, this course will explore key methods for studying and writing about culture. It will look at how poverty and poor people have been discussed and represented in the United Sates at various points during the last 125 years, and it will provide an opportunity to explore the many ways "poverty" and "culture" intersect and interact, each term affecting the meaning of the other. Readings from Horatio Alger, Sandra Cisneros, Michael Eric Dyson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Harrington, Jacob Riis, and Richard Wright. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing.
119 Life-Altering Conditions HU
C.Schilling
Always in emergencies we invent narrative, observed the writer Anatole Broyard when he became a cancer patient. We will read his and other narratives about the experience of responding to and living with medical and disabling conditions that alter lives. These stories will bring us to complicated questions about human resilience; the making of identity; the constructions of normality, difference, and human community; and medical, ethical, and social responses to alterations of the body. We will also speculate about the contributions of writing and other arts to the process of living with and interpreting the fluid states of human bodies. We will concentrate on essays and print memoirs, but also include some poems, a graphic memoir, and film. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
120 Evolutionary Fictions HU
C.Schilling
The capacious explanatory power of Darwin's concept of evolution depended upon the metaphors and stories that circulated in the scientist's cultural world to make a startling idea accessible and persuasive. Ever since their publication, The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man have, in turn, generated literary fictions representing disparate interpretations of evolution's meaning to human culture. We will trace these cultural exchanges between science and literature by reading selections from Darwin's writing along with literary works that have responded either explicitly or indirectly to his ideas. We will discuss the literary and cultural fate of some of Darwin's key words, such as "survival," "extinction," "adaptation," "fittest," and "progress." And we will speculate about how they enter certain constructions of abundant productivity or irretrievable loss, incremental alteration and catastrophic change, stunning beauty or grotesque horror, competition or cooperation, elegant design or universal chaos. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
122 Writing in Public Health NA (Cross-listed in Biology)
J.Owen
The study of public health and the development of public health policy are multidisciplinary activities which engage students and practitioners in the areas of science, medicine, mathematics, public policy, economics and politics. This course will address both national and global public health issues. In the first half of the semester, students will read and write about the increasing rate at which Americans are afflicted with type 2 diabetes, analyze why it preferentially affects certain racial and ethnic groups and develop their own ideas about how to ameliorate this incipient public health disaster. The second half of the course will focus on the ongoing problem of infectious disease in America and in the countries of the third world. Despite more than a century of research, we have still not solved the global health problems associated with influenza, malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Students will learn about the biology of some of these diseases and study the mechanisms which are currently being used to minimize their impact on the health of different populations. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing.
126 Passion, Proof and Persuasion: The Nature of Scientific Inquiry NA (Cross-listed in Biology)
J.Owen
An exploration of the narratives underlying scientific discovery. Using select scientific memoirs and biographies as a guide, we will explore motivations that drive scientists and scientific breakthroughs. We will then analyze the work of a single biologist from multiple perspectives and examine how scientific controversy is portrayed in the media and in fiction. Finally, by evaluating the writings of scientists and journalists, we will work together to determine the most effective models of communication of scientific advances. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)127a The Voice of Terrorism HU
M. Giammarco
From the first century to the twenty-first, terrorism has been a chilling phenomenon that has reverberated throughout human history. Neither random, spontaneous, nor blind, terrorism is a deliberate use of violence against civilians for either political or religious ends. To better understand the many aspects of this subject, we will read literature, fiction and non-fiction, as well as watch films such as The Battle of Algiers, Four Days in September, Bloody Sunday, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, and The Terrorist that dramatize the psychological and ideological factors at work amid complex political struggles.Prerequisite: Open only to first year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing.128 Reading Sacred Texts HU
N.Koltun-Fromm
An introduction to reading sacred texts in an academic setting. In this course we will apply a variety of methodological approaches - literary, historical, sociological, anthropological, or philosophical - to the reading of religious texts, documents, and materials. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
