Comp\Post

Guidelines: Each of the first four writing projects should be approximately 3-4 double-spaced pages (12 point font, standard margins) and will be submitted to Blackboard. Approximate means that a piece much shorter than 3, or much longer than 4, is in need of revision and rethinking for the purposes of the given assignment. The final project will be longer and have additional requirements.

Audience: I am only the initial reader of your essay. Since we are emphasizing that writers seek to communicate their writing in a variety of public/published forms, you need to consider a larger audience for each of the essays–and let that audience inform your writing and revision. Generally speaking, your audience for these projects will be readers who are interested in what first year students at Wahsington College are writing and learning. This means that they have a basic knowledge of this course and its assignments, but no specific knowledge of the texts you are discussing or ideas you are exploring. One goal of mine is to have you submit a final version of one of these essays for publication in a digital magazine I am developing for first-year writers at Washington College. Readers of that magazine will be: your peers, other professors on campus, your parents, future students–all interested in getting a better view of how first-year students at WAC think and write. This is your audience.

Writing Project #1: Autobiographical Wreading

Develop a 3-4-page essay reflecting on your life as a reader/writer. You have some models to consider in Birkerts, Graff, and Hayles for how strong and engaging critical writing can be effective and deliberate in using autobiographical reflection to develop its focus on significant ideas. In other words, your essay should demonstrate your understanding that autobiographical reflection (at least the kind I want to read) does not mean merely writing about yourself—does not read like a resume.

• The question you will be answering in this essay (think of your thesis/focus as the answer to this question): What is your view of the significance of reading/writing and how has that view been shaped by your experience as a reader/writer? [I am leaving it up to you whether you want to deal with reading or writing or some combination of the two]
• Specific writing focal point for this project: critical reflection—developing significance and focus through reflection. One way you should focus your attention and your argument/thesis: cite and explain what Birkerts, Hayles or Graff say about reading/writing–and use that to then focus on your own view in response. Another way to focus is to narrow your scope: you will need to focus on some key autobiographical examples of your engagement with reading/writing (say 2 or 3) that help demonstrate and develop the overall significance you are writing about.

Writing Project #2: Intertextual Wreading

Develop a 3-4 page essay that reads and illuminates an intertextual moment or episode in the novel Frankenstein—in other words, a place where Shelley has explicitly or implicitly incorporated another text into the novel. This intertextual link might be a direct quotation or allusion to another text or author: for example, various references to Paradise Lost (beginning with the epigraph) or quotation of Coleridge or Wordsworth or Percy Shelley. The intertextual link might be (if you choose) more subtle in the connection: perhaps a textual moment (remember how we have discussed this idea of ‘text’) that refers to an earlier moment in this novel or even to itself as a text–say, for example, an act of reading or writing letters. The keys for your selection should be that it is a passage of the novel that you have noticed for its textual implications, one that interests you as a reader and writer, and one that you believe can help illuminate something significant about this novel.

• Questions you should consider in shaping your essay and its thesis: Why is the particular intertextual passage you have focused on significant to the novel—what light does it shed on the larger text of the novel? What do we need to understand in reading this intertextual passage (and the text it links to) in order to understand that larger significance? You can think of the novel as having a thesis: or, your interpretation of the novel as a thesis–something crucial you think this novel is about. In that sense, you can also think of the intertextual passage/connection you focus on as illuminating/supporting the ‘thesis’ of the novel.
• Specific writing focal point: the close reading and illumination of texts and their implications; effectively reading and integrating another text with the text of your writing; complicating (in the good sense) our critical vision and development of ideas in our writing.

Writing Project #3: Remediated Wreading

Develop a 3-4 page essay that analyzes a film (your choice) and its interpretation of the Frankenstein story. This film need not explicitly be titled or be about Frankenstein—for example, one might argue that “Blade Runner” or “Memento” are versions of the Frankenstein story.

Whatever the film, you will focus on analyzing how the film (as a film)  takes up and remediates Mary Shelley’s original novel: how the film interprets Shelley’s text and remediates or translates that text into another medium. To focus your analysis down to size for this assignment, consider the following questions: What is the primary interpretation or “thesis” of this film in its re-telling  of the Frankenstein story? What does it emphasize in its version of Frankenstein? To borrow from the Graff’s, you can think of the film as having a thesis in the sense that the original story says one thing (they say) and the film offers its response (I say). What does the film say with regard to the original novel?

