PBDS.626

LITERARY NONFICTION

NOTE: This is representative of the syllabi for this course. It is not necessarily the syllabus being used in any one semester.

Experimentation in writing various kinds of nonfiction, including personal essays, travel essays, humor, profiles, memoirs. Focus is on the use of literary techniques within the context of the form's traditions and contemporary innovations.

Writers such as Jan Morris, Tom Wolfe, John McPhee, E.B. White, Norman Mailer, Tracy Kidder, Joan Didion, Calvin Trillin, James Agee and S.J. Perelman will be contrasted and compared. Each student will make a class presentation regarding these (or other) writers and each student will write about ten assignments throughout the semester. Editing other's work, as well editing your own, will also be stressed.

We'll be learning skills, approaches, strategies to writing non-fiction. Less emphasis will be placed on bald facts, knowledge or ideas. This will be an excursion into self and into discipline and into the limits of style and form and its appropriateness for each of us. Start-to-finish in this course, the emphasis will be on the act of writing; on developing critical and analytical skills; on understanding the purpose and structure and design of specific forms of writing.

Everything will be in the service of the writing. If everything works out, nothing will be extraneous to the writing since writing doesn't occur in a vacuum, a void, or a narcissistic black hole fueled by ego, impulse or vanity.

Hopefully, you'll leave this course with an enhanced appreciation for the possibilities and power of literary nonfiction -- and for what you bring to it. You may also be better able to tolerate the confusion, uncertainty, ambivalence and fear that are an inescapable part of serious writing.

REQUIRED READING

There will be many, many handouts.

RECOMMENDED READING (as well as recommended additions to your library):

• Literary Journalism, edited by Norman Sims and Mark Kramer. Ballantine Books, 1995.

• Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. Allyn & Bacon, 2000.

• On Writing Well by William Zinsser. HarperCollins, 1998.

• Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, edited by George Plimpton. Viking Press. A multi-volume series of interviews with such writers as James Thurber, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut on the "guts" of their writing -- how they write, why they write, their daily struggles with writing, etc.

Every week, try to read:

• "Talk of the Town" or a longer article/essay in The New Yorker.

• The Washington Post's "Style" Section

• If you come across interesting, well-written articles in these or other publications, please bring them in for class discussion and let me know at the beginning of the class that you have something to discuss.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

Keep a writer's notebook. A three-ring binder may work best for this. For each week of the class, write in your notebook two to three ideas that you'd like to develop as articles or even as books. Each idea should include: the slant you'd take when writing the article or book, what pulls you toward this idea, how you'd approach the topic, how you'd research it. Keep your entries in this notebook brief. I will collect the notebooks on Nov. 11. Grades for the journals will pivot on the creativity, imagination, effort and ambition of your ideas.

The note is not class notes. It is ideas --your ideas-- and primarily for your personal use. Do not be overly concerned with neatness. Your entries can be done in handwriting or with a word processor or on an old typewriter you found in a junkyard. What's important is 1) entries be neat enough so I can read them; 2) you not spend more time addressing legibility than you do addressing creativity. (On the other hand, don't be too tempted by illegibility. After all, I do have to read them.)

Other than the notebook, writing assignments will be given in the number of desired words. The length of an assignment is not arbitrary, although it is somewhat flexible. For a 1,500-word assignment, for example, you don't have to hit that magic number right on the button. On the other hand, don't skimp and write 1,000 words. And don't write a bloated 2,000 words. A general rule of thumb is that going over or under an assigned length by 150-200 words is dandy. Anything excessively above or below that number will be a problem.

Assignments have specific lengths to give you a feel for a form of writing, for the discipline involved in it, for your own proclivity for -- and comfort in -- that style. Don't be seduced by the numbers! The compression necessary when writing a 500-word essay may be as difficult as the discipline and/or research and/or thinking demanded when taking a 2,500-word essay to full length. Maybe more difficult.

Assignments should be double-spaced in 12-point characters. Always use one-inch margins and indent paragraphs. Do not have an extra space between paragraphs. Those extra spaces disrupt the reading process, turn each paragraph into an isolated island of its own and interrupt the flow of meaning and effect.

REVISIONS

Every writing assignment (except the writer's notebook) can be revised twice. The grade for the latest revision will replace previous grades received for that assignment.

No revision will be accepted unless all previous versions of that assignment are stapled to it.

