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<strong>Alexander</strong> <strong>Ruch</strong><br />

Sample Freshman Writing Course<br />

Telling Stories: The Fairy Tale<br />

Telling, hearing, reading, writing, and responding to stories are fundamental human activities, as<br />

basic to our existence as eating or sleeping. We hear stories whenever we turn on the news, tell<br />

stories whenever we have job interviews, go on dates, or compose academic papers. In this course,<br />

we will probe into different ways of understanding this need to tell stories, focused through<br />

attention to one of the oldest oral and literary genres: the fairy tale. To do this, we will examine a<br />

variety of fairy tales, from the Grimms‟ collections of oral peasant stories to more recent literary<br />

fairy tales by Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie and animated Disney films.<br />

Along the way, we will engage with different approaches to fairy tales, from cultural history to<br />

literary analysis, developmental psychology, and feminist criticism.<br />

In this course, we won‟t just be passively reading what others have written about fairy tales, but<br />

engaging with that writing to develop our own thoughts about what it means to read and tell stories.<br />

By writing generously about, with, and sometimes against others to enter into a larger conversation<br />

(what Joseph Harris calls “rewriting”), we will hone our skills at making academic arguments that<br />

speak to others. We will become more experienced at identifying different kinds of arguments, and<br />

in different ways of drawing those arguments into our own to create more engaging and persuasive<br />

writing. We will practice conducting academic research, and learn about the reasons behind the<br />

conventions we use to make our claims both compelling and responsible to a larger academic<br />

community. We will examine the traits that make prose clear, concise, cohesive, and coherent, and<br />

learn practical ways to revise prose with those traits in mind. We will also think about the ways that<br />

academics tell stories as ways to advance their own ideas, and try some of these ways out in our own<br />

writing.<br />

Outcomes<br />

Students will learn how to write clearly and how to develop complex, coherent arguments that<br />

engage with expert knowledge through independent scholarly research and correct citation of<br />

sources. As components of this, you can expect to develop your skills in the following areas in<br />

preparation for your future academic writing:<br />

<br />

<br />

<br />

<br />

<br />

<br />

Practicing strategies for inventing, drafting, revising, and editing effective academic writing<br />

Undertaking responsible academic research and employing your findings in the service of an<br />

original, debatable, and compelling argument<br />

Developing close-reading skills and evaluating others‟ arguments<br />

Situating your claims in the context of relevant scholarship, and in the context of<br />

conversations we have in our own class<br />

Identifying, replicating, and reflecting upon the writing strategies and knowledge-making<br />

practices of the scholarly essays you encounter<br />

Learning the joy of thinking carefully about a topic and developing your original ideas in<br />

conversation with others


2<br />

Requirements<br />

Simply put, this course requires a lot of writing and a lot of rewriting. I approach writing as a way of<br />

thinking as well as a way of communicating, and this process of discovery, development, and<br />

refinement doesn‟t happen in a single late-night typing session. For this reason, I treat all writing<br />

turned in before the last week as a draft in process, and I encourage you (and sometimes compel<br />

you) to return to earlier pieces of writing to update, rethink, or just improve them. A collection of all<br />

your completed writing will go into a portfolio due on the last week of class in lieu of a final paper<br />

or exam. Part of the reason for this is personal: I don‟t especially enjoy writing comments on work<br />

considered finished, since the most helpful comments identify places that could use work or are<br />

begging for further development. This way, you will get actually useful comments from both me and<br />

your fellow students and have ample time to incorporate such feedback into future drafts. If this<br />

sounds like more work for you, it is; it is also more work for me, but I have kept the reading load<br />

relatively light to balance this out for both of us.<br />

Grade Breakdown<br />

Short Weekly Writing Assignments: 30% (6 x 5% each)<br />

Longer Paper Drafts: 30% (2 x 15% each)<br />

Final Portfolio Demonstrating Ongoing and Thoughtful Revision: 30%<br />

Workshop and Discussion Participation: 10%<br />

Attendance and Punctuality<br />

We are all responsible to one another in this class, and part of that is being present and prepared for<br />

class. Barring exceptional and well-documented circumstances, your grade will be docked one percentage<br />

point for each missed class over three. Also, arriving over 10 minutes after the start of class constitutes an<br />

absence, and habitual tardiness of even a minute or two won‟t be tolerated.<br />

Assignment Late Policy<br />

Lateness on assignments is unacceptable; if you have a medical excuse or other documented<br />

emergency situation that caused you to be absent from class, I‟ll accept your work upon your return,<br />

but otherwise I want things turned in on time or else not at all.<br />

Course Texts<br />

Along with shorter readings, you should find and purchase copies of the following books:<br />

Harris, Rewriting<br />

Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories<br />

Williams, Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace (2 nd ed.)