129 The Lotus Sutra: Text, Image, and Practice HU (Cross-listed in East Asian Studies and Religion)
Staff
An exploration of the Lotus Sutra, arguably the most important text in the history of East Asian Buddhism. We will examine its narrative and doctrinal dimensions, study artistic representations of its stories, and explore the practice and cult of the text. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
131b Food, Culture and Society HU
M. Giammarco
Behind the popular expression "You are what you eat" lies a great deal for contemplation, for food is much more than nourishment: It is tradition, anthropology, biology, history, and folklore, to name only a few areas; toward that end, this course will examine the many ways in which people work, think, and communicate with food. Prerequisite: Open only to first year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing.132 Writing Beethoven HU (Cross-listed in Music)
R.Freedman
(Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
133 The American West in Fact and Fiction SO
E.Lapsansky
An examination of the imagery of the American West. Using visual and verbal images, this course explores such diverse aspects of the West as cowboys, cartography, water rights, race and social class, technology, religion, prostitution, and landscape painting. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
136 Myth & Society HU
B.Mulligan
Why did Vergil turn to the myth of Troy to comment on the rise of Rome s empire and the fall of its republican government? How did Freud use the myth of Oedipus in formulating the principles of psychoanalysis? Focusing on the mythologies of the ancient Mediterranean in particular those of Greece and Rome we will explore the roles that myth can play in society. In the process of investigating variety of approaches individuals and societies can take to myth, students will hone their abilities at critical reading and writing. Whenever possible, we will draw connections and comparisons to the mythologies of other cultures (including our own). Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
137 The Rhetoric of Force in Classical Greece HU
A.Fenton
The interplay between violence and persuasion fascinated the ancient Greeks, and will make up the topic for this class. Beginning with the Iliad's conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles for supremacy among the Achaeans, Greeks regularly paired the effective use of rhetoric with the use of physical force. By reading and analyzing such authors as Sophocles, Plato and Aristophanes, we will examine the role of rhetoric in controlling and shaping violence within a democratic society. We will investigate the importance of persuasive speech in converting individual vengeance into collective justice, as well as its function of legitimizing the use of force by the state. [Carries Humanities divisional credit.] Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
138 Critical Issues in Education: Politics and Practices SO (Cross-listed in Education)
A.Lesnick
The primary goal of this course is to contribute to the growth of each student as an academic writer. By "academic," the course includes personal knowledge, experience, and reflection as connected to close reading, analysis, and argumentation. To this end, students in the course undertake a range of writing projects, with attention throughout to the role of informal writing and revision in extending learning. This seminar explores major educational issues in the United States in relation to the ongoing need for educational reform. Students analyze historical and philosophical conceptions of education, theories of learning and development, linkages between social identities and schooling, and relationships among knowledge, language, and power. Prerequisite: Open only to members of the first-year class as assigned by the Director of College Writing (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
139 Prostitution/Sex Work Debates SO
N.Banu
There is, perhaps, no social phenomenon as steeped in controversy, confusion and mythology as prostitution. For some prostitution is the ultimate symbol of women's sexual exploitation in a patriarchal society whereas others differ by arguing that not all prostitutes are exploited victims but rather agents with control over their actions. Some see prostitution as a timeless phenomenon, the oldest profession that holds mirror to some essential dynamics between the sexes. Others describe it as an economic transaction that has taken different forms throughout history. How do we understand the interplay of money, morality and gender/sexuality at the center of prostitution? What kinds of policies are needed to address the conditions of people living in prostitution? In this course we will explore these issues seeking help from the writings of feminist thinkers, activists and prostitutes. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)142b Excursions in the Void: Existentialism, Nihilism and Radical Doubt HU
145b The Culture of War HU
P.Gaffney
This course will explore the ethical, political and aesthetic implications of existentialism with reference to other "moments of doubt" in philosophy and literature, including nihilism and radical doubt. Writing assignments and class discussion will aim at answering questions like the following: What is existentialism good for? Does it constitute a plausible strategy for engaging the complexity, difficulty and ambiguity of everyday experience? Prerequisite: Open only to first year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing.