Only two assignments will receive separate grades for the original version and the revised version: the essay on awareness and the last assignment of the semester -- the 1,500 word article.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS

Starting around the fifth week of the course, each student will make a 30- minute presentation about the books and authors you have focused on. You can read either two (or more) books by one author or one (or more) books by two authors. You can compare authors, styles, structure, topics, careers, etc. The overall purpose is to qualify how close any of these writers or books come to "literature," how far they push the envelope of non-fiction, and how successful they are at doing this.

Below are suggested books/authors. If there are other books and authors you'd like to read, please ask me to approve them:

Ota: The Pygmy in the Zoo -- Harvey Blume

Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life -- Richard Ben Cramer

Long Quiet Highway -- Natalie Goldberg

Writing Down the Bones -- Natalie Goldberg

Patrimony -- Philip Roth

Growing Up -- Russell Baker

Total Loss Farm -- Raymond Mungo

The Soul of a New Machine -- Tracy Kidder

The Perfect Storm -- Sebastian Junger

Into Thin Air -- Jon Krakauer

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men -- James Agee

A Walker in Jerusalem -- Samuel Heilman

Coming into the Country -- John McPhee

The John McPhee Reader -- edited by William Howarth

Holy Days -- Lis Harris

French Lessons -- Alice Kaplan

In Cold Blood -- Truman Capote

The Right Stuff -- Tom Wolfe

Miami and the Siege of Chicago -- Norman Mailer

The Steps of the Pentagon -- Norman Mailer

Of a Fire on the Moon -- Norman Mailer

Out of Africa -- Isak Deniesen

The White Album -- Joan Didion

Uncivil Liberties -- Calvin Trillin

Alice, Let's Eat -- Calvin Trillin

GRADING

Grades will be given on every writing assignment:

F -- for work that does not satisfy in any way the course requirements and/or the graduate level of this course.

C-, C, C+ -- for work that barely satisfies the course requirements and/or the graduate level of this course.

B-, B, B+ -- good, solid, commendable work.

A-, A -- work so accomplished, so polished, so skilled that an editor receiving it would immediately shriek "Eureka!" and sprint down the hall to brag to colleagues that another Hemingway, Wolfe, Mailer, Capote, McPhee has just been discovered.

There is no final exam

Grades received for your writing assignments will account for 65 percent of your final grade; your oral presentation will account for 20 percent; class participation and attendance will account for 15 percent. Also influencing the final grade will be your progress and improvement as a writer and as a thinker about writing since the beginning of the semester.

Class participation is not class attendance. "Attendance" means bodily and (hopefully) mentally present from the beginning to the end of each class. "Participation" means you are contributing to the class with comments, insights, readings you have discovered on your own, yelps of revelation, groans of dismay, holy/transcendent/beatific visions. (But please: NO speaking in tongues.)

Any assignment not turned in during the class when it is due will lose half a letter grade. Assignments more than one week late will lose a full letter grade.

No assignment can be e-mailed to me.

Excessive and repeated tardiness will adversely affect your grade, as will more than two absences.

PLAGIARISM:

It is illegal and unethical to use someone else's work without properly crediting the source. If you are not sure whether to credit a source or to quote or paraphrase or use original language, please ask me in advance -- or err on the side of citing the source you are using. If I discover you've plagiarized material for this course, I will follow the university's policy of academic integrity. (See the UB Student handbook for this policy.) Under that policy, the consequences of plagiarism can include failing the course and being expelled from the university.

OFFICE HOURS

My office #, phone # and e-mail address are in the top left corner of the first page of this syllabus. I'll be in my office from 7-8 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday. I'll accommodate any student who wants to meet with me, but an appointment is advisable. Please call or e-mail to schedule a meeting. If a before- or after-class meeting is inconvenient for you, I'll try to adjust my schedule -- within reason -- so we can meet at another time.

THE WEEKS AHEAD.............

Note: This is a rough overview of the semester. Readings, writing assignments, and class discussions may change as the semester proceeds.

Week 1: Sept. 9

Get acquainted; general lay of the land; writing and reading assignments for Week #3

Week 2: Sept. 16

NO CLASS -- YOM KIPPUR

Week 3: Sept. 23

READING: "Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists" by Mark Kramer, and either Tracy Kidder, "Memory," OR John McPhee, "Atchafalaya."

DUE: two 500-word assignments.

