Problems of the Environment, the West, and Race
in US History
Spring 2008 - English 1A / History 9
NOTE : THIS SITE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
Peter Blakemore
Office: 134 Creative Arts
Office Hrs: to be announced
and by appointment
Phone: 476-4314
email: peter-blakemore@redwoods.edu
http:// www.redwoods.edu/instruct/pblakemore
George Potamianos
Office: 119 Creative Arts
Office Hrs: by appointment
Phone: 476-4318
email: george-potamianos@redwoods.edu
Required Course Texts & Materials:
- Spring 2008 Course Packet
- The Shape of Reason, John Gage
- They Say, I Say, Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein
- Ecology of Fear, Mike Davis
- The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, George Lipsitz
- Give Me Liberty! Volume 2, Eric Foner
- A good (at least 70,000 words) paperback dictionary
- Access to the Internet
- Access to word processing and printing
These linked classes will be taught as a single course during the term. Both professors will be working with you in the classroom throughout the semester. Mainly we will focus on reading, critical thinking, and writing about arguments of the past 150 years of US history specifically related to the environment, the West, and race. That means that we will be reading especially carefully, analyzing what we read with critical minds, searching for the best, most productive historical questions, and writing about what we discover in the process. As we work through the semester, we will strive to develop skills that should help you in future reading and inquiry. The skills you hone and the habits of mind you gain in this course should also be particularly useful as you continue here at College of the Redwoods and in your future education. By the end of this term, if you have actively participated in the work we do together, you will know what it means to hold an opinion about an issue in US history and whether that opinion is based on reasoned belief, emotional appeal, authority, or something else.
Course Learning Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete the course should be able to:
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Identify and evaluate the issue, claim, and major supporting arguments in a variety of non-fiction texts.
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Write unified, well-developed, logical, coherent, and convincing analytical or argumentative essays.
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Recognize and use a variety of rhetorical strategies appropriate for the purpose and audience of the essay.
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Formulate and defend a stance in response to issues and claims presented in visual, written, or oral arguments.
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Support claims effectively with relevant, thoughtful, and sufficient evidence drawn as appropriate from written texts and from the writer's own experience and knowledge.
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Integrate and correctly cite the ideas of others through paraphrase, summary, and quotation into an essay that expresses the writer's own voice, position, and analysis.
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Locate data or other information, appropriate for a specific need, from a variety of print and electronic sources, including online subscription databases.
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Craft effective sentences of varying structure and type to clarify the meaning, relationship, and importance of ideas.
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Recognize and eliminate significant errors in grammar, usage, and punctuation through careful editing and proofreading.
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Use your sense of the complexity and care required to research a topic to shape your ideas and document the ideas of others as they relate to your own.
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Use source materials to construct your own historical arguments.
Reading Actively
At first glance, the list of texts may seem daunting, but remember that you are reading for two classes combined into one. Even so, we will be asking a good deal of you in your reading: most importantly of all, we ask you to practice active reading. That means that when you read, you ask questions, you wonder about connections, and you struggle to make meaning out of complex ideas. You will need to engage our texts with a spirit of discovery and skepticism. You will also need to be ready to engage in useful, penetrating discussions and group activities about our readings and the ideas we encounter. If you read actively and participate strongly in our discussions and in your individual groups, you will soon see that the selected texts complement and speak to one another. You will, in short, begin to recognize the interconnectedness of inquiry and critical thinking, historical consciousness and composing and presenting your own complex ideas in words. We have organized the course and selected books and essays that should lend themselves to the process of questioning assumptions and discovering the basis for our opinions, particularly where US western, environmental, and racial history are concerned. In general, the central question we will be asking each of you to answer is this: What do these writings, ideas, class discussions, and group presentations lead me to believe? There will be a host of other, more specific questions about historical analysis, critical thinking, rhetoric, research, and composition that arise out of our reading, listening, viewing, talking, and writing, but as long as you are actively pursuing your own understanding of the difficult issues we take up, you should have no problem remaining engaged in our class.
Note: the key word above is "actively." To become a more active student you will have to understand the value of our work for yourself individually and for your community as a collective body. That means you will have to believe that deeper understanding of specific issues in history can have an effect on your actual life. It also means reading with an open mind, fully prepared to entertain new ideas, new images, and new concepts. It means trying to imagine the experiences of those you read about and trying to understand how they were affected by these incidents and thoughts. Reading actively also means you will have to believe that a book-and the ideas and expressions contained within it-can affect a person's life. The reading for this course will demand a great deal from you-please be prepared.
