PBDS 750

Special Topics: Writing

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

(Topic Changes from semester to semester. Here's a sample∞)

THE ZEN OF RELIGION WRITING

Our response to the attacks of September 11 made it clear how much religion resides at the center of our nation Ü and of ourselves. The attacks and their aftermath also made clear how distortions of religion, by those who profess to practice them or those who are strangers to them, can harm and destroy. This course will help students appreciate the many faiths in America's religious fabric, as well as hone their skills so they can write about religion and religious experience with profound clarity, knowledge and empathy.

"Faith" is not a requisite for this course. Tolerance and curiosity are. This course will be an excursion into self and into discipline—the discipline of faith and the discipline of writing. We will be learning skills, approaches, strategies to writing about religion and faith, strategies for understanding religion and faith. We will compare religions, denominations, sects, cults, attempting to understand their beliefs and their appeal. We will not forego our own beliefs (or lack thereof), but will learn how to temporarily set these aside while treading in the religious shoes of another person. None of this will be extraneous to writing, since writing does not exist 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 faith to enrich us, even to frustrate us. You will also hopefully leave with better able to tolerate the confusion, uncertainty, ambivalence and fear that are an inescapable part of serious writing—and of seriously trying to come to grips with a galaxy of religions.

REQUIRED READING:

A New Handbook of Living Religions, edited by John R. Hinnells. Penguin Books.
There will be occasional handouts from me

RECOMMENDED READING:

Handbook of Denominations, 11^th edition, Frank S. Mead and Samuel S. Hill. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN. 2001. ON RESERVE IN LIBRARY.

Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, edited by Eileen W. Lindner. National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, New York. ON RESERVE IN LIBRARY.

How to Be a Perfect Stranger: A Guide to Etiquette in Other People's Religious Ceremonies, edited by Arthur J. Magida. Two volumes. Skylights Paths Publishing, Woodstock, VT. ON RESERVE IN LIBRARY.

Going on Faith: Writing as a Spiritual Quest, edited by William Zinsser. Marlowe and Co., NYC.

The World's Religions by Huston Smith. HarperSanFrancisco.

Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg. Bantam Books.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Bantam Books.

Reporting & Religion, edited by Benjamin J. Hubbard. Eagle Books.

Reporting News About Religion, Judith M. Buddenbaum. Iowa State University Press.

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

On Writing Well by William Zinsser. HarperCollins, 1998.

If you come across well-written articles on religion in any publication, please bring them in for class discussion and let me know at the beginning of the class that you have something to discuss.

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES:

www.beliefnet.com -- Spans all religions. Many resources & articles.

www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralism/ -- Pluralism Project at Harvard. Access to many resources; information on efforts around the U.S. to understand other faiths.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS:

Keep a writer's journal. A three-ring binder will work best for this. For each week of the class, write in your journal 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 journal entries brief. I will collect the journals on Nov. 19. Grades for the journals will be based on the creativity, imagination, effort and ambition of your ideas.

The journal is not class notes or reading notes. It is ideas Ü your ideas Ü and is primarily for your personal use. Do not be overly concerned with neatness. You 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.

The1,500-word article due December 3 should concentrate on several visits you've made to a faith not your own Ü to a mosque, a synagogue, a church, a Friends meeting, etc. In this assignment, you will concentrate on theology, ritual, rite, liturgy Ü the "mechanics" and the ideas of faith. But you will make this come alive by focusing on a particular member of that faith and how he/she relates to the event/worship/ritual and what meaning it has for them and how it affects them. You can also bring yourself into the essay: how does any of what you see/hear/smell/ponder affect you?

Other than the journal, 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:

Most writing assignment can be revised twice. The grade for the latest revision will replace any previous grades received for that assignment.

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

The only revisions which will receive separate grades for the original and the revision are those due October 15 and Nov. 26.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS:

Around mid-semester, the class will divide into different faiths Ü Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Ba'hai, etc. Each group will make a presentation to the class on November 19 or 26. The presentation will reflect having immersed yourself in that particular faith over several weeks. You will be conversant with that faith's theology, rituals, observances, holidays, etc. That knowledge plus your experiences attending services and such events as communions, funerals or bar mitzvahs will be the basis of your presentation.

For your presentation, each of you might discuss a certain aspect of "your" faith's theology and then talk about a particular worship event or ritual you observed and how theology undergrids that event or ritual. You might compare this to other faiths/denominations we've discussed or with a faith/denomination you're familiar with Ü maybe your own. Also discuss any writings that profoundly helped you understand "your" faith Ü how did they help you? how can they help your writing reach the same level of clarity and understanding?

The same rules apply to the presentation that apply to your final 1,500-word article: it should not be "dry" and "academic." Talk about your experiences. Talk about meeting "real-live" Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. and having heart-to-heart discussions with them about their faith. Talk about how any of this has affected your own faith or your (mis)perceptions about another faith.

Since your presentations will occur as you are researching and writing your 1,500-word article (due Dec. 3), you can use this as an opportunity to refine your thinking and your perspective on your article.

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 religion and writing.

Class participation is not class attendance. Attendance means your are bodily and 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, etc.

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 to use original language, please ask me in advance Ü 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. most Mondays and Tuesdays. 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. 3

Get acquainted; general lay of the land; writing and reading assignments for Week #2

Week 2: Sept. 10

READING: Handouts on September 11 & the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

DUE: 750 word essay on you, God, religion, faith. You can take this in any direction you want Ü your relationship to the faith you were born into, the faith you left, the faith you are now in, the faith you will never be in. Why you practice a certain religion; why you don't. What aspect of your faith are important to you; what aren't. What God is, isn't, can't be, shouldn't be. Is there a God? Make this personal/

philosophical/theological. Make it clear, passionate, self-critical, God-critical, faith-critical, etc.