Assignment #1: a newspaper-style article about Week #1, with the traditional, objective stance toward writing and the five indispensable elements of journalism -- who, what, where, why, when.

Assignment#2: Also write about Week #1, but use any of the elements of literary nonfiction. How you write this piece can be personal, critical (of yourself, your classmates, your teacher, your university, etc.), reflective, bemused, indignant, etc. You choose the style, the tone, the content, the direction, but it must -- however explicitly or obliquely -- address Week #1.

Week 4: Sept. 30

READING: Handouts: selections by E.B. White and from Natalie Goldberg's Long Quiet Highway.

DUE: 750-word essay on being aware. Of what? Of anything. Of sitting as you write. Of the muscles you use -- or don't use -- as you write. Of thinking as you write. Of the flow of your thoughts: their rising, falling, fading away. Of the scratch of your pen on paper or the pounding of your keyboard as you bang away. Of the birds or kids or traffic outside your window. Of the silence outside your window if you live in the country. Of your resistance to this assignment even as you plow ahead with this assignment because you know you have to do this damn assignment.

As you write, remember these lines from Natalie Goldberg's Long Quiet Highway: "The deepest thing writing taught me was that there was nothing to hold on to. Thoughts moved quickly. As a writer, I worked hard to grasp them as they flooded through me, but thoughts moved faster than my hand..... A writer's life is about examination. What is love, anyway, and sorrow and light? I wasn't ready to examine these things for their own sake. I was busy examining myself. How do I get this mind to speak clearly, how do I coordinate it with my hand and pen, who is a writer, how do I become one?... [At author's readings, I found out that everyone] wrote differently and had a different schedule. That was great! It gave me permission to find my own way. It encouraged me to examine myself. Who was I anyway, who was going to write?"

Week 5: Oct. 7

READING: Susan Orlean, "The American Man at Age 10."

DUE: 750-word profile. Can be about anyone -- a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, someone you just met, someone you go out of your way to meet. Things to keep in mind: what makes them unique? what draws you to them? what repels you by them? what do they evoke in you? what do you think you evoke in them? Describe their appearance, their clothing, the way they walk, the rhythm/cadence/pacing of their speech, if they use words in a certain way and how. Do you want to analyze that speech pattern -- or just "report" it? It's your choice.

Week 6: Oct. 14

Reading: TBA/several essays.

DUE: 750-word essay on topic of your choice. Make it elegant, graceful, fluid, insightful, penetrating; self-revealing, if necessary; critical, if desired. Revealing of what? You decide. Critical of what? You decide.

Week 7: Oct. 21

READING: Handouts -- selections by Russell Baker, James Thurber, Calvin Trillin, other humorists.

DUE: 500-word humorous essay.

Week 8: Oct. 28

READING: Handout -- "Hymn" by Emily Hiestand from The Atlantic.

DUE: Revisions of 750-word essay on being aware that you wrote for Week 4, Sept. 30. As you revise, keep in mind this passage from Philip Gerard's Creative Nonfiction: "Revision is... re-envisioning your work. Stepping back from it in light of what you know now, what you have written, and determining if you have done what you set out to do. Just because the piece occurred to you in a certain way and you wrote it that way doesn't mean that was the only way, or the best way, to do it".

IMPORTANT: This class and the following week's will run from 8:15 to about 9:30 p.m. After that, I'll meet individually with students for 10-15 minute sessions in my office (Room 504) to review progress to date, discuss any problems, review proposal for the 1,500-word fact/research piece.

Week 9: Nov. 4

READING: TBA/several travel pieces.

DUE: Class discussion of your idea for a 1,500 word fact/research piece. Discuss why you're pulled toward this idea, why "readers" will find it compelling, how you'll research the project, what sort of preliminary research you've done (who you've talked to, what interviews you've done). The class will act as a board of editors.

IMPORTANT: This class will run from 8:15-9:30 if I could not meet with every student last week for individual meetings.

Week 10: Nov. 11

READING: TBA

DUE: Writer's notebooks and 850-word travel piece.

Week 11: Nov. 18

READING: TBA

DUE: 1,500-word fact/research piece.

Week 12: Nov. 25

READING: TBA

Week 13: Dec. 2

READING: TBA

Week 14: Dec. 9

READING: TBA.

DUE: revised 1,500-word fact/research article.

Week 15: Dec. 16

There is NO final exam, but you are expected to attend this class for general discussion about the course.