Writing Thoughtfully
It takes most people years to develop a strong personal style in their writing, so please bear this in mind and be patient with yourself as we work through the assignments during this term. Though you may not see the kind of prominent improvement you'd like in just a month or two, many others who read your work and have more objectivity about it will likely notice changes (especially people like us who have been reading college students' essays for a combined total of more than 35 years). One of the most important things you will get from this class if you participate and strive to write better will be a greater consciousness of what happens as you generate ideas, plan and organize your thoughts, then execute and improve them through the process of revision. If you approach your writing in this course as the sort of trying of ideas, opinions, and beliefs that we will ask you to think of it as (the word "essay" derives from the French term for "try"), then you will almost certainly grow as a writer. As for the mechanics and grammar of your writing, since some of you will have excellent skills and others fair to good skills, those of you who have problems will need to spend extra time learning to identify and correct them. We may ask some of you to arrange for individual meetings if your errors persist, but this course is not primarily a course in grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. Throughout the term, we will focus specifically on questions of style and eloquence, but in the main we will be practicing inquiry and argument.
The Assignments
Please pay close attention to the Course Schedule in order to keep track of when readings should be done and when the writing is due. Note: All reading assignments must be done before the start of the class listed. All writing assignments are due at the beginning of class on the day listed. Be sure to come to class prepared for discussion. Brief descriptions of the graded writing assignments follow. (Note: Do not expect to pass this class without handing in all of the writing assignments. Also, make sure you never give us the only copy of an assignment-it is your responsibility to keep electronic and/or paper backup copies).
Essays:
You will be working on several different kinds of writing projects this semester. We will ask you to write in class several times. There will also be two short Inquiry & Research Interest Essays, a Group Project Report, and an Individual Research Project Essay. A list of the due dates for these writings follows:
- In-class Writing #1- Thursday 2/14
- I&RI Essay #1 (2-3 pages) - Tuesday 2/19
- In-class Writing #2 - Thursday 2/21
- Group Project Report - Version 1 (5-6 pages) - Tuesday 3/4
- Group Project Report posted online (Revised) - Friday 3/7
- Group Project Report - Final Version (6-8 pages) - Friday 3/14
- In-class Writing #3- Tuesday 4/1
- I&RI Essay #2 (2-3 pages) - Thursday 4/10
- Individual Research Project Essay-Version 1 (5-6 pages) Tuesday 4/29
- Individual Research Project Essay posted online (Revised) Tuesday 5/2
- Individual Research Project Essay-Final Version (8+ pages) Friday 5/17
Rewrite Policy:
Class members who choose to revise essays to improve them and receive additional credit must fill out a Rewrite Contract that we will give you upon request. You must ask us for one of these contract forms within one week of our returning the writing.
Focusing on Problems and Questions at Issue:
In this class we will spend the majority of our time trying to solve problems. We will start the problem-solving process by asking questions. In academic work, discovering what is at issue often leads into deeper understanding and is one of the first steps in actively researching ideas in order to arrive at reasoned conclusions. For us in this class, the two main problems we will deal with during the semester are:
How do we identify a focus within the larger topic of US Western and environmental history since 1865 and work together in groups to explore aspects of that focus, and how do we then present our materials to the larger class community in such a way that they understand both the significance of what we have discovered and the process we used to come to our reasoned conclusion?
Based on what we have learned from our work on Problem 1, how do we individually identify and research a problem or question at issue within the larger topic of race in America, and how do we then communicate or present our research and conclusions based upon it to the class community?
Group Work:
The overarching issue you will deal with during the term is: How do we do this together? Since Problem 1 culminates in a Group Presentation and Group Project Report, you will need to figure out how to work together. Problem 2, on the other hand, leads toward an individual Research Project Essay & Individual Presentation, so the group work you do during that part of the semester will be of a different nature. We have designed this course so that you, the individual members of the class, will decide how to solve these problems.
In-class Writing:
You should always come to class with pen and paper, and you should always be ready to write. In fact, we will usually ask you to write during class-and you should definitely take notes on our discussion and any lectures. Sometimes the writings will seem more like free-writes to generate ideas for the longer out-of-class inquiries and essays. At other times we will ask you to practice concepts of style and sentence construction or academic form such as quoting, citing, or paraphrasing. You will always need to be prepared to read what you write so, please, no squirming or embarrassment about your ideas or your word choice or the rest. One of the most important aspects of learning to write and reason is learning a sense of audience. Since all the members of our class will be your audience, you need to be prepared to address that audience.