In order to read the film closely, consider: What 1 or 2 aspects of this film (again, as a film, a different medium than a print novel) do you read as significant in how the film uses/interprets/remediates the novel? In other words, since this is a film text, you will need to do some slow reading of key scenes and pay attention to all that goes into a scene (and maybe even into one frame from one scene). Based on your media specific analysis of these aspects of the film, in comparison to the novel, how do you view this film’s interpretation of the novel—what is it doing with the Frankenstein story?

Specific writing focal point: media specific analysis—paying attention to the specifics of the medium of film (and its differences from the medium of print writing) and using that to enhance your critical analysis. We focus on this as a way to develop the specificity of our writing more generally–the importance of being specific and concrete with our language and details, particularizing the ideas of your writing for your reader. Remember the idea from Marshall McLuhan we have discussed–the medium is the message/massage; and from Katherine Hayles–materiality is content. You will be elaborating the “message” of the film (its interpretation of the novel, its thesis, so to speak) by showing how it is conveyed in the film but also through the film–how the message is influenced by the medium and materiality of the film. We will also be continuing to think about the “massage” (and effects) of our own writing. You might think of this essay as a ‘remediation’ of the last essay you wrote on Frankenstein–in that you are sharpening your interpretation and thesis regarding this novel; and also giving more attention to the ways the story shows up in different media.

To start your composting, consider: What are the material aspects of film? How do those material and medium specific characteristics figure into the scenes you might focus on? Remember the shower scene from “Psycho,” where the meaning is conveyed through the way the scene is made and shot and edited. You will be looking for those characteristics of the film you select.

Consider You Tube as a useful way to get at some close reading of scenes from a film. For example, the “It’s Alive” from the original 1931 Frankenstein.

Writing Project #4: Digital Wreading

Develop a 3-4 page essay that applies ideas from Birkerts and/or Hayles in support of your own critical reading of Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl.

• Questions you will be considering: In your critical view, what does Patchwork Girl achieve—or perhaps fail to achieve—as a novel? How does this text, as a digital text (we will continue to employ media specific analysis and close/slow reading in our thinking and writing) reach or fail to reach that achievement? What ideas from Birkerts and/or Hayles inform your critical view and will help you elaborate your reading of Jackson’s text?
• Specific writing focal point: critical application/integration—assessing the critical argument of another writer (secondary source–in this case, something from Birkerts and/or Hayles) and effectively applying that argument to your own.

Final Project: Further Wreading

The final writing project of the course is the place for you to demonstrate your understanding of ideas from the reading and strategies and experiences from your previous writing. It is an opportunity for you to develop what I expect to be your most substantial piece of critical writing to this point in your career as a writer and to polish your work suitable for presentation in a public forum. Further details under Final Project.

Assessment and Evaluation:

As you will come to learn, I believe that it is crucial for developing writers (of which I am still one, just working on some different things and with more gray hair than you) to receive ongoing feedback that can be used to reinforce and revise the kinds of writing experiences you are having. For that reason, in addition to the feedback you will get from me and from your peers in workshops, I will assess your writing projects by using the evaluation rubric described below. This rubric will provide you with information that you can take into conferences with me and into your next writing—information that is more robust than a single letter (A, B, C, etc.). I will expect you to consult this rubric and reflect upon other records of your assessment in preparing to conference with me, especially when you have any questions about my evaluation or about what you experienced during the writing project.

Rubric

[1]Critical Vision [25 points]: how well the writing responds to readings, integrates texts, and establishes a focus and thesis.

[2]Development [25 points]: how well the writing organizes its topic and how thoroughly it develops its focus, including the effectiveness of the essay’s revision

[3]Presentation [25 points]: the effectiveness of the style and your editing of linguistic elements of the writing (and in some cases, such as the final project, multimedia elements); aspects of writing and editing informed by our strong writing rubric, our experiments with revision and editing strategies in class, your own to-do lists, your grammar/rhetoric explorations, guidance from the Writing Center.

[4]Specific Focal Point [25 points]: For each project there will be a specific focal point that we will be exploring relevant to the focus of that unit of the course

For each 25-point category, the evaluation will be based on the following scale:

24-25: Excellent. Elements are vividly present in all aspects, rendering the writing impressive as well as effective.

20-23: Strong. Elements are present and effective in all aspects of the writing, room for development or improvement in one area.

18-19: Emerging. Elements are sufficiently present, with room to improve in more than one aspect of the writing to strengthen the effect.

15-17: Weak. Elements are inconsistently present, weakening the writing in several aspects, in need of further revision

10-14: Failing. Elements are largely absent and in need of significant revision

0: Nonexistent.