			PBDS.626 LITERARY NONFICTION NOTE: This is representative of the syllabi for this course. It is not necessarily the syllabus being used in any one semester. Experimentation in writing various kinds of nonfiction, including personal essays, travel essays, humor, profiles, memoirs. Focus is on the use of literary techniques within the context of the form's traditions and contemporary innovations. Writers such as Jan Morris, Tom Wolfe, John McPhee, E.B. White, Norman Mailer, Tracy Kidder, Joan Didion, Calvin Trillin, James Agee and S.J. Perelman will be contrasted and compared. Each student will make a class presentation regarding these (or other) writers and each student will write about ten assignments throughout the semester. Editing other's work, as well editing your own, will also be stressed. We'll be learning skills, approaches, strategies to writing non-fiction. Less emphasis will be placed on bald facts, knowledge or ideas. This will be an excursion into self and into discipline and into the limits of style and form and its appropriateness for each of us. Start-to-finish in this course, the emphasis will be on the act of writing; on developing critical and analytical skills; on understanding the purpose and structure and design of specific forms of writing. Everything will be in the service of the writing. If everything works out, nothing will be extraneous to the writing since writing doesn't occur in a vacuum, a void, or a narcissistic black hole fueled by ego, impulse or vanity. Hopefully, you'll leave this course with an enhanced appreciation for the possibilities and power of literary nonfiction -- and for what you bring to it. You may also be better able to tolerate the confusion, uncertainty, ambivalence and fear that are an inescapable part of serious writing. REQUIRED READING There will be many, many handouts. RECOMMENDED READING (as well as recommended additions to your library): • Literary Journalism, edited by Norman Sims and Mark Kramer. Ballantine Books, 1995. • Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. Allyn & Bacon, 2000. • On Writing Well by William Zinsser. HarperCollins, 1998. • Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, edited by George Plimpton. Viking Press. A multi-volume series of interviews with such writers as James Thurber, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut on the "guts" of their writing -- how they write, why they write, their daily struggles with writing, etc. Every week, try to read: • "Talk of the Town" or a longer article/essay in The New Yorker. • The Washington Post's "Style" Section • If you come across interesting, well-written articles in these or other publications, please bring them in for class discussion and let me know at the beginning of the class that you have something to discuss. WRITING ASSIGNMENTS Keep a writer's notebook. A three-ring binder may work best for this. For each week of the class, write in your notebook two to three ideas that you'd like to develop as articles or even as books. Each idea should include: the slant you'd take when writing the article or book, what pulls you toward this idea, how you'd approach the topic, how you'd research it. Keep your entries in this notebook brief. I will collect the notebooks on Nov. 11. Grades for the journals will pivot on the creativity, imagination, effort and ambition of your ideas. The note is not class notes. It is ideas --your ideas-- and primarily for your personal use. Do not be overly concerned with neatness. Your entries can be done in handwriting or with a word processor or on an old typewriter you found in a junkyard. What's important is 1) entries be neat enough so I can read them; 2) you not spend more time addressing legibility than you do addressing creativity. (On the other hand, don't be too tempted by illegibility. After all, I do have to read them.) Other than the notebook, writing assignments will be given in the number of desired words. The length of an assignment is not arbitrary, although it is somewhat flexible. For a 1,500-word assignment, for example, you don't have to hit that magic number right on the button. On the other hand, don't skimp and write 1,000 words. And don't write a bloated 2,000 words. A general rule of thumb is that going over or under an assigned length by 150-200 words is dandy. Anything excessively above or below that number will be a problem. Assignments have specific lengths to give you a feel for a form of writing, for the discipline involved in it, for your own proclivity for -- and comfort in -- that style. Don't be seduced by the numbers! The compression necessary when writing a 500-word essay may be as difficult as the discipline and/or research and/or thinking demanded when taking a 2,500-word essay to full length. Maybe more difficult. Assignments should be double-spaced in 12-point characters. Always use one-inch margins and indent paragraphs. Do not have an extra space between paragraphs. Those extra spaces disrupt the reading process, turn each paragraph into an isolated island of its own and interrupt the flow of meaning and effect. REVISIONS Every writing assignment (except the