P. Gaffney
This course takes a close look at cultural production about or during times of war, with an aim to understand the way particular authors, artists and filmmakers negotiate discourses of nationalism, terrorism, hypermasculinity, the rational and the irrational, and the role of the media. The course will focus on WWI, WWII and the Vietnam War, but will also consider similar themes from the post-Cold War era, including the war in the Balkans, and the Gulf and Iraq War. Some of the questions we will consider include: What have been the motivations and justifications for war as represented in these texts and other media? What have been the effects of war on soldiers and on those who remain at home? How does the rhetoric of war shape society and its institutions, even during times of peace? Prerequisite: Open only to first year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. -
146 Freedom and Power in the Information Age NA
D.Wonnacott
An exploration of the impact of information technology on our ability to create a balance between conflicting rights, e.g. does the government have a right to wiretap our phones? How can we balance copyright protection with our right to free speech? We will examine arguments that have been made for various balances at various times and enter into the fray with our own essays, sharing drafts with each other and using feedbackto produce work that is clearly written, logically consistent, and relevant. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
147 The History of Mechanical Thought NA
S.Lindell
An exploration of the history of computer and information systems, from early number systems to binary logic, and from the abacus to the modern computer. We will also explore what makes a machine automatic, or a general purpose calculating machine. Prerequisite: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
148 Innovation, Rebellion and Dissent HU
J.Benatov
What motivates people to rebel? This course examines the notions of originality and dissent from both a social and an aesthetic perspective. Our readings and analyses during the semester will demonstrate that there is no clear-cut separation between these two spheres and that artistic and social idiosyncrasy are mutually constitutive elements. Readings include: Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener; Jorge Luis Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius; Philip Roth, The Conversion of the Jews, Eli the Fanatic; J.D. Salinger, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," "Teddy"; Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Pulp Fiction, Dir. Quentin Tarantino; Adaptation, Dir. Spike Jonze; Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.149 Destination Eastern Europe HU
J.Benatov
Over the past decade or so, Prague and Budapest have rapidly become two of the most appealing travel destinations in Europe. Until not too long ago, however, they were still part of socialist Eastern Europe. Situated for almost half a century behind an ideological Iron Curtain, this region remained America's political enemy during the long decades of the Cold War. In this course, we will explore a variety of cultural representations of this most enigmatic, secluded, and 'un-Western' part of Europe. How do ideas, images, and stereotypes of people and places change after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989? More importantly, how is our understanding of American culture and identity enriched by analyzing U.S. fiction, films, and journalism engaged with Eastern Europe? Fiction: John Updike, "Rich in Russia," "Bech in Rumania," "The Bulgarian Poetess," "Bech in Czech," 1970; Philip Roth, "The Prague Orgy," 1985; Saul Bellow, "The Dean's December", 1981; Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 2000; Annie Ward, "The Making of June", 2002 Non-fiction: Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (excerpts).
150 Introduction to Literary Analysis HU (Cross-listed in English)
K.Benston,S.Finley,D.Sherman,G.Stadler,C.Zwarg
Intended like other sections of the Writing Program to advance students critical reading and analytical writing skills, this course is geared specifically towards introducing students to the discipline that studies the literary traditions of the English language. One of its aims is to explore the broad range of thematic interests inherent in these traditions, sharing as they do common roots in the history of our language and its influences. The powers and limits of language; ideas of character and community, and the relation between person and place; heroic endeavor and the mystery of evil; loss and renovation these are among the themes to be tracked through various strategies of literary representation and interpretation in a variety of genres (epic, narrative, and poetry) and modes (realism, allegory, and romance), and across a range of historical periods. Our goal is to develop the vocabulary, skills, and knowledge necessary to understand not only how we decide what literary texts mean, but also how literary texts generate and contemplate meaning. Courses 2008-09: Benston, "Marvelous and Monstrous Passions"; Sherman, "Memory: the Use(s) of the Past; Stadler, "Encountering the Unknown"; Zwarg, "Reality is an Activity of the Most August Imagination". Prerequisite: Open only to members of the first-year class as assigned by the Director of College Writing. (Satisfies the freshman writing requirement.)
220 Writing About Science/Science Writing HU
C.Schilling
This course offers instruction and practice in writing about topics in the sciences, medicine, and nature for a range of audiences and purposes. Prerequisite: First-year Writing Seminar.
480 Independent Study HU
C.Tolliver, J.BrooksCOURSES AT BRYN MAWR
(These courses do not fulfill the writing requirement of Haverford College)English 125 Writing Workshop
English 126 Writing Workshop for Non-Native Speakers of English
English 220 Writing in Theory/Writing in Practice: The Study of the Teaching of Writing (Also listed as Education 220)