Attendance & Participation:
Since the main purpose of this class is to bring us all together so that we can engage one another in the process of discovering ideas, reasons, opinions and beliefs, each of you needs to be in the classroom on time, ready to think, speak, read, and write. Participating by listening and trying out one's ideas and thoughts during class time is so important to a class like ours that we have decided to set the following attendance policy: students with more than three unexcused absences will drop one grade in the participation portion of their grades. If there are good reasons why you need to miss class, call one of our office phones and let us know before class meets. You should know that poor attendance will certainly lower your grade and may cause you to fail.
Working Online:
We will often place materials and open discussion forums on our class Blackboard site. This will be a place where you can explore your ideas further and check in to see what others from our class have had to say beyond classroom discussion. We will also use Blackboard to set up group forums and communication links during the times when you all will be working together in groups. A link to the class Blackboard account will be available on Peter's home page. You can also access Blackboard at the CR homepage. We will give you a handout with more information about working online at Blackboard and Turnitin.com.
Grading:
Since both instructors will be reading all of your written work and grading the work holistically together, all assignments and grades apply to both classes.
The breakdown for course grades is as follows:
- Participation (Preparation & class discussion) - 15%
- I&RI Essay #1 - 10%
- In-class Writing - 10%
- Group Presentation - 10%
- Group Project Report - 15%
- I&RI Essay #2 - 10%
- Individual Research Project Presentation - 5%
- Individual Research Project - 25%
- Total = 100%
Grades will be assigned on the basis of this scale: 93-100=A / 90-92=A- / 88-89=B+ / 83-87=B / 80-82=B- / 78 - 79=C+ / 70 - 77=C / 60 - 69=D / 59 and below=F.
Plagiarism:
All Essays need to be posted to Turnitin.com before you can receive credit for them. The process is simple and takes only a few minutes. We will give you a handout in the first or second week of the semester explaining the procedure and you will be able to do it anywhere that you have access to the Internet. We have decided to require this not only because the CR English Department recommends it, but also because we have had so many cases of plagiarism in the past several years that we want to curb the temptation as much as possible. Plagiarism, which is the act of claiming another writer's words or ideas as your own without citing them as a source, is a serious breech of academic conduct and will result in failure of the assignment and possible failure for the course. We will discuss it in detail during the term. If you aren't sure whether you're about to plagiarize or not, ask one of us about it.
Learning Disabilities:
Students who have special needs due to physical or learning disabilities should let us know at the very beginning of the course (we mean during this first week) so that we can arrange appropriate accommodations.
An Invitation:
Finally, experience tells us that people who think carefully about their education and become more reflective about it generally have the greatest success. Probably the best way to get involved in this process is to get to know your teachers and speak with them outside of the classroom. Talk to them after class. Visit them in their offices or in the Writing Center. Make appointments and let them know what's going through your mind as it relates to your work in their classes. And most important of all, let your teachers know if something in particular isn't coming across clearly for you. Sometimes your problem is just a particularly difficult concept, a complex section of reading, or a challenging assignment or series of assignments. Your teachers will, in almost every case, want to help you work through those tougher parts of the class. But you need to communicate with them. You especially need to communicate with us-this is an intense and very involved class that requires a lot of discipline from you. If you feel that you are falling behind, you should let us know as soon as possible. If you ask either of us, we will offer plenty of extra help and even direct you toward others who can help. If you choose to sign up for English 152, you can meet with Peter in the Writing Center in LRC 102 where he works two days a week (Tuesday & Thursday 8:30-9:55). We have also kept our office hours minimal or by appointment in order to give students maximum flexibility for meetings. Even if our schedules seem to clash at first glance, come see us-we will certainly be able to schedule a time to meet. If you have to contact either of us, please call our offices (George: 476-4318; Peter: 476-4314) and leave a clear, specific message, including a telephone number and time when you can be reached. We will get back to you as soon as possible. We look forward to getting to know each of you better and to seeing all of you succeed. Welcome and good luck!
We may alter this schedule if it becomes necessary to do so
Note: Clicking on underlined items in the course schedule will send you to relevant pages we have produced for the weeks of the semester.