writer's notebook) can be revised twice. The grade for the latest revision will replace previous grades received for that assignment. No revision will be accepted unless all previous versions of that assignment are stapled to it. Only two assignments will receive separate grades for the original version and the revised version: the essay on awareness and the last assignment of the semester -- the 1,500 word article. ORAL PRESENTATIONS Starting around the fifth week of the course, each student will make a 30- minute presentation about the books and authors you have focused on. You can read either two (or more) books by one author or one (or more) books by two authors. You can compare authors, styles, structure, topics, careers, etc. The overall purpose is to qualify how close any of these writers or books come to "literature," how far they push the envelope of non-fiction, and how successful they are at doing this. Below are suggested books/authors. If there are other books and authors you'd like to read, please ask me to approve them: Ota: The Pygmy in the Zoo -- Harvey Blume Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life -- Richard Ben Cramer Long Quiet Highway -- Natalie Goldberg Writing Down the Bones -- Natalie Goldberg Patrimony -- Philip Roth Growing Up -- Russell Baker Total Loss Farm -- Raymond Mungo The Soul of a New Machine -- Tracy Kidder The Perfect Storm -- Sebastian Junger Into Thin Air -- Jon Krakauer Let Us Now Praise Famous Men -- James Agee A Walker in Jerusalem -- Samuel Heilman Coming into the Country -- John McPhee The John McPhee Reader -- edited by William Howarth Holy Days -- Lis Harris French Lessons -- Alice Kaplan In Cold Blood -- Truman Capote The Right Stuff -- Tom Wolfe Miami and the Siege of Chicago -- Norman Mailer The Steps of the Pentagon -- Norman Mailer Of a Fire on the Moon -- Norman Mailer Out of Africa -- Isak Deniesen The White Album -- Joan Didion Uncivil Liberties -- Calvin Trillin Alice, Let's Eat -- Calvin Trillin GRADING Grades will be given on every writing assignment: F -- for work that does not satisfy in any way the course requirements and/or the graduate level of this course. C-, C, C+ -- for work that barely satisfies the course requirements and/or the graduate level of this course. B-, B, B+ -- good, solid, commendable work. A-, A -- work so accomplished, so polished, so skilled that an editor receiving it would immediately shriek "Eureka!" and sprint down the hall to brag to colleagues that another Hemingway, Wolfe, Mailer, Capote, McPhee has just been discovered. There is no final exam . Grades received for your writing assignments will account for 65 percent of your final grade; your oral presentation will account for 20 percent; class participation and attendance will account for 15 percent. Also influencing the final grade will be your progress and improvement as a writer and as a thinker about writing since the beginning of the semester. Class participation is not class attendance. "Attendance" means bodily and (hopefully) mentally present from the beginning to the end of each class. "Participation" means you are contributing to the class with comments, insights, readings you have discovered on your own, yelps of revelation, groans of dismay, holy/transcendent/beatific visions. (But please: NO speaking in tongues.) Any assignment not turned in during the class when it is due will lose half a letter grade. Assignments more than one week late will lose a full letter grade. No assignment can be e-mailed to me. Excessive and repeated tardiness will adversely affect your grade, as will more than two absences. PLAGIARISM: It is illegal and unethical to use someone else's work without properly crediting the source. If you are not sure whether to credit a source or to quote or paraphrase or use original language, please ask me in advance -- or err on the side of citing the source you are using. If I discover you've plagiarized material for this course, I will follow the university's policy of academic integrity. (See the UB Student handbook for this policy.) Under that policy, the consequences of plagiarism can include failing the course and being expelled from the university. OFFICE HOURS My office #, phone # and e-mail address are in the top left corner of the first page of this syllabus. I'll be in my office from 7-8 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday. I'll accommodate any student who wants to meet with me, but an appointment is advisable. Please call or e-mail to schedule a meeting. If a before- or after-class meeting is inconvenient for you, I'll try to adjust my schedule -- within reason -- so we can meet at another time. THE WEEKS AHEAD............. Note: This is a rough overview of the semester. Readings, writing assignments, and class discussions may change as the semester proceeds. Week 1: Sept. 9 Get acquainted; general lay of the land; writing and reading assignments for Week #3 Week 2: Sept. 16 NO CLASS -- YOM KIPPUR Week 3: Sept. 23 READING: "Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists" by Mark Kramer, and either Tracy Kidder, "Memory," OR John McPhee, "Atchafalaya." DUE: two 500-word