3<br />

Class Schedule<br />

Week 1: Bearings<br />

Grimms, “Little Red Cap,”<br />

Perrault, “Puss in Boots”<br />

Harris, Rewriting, “Introduction” and “Coming to Terms”<br />

Assignment for week 2: Write 1 page about a fictional story that has been or is important to you.<br />

This could be a fairy tale, children‟s book, film, tv show, or any other story not recounting real-life<br />

events. The goal is to reflect on how it was important to you, and to start thinking about why. I am<br />

less interested in an argument about the story than I am about getting you (1) thinking about fiction<br />

in your own life, and (2) working at communicating your own interests to others.<br />

Week 2: Why Tell Tall Tales?<br />

Plato, Republic Book X<br />

Tuan, Escapism, “Preface” and “Earth / Nature and Culture”<br />

Harris, Rewriting, “Forwarding”<br />

Assignment for week 3: “Come to terms” with Plato or Tuan on fiction (about 1 page)<br />

Week 3: Fairy Tales, Desire, and Development<br />

Short selections from the Thousand and One Nights<br />

Freud, “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming”<br />

Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, “The Struggle for Meaning” and “The Frame Story of Thousand<br />

and One Nights”<br />

Harris, Rewriting, “Countering”<br />

Assignment for Week 4: “Forward” or “counter” Freud or Bettelheim, using any ONE story we<br />

have looked at in class as evidence (about 2 pages)<br />

Week 4: Storytelling<br />

Benjamin, “The Storyteller”<br />

Zipes, “Revisiting Benjamin‟s „The Storyteller‟”<br />

Watch The Storyteller, “Stone Soup” episode<br />

Harris, Rewriting, “Taking an Approach”<br />

Assignment for Week 5: Take an approach” to some question raised by either Benjamin or Zipes<br />

(about 2 pages)<br />

Week 5: A Social History of the European Fairy Tale<br />

Straparola, “Constantino Fortunato”<br />

Basile, “Cagliuso”<br />

Watch (in class) Puss in Boots (1922, 9 min.)<br />

Zipes, “Fairy Tale Discourse: Toward a Social History of the Genre,” “Of Cats and Men: Framing<br />

the Civilizing Discourse of the Fairy Tale”


4<br />

Assignment for Week 6: Paper 1 draft (5-6 pages)<br />

[Paper 1: Argument paper developing one of your shorter writing assignments into a convincing and<br />

compelling intervention in that topic, and drawing on adequate primary and secondary evidence to<br />

support your claims]<br />

Week 6: Feminist Approaches to Fairytales<br />

Rowe, “Feminism and Fairy Tales”<br />

Stone, “Difficult Women in Folktales”<br />

Assignment for Week 7: Read your group‟s drafts carefully and complete the peer review rubric<br />

Week 7: Workshopping Paper 1<br />

Peer Review Paper Drafts<br />

Harris, Rewriting, “Revising”<br />

Assignment for Week 8: Revise paper 1 based on the peer review<br />

Week 8: Feminist Revisions<br />

Perrault, “Bluebeard”<br />

Carter, The Bloody Chamber, “The Bloody Chamber,” “The Company of Wolves,” and “Puss-in-<br />

Boots”<br />

Atwood, “Bluebeard‟s Egg”<br />

Assignment for Week 9: Both Carter, and Atwood find resources for modern literature in fairy tales,<br />

while also criticizing and revising some conventions (especially expectations surrounding gender) of<br />

the. Choose one aspect of either of their approaches that you find original, enlightening, curious, or<br />

in some other way remarkable and explain why you find it so in 2-3 pages.<br />

Week 9: Conducting Research<br />

Library Session<br />

Assignment for Week 10: Begin research for Paper 2. You must bring in a list of at least 3 scholarly<br />

sources relevant to your topic. If you have trouble identifying 3 sources, by all means consult with<br />

one of the research librarians. This is not cheating—they are there to help you with your research!<br />

Week 10: Revising for Style<br />

We will cover the basics in class, but you may wish to consult Williams, Style: The Basics of Clarity and<br />

Grace (2 nd ed.) for more detail<br />

Bring your most recent draft of Paper 1 to class to workshop<br />

Assignment for Week 11: Paper 2 draft 1 (5-6 pages)<br />

[Paper 2: Research paper on a Disney film of your choice, incorporating at least 3 relevant secondary<br />

academic sources (discussed in week 9)]<br />

Week 11: Workshopping Paper 2<br />

Peer Review Paper Drafts


5<br />

Begin Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories<br />

Assignment for Week 12: Revise paper 2 based on the peer review<br />

Week 12: Scheherazade on the Run<br />

Finish Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories<br />

Teverson, “Fairy Tale Politics: Free Speech and Multiculturalism in Haroun and the Sea of Stories”<br />

Assignment for Week 13: We have seen a number of fairy tales, and approaches to fairy tales. Now<br />

it is time to write your own (to be told aloud in class). I have no page limit or requirement, but it<br />

shouldn‟t take more than 7 minutes to tell. I do, however, require that you write a 1-page<br />

justification for why you wrote the story you did the way you did, and it has to relate in some<br />

reasonable way to something we talked about during the semester. The story is due next week; the<br />

justification is not due in the final portfolio.<br />

Week 13: The Sharing of Stories<br />

Storytelling and Oral Feedback<br />

Assignment for Week 14: Review your portfolio and indicate which two of the short writing<br />

assignments you have revised to include along with your story, the story justification, and the two<br />

longer papers<br />

Week 14: Wrapping Things Up and General Festivities<br />

Final Portfolio of all writing (please indicate which pieces are revised since the previous iteration) due

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