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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 />
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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