assignments. Assignment #1: a newspaper-style article about Week #1, with the traditional, objective stance toward writing and the five indispensable elements of journalism -- who, what, where, why, when. Assignment#2: Also write about Week #1, but use any of the elements of literary nonfiction. How you write this piece can be personal, critical (of yourself, your classmates, your teacher, your university, etc.), reflective, bemused, indignant, etc. You choose the style, the tone, the content, the direction, but it must -- however explicitly or obliquely -- address Week #1. Week 4: Sept. 30 READING: Handouts: selections by E.B. White and from Natalie Goldberg's Long Quiet Highway. DUE: 750-word essay on being aware. Of what? Of anything. Of sitting as you write. Of the muscles you use -- or don't use -- as you write. Of thinking as you write. Of the flow of your thoughts: their rising, falling, fading away. Of the scratch of your pen on paper or the pounding of your keyboard as you bang away. Of the birds or kids or traffic outside your window. Of the silence outside your window if you live in the country. Of your resistance to this assignment even as you plow ahead with this assignment because you know you have to do this damn assignment. As you write, remember these lines from Natalie Goldberg's Long Quiet Highway: "The deepest thing writing taught me was that there was nothing to hold on to. Thoughts moved quickly. As a writer, I worked hard to grasp them as they flooded through me, but thoughts moved faster than my hand..... A writer's life is about examination. What is love, anyway, and sorrow and light? I wasn't ready to examine these things for their own sake. I was busy examining myself. How do I get this mind to speak clearly, how do I coordinate it with my hand and pen, who is a writer, how do I become one?... [At author's readings, I found out that everyone] wrote differently and had a different schedule. That was great! It gave me permission to find my own way. It encouraged me to examine myself. Who was I anyway, who was going to write?" Week 5: Oct. 7 READING: Susan Orlean, "The American Man at Age 10." DUE: 750-word profile. Can be about anyone -- a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, someone you just met, someone you go out of your way to meet. Things to keep in mind: what makes them unique? what draws you to them? what repels you by them? what do they evoke in you? what do you think you evoke in them? Describe their appearance, their clothing, the way they walk, the rhythm/cadence/pacing of their speech, if they use words in a certain way and how. Do you want to analyze that speech pattern -- or just "report" it? It's your choice. Week 6: Oct. 14 Reading: TBA/several essays. DUE: 750-word essay on topic of your choice. Make it elegant, graceful, fluid, insightful, penetrating; self-revealing, if necessary; critical, if desired. Revealing of what? You decide. Critical of what? You decide. Week 7: Oct. 21 READING: Handouts -- selections by Russell Baker, James Thurber, Calvin Trillin, other humorists. DUE: 500-word humorous essay. Week 8: Oct. 28 READING: Handout -- "Hymn" by Emily Hiestand from The Atlantic. DUE: Revisions of 750-word essay on being aware that you wrote for Week 4, Sept. 30. As you revise, keep in mind this passage from Philip Gerard's Creative Nonfiction: "Revision is... re-envisioning your work. Stepping back from it in light of what you know now, what you have written, and determining if you have done what you set out to do. Just because the piece occurred to you in a certain way and you wrote it that way doesn't mean that was the only way, or the best way, to do it". IMPORTANT: This class and the following week's will run from 8:15 to about 9:30 p.m. After that, I'll meet individually with students for 10-15 minute sessions in my office (Room 504) to review progress to date, discuss any problems, review proposal for the 1,500-word fact/research piece. Week 9: Nov. 4 READING: TBA/several travel pieces. DUE: Class discussion of your idea for a 1,500 word fact/research piece. Discuss why you're pulled toward this idea, why "readers" will find it compelling, how you'll research the project, what sort of preliminary research you've done (who you've talked to, what interviews you've done). The class will act as a board of editors. IMPORTANT: This class will run from 8:15-9:30 if I could not meet with every student last week for individual meetings. Week 10: Nov. 11 READING: TBA DUE: Writer's notebooks and 850-word travel piece. Week 11: Nov. 18 READING: TBA DUE: 1,500-word fact/research piece. Week 12: Nov. 25 READING: TBA Week 13: Dec. 2 READING: TBA Week 14: Dec. 9 READING: TBA. DUE: revised 1,500-word fact/research article. Week 15: Dec. 16 There is NO final exam, but you are expected to attend this class for general discussion about the course. home \| bs, corporate communication \| ba, english \| ma, publications design \| mfa, integrated design \| mfa, creative writing & publishing arts \| people \| portfolio \| facilities \| classes \| undergraduate applications \| graduate applications \| contact \| site index \| university of baltimore