Week 3: Sept. 17

Outside speaker: a Quaker

READING: Handouts on Quakers.

DUE: 750 words interpreting/comparing handouts last week from Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

Week 4: Sept. 24

Outside speaker: a Muslim

READING: New Handbook of Living Religions, Chapter Three, "Islam," and a handout -- "Hymn" by Emily Hiestand from The Atlantic.

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 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. 1

Reading: TBA

DUE: 750 words on going to a Quaker meeting or a mosque.

Week 6: Oct. 8

Outside speaker: a Buddhist

READING: New Handbook of Living Religions, Chapter 8, "Buddhism."

DUE: TBA

Week 7: Oct. 15

Field trip to Shambhala meditation center

READING: TBA

DUE: Revise any of the assignments for which you have received a grade and comments from me since the beginning of the semester. That should be the essay on you/God/religion/faith that was due 9/10, the comparison of texts that was due 9/17, the essay on attending a Quaker meeting that was due 9/24. 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.

Week 8: Oct. 22

Outside speaker: a Greek Orthodox priest

READING: New Handbook of Living Religions, Chapter 2, "Christianity."

DUE: 750 words about the meditation experience the previous week at the Shambhala meditation center.

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

Week 9: Oct. 29

No class Ü focus on visiting the faith you are concentrating on.

Week 10: Nov. 5

Class discussion of your visits to "your" faith.

Week 11: Nov. 12

No class Ü focus on visiting the faith you are concentrating on.

Week 12: Nov. 19

Class presentations∞.

DUE: Turn in your journals.

Week 13: Nov. 26

Class presentations∞∞

DUE: Revision of the first writing assignment Ü the 750-word essay you submitted on Sept. 10 on God, religion, faith. Use the revision as an opportunity to 1) refine your writing. 2) assess if your attitude toward God, religion, faith has changed during this course. (NOTE: Its OK if your attitude has not changed. But if it hasn't, state why not.)

Week 14: Dec. 3

READING: TBA.

DUE: 1,500-word article.

Week 15: Dec. 10

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




			PBDS 750 Special Topics: Writing NOTE: This is representative of the syllabi for this course. It is not necessarily the syllabus being used in any one semester. (Topic Changes from semester to semester. Here's a sample∞) THE ZEN OF RELIGION WRITING Our response to the attacks of September 11 made it clear how much religion resides at the center of our nation Ü and of ourselves. The attacks and their aftermath also made clear how distortions of religion, by those who profess to practice them or those who are strangers to them, can harm and destroy. This course will help students appreciate the many faiths in America's religious fabric, as well as hone their skills so they can write about religion and religious experience with profound clarity, knowledge and empathy. "Faith" is not a requisite for this course. Tolerance and curiosity are. This course will be an excursion into self and into discipline—the discipline of faith and the discipline of writing. We will be learning skills, approaches, strategies to writing about religion and faith, strategies for understanding religion and faith. We will compare religions, denominations, sects, cults, attempting to understand their beliefs and their appeal. We will not forego our own beliefs (or lack thereof), but will learn how to temporarily set these aside while treading in the religious shoes of another person. None of this will be extraneous to writing, since writing does not exist 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 faith to enrich us, even to frustrate us. You will also hopefully leave with better able to tolerate the confusion, uncertainty, ambivalence and fear that are an inescapable part of serious writing—and of seriously trying to come to grips with a galaxy of religions. REQUIRED READING: A New Handbook of Living Religions, edited by John R. Hinnells. Penguin Books. There will be occasional handouts from me RECOMMENDED READING: Handbook of Denominations, 11^th edition, Frank S. Mead and Samuel S. Hill. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN. 2001. ON RESERVE IN LIBRARY. Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, edited by Eileen W. Lindner. National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, New York. ON RESERVE IN LIBRARY. How to Be a Perfect Stranger: A Guide to Etiquette in Other People's Religious Ceremonies, edited by Arthur J. Magida. Two volumes. Skylights Paths Publishing, Woodstock, VT. ON RESERVE IN LIBRARY. Going on Faith: Writing as a Spiritual Quest, edited by William Zinsser. Marlowe and Co., NYC. The World's Religions by Huston Smith. HarperSanFrancisco. Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg. Bantam Books. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Bantam Books. Reporting & Religion, edited by Benjamin J. Hubbard. Eagle Books. Reporting News About Religion, Judith M. Buddenbaum. Iowa State University Press. Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. Allyn & Bacon, 2000. On Writing Well by William Zinsser. HarperCollins, 1998. If you come across well-written articles on religion in any publication, please bring them in for class discussion and let me know at the beginning of the class that you have something to discuss. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES: www.beliefnet.com -- Spans all religions. Many resources & articles. www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralism/ -- Pluralism Project at Harvard. Access to many resources; information on efforts around the U.S. to understand other faiths. WRITING ASSIGNMENTS: Keep a writer's journal. A three-ring binder will work best for this. For each week of the class, write in your journal 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 journal entries brief. I will collect the journals on Nov. 19. Grades for the journals will be based on the creativity, imagination, effort and ambition of your ideas. The journal is not class notes or reading notes. It is ideas Ü your ideas Ü and is primarily for your personal use. Do not be overly concerned with neatness. You 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. The1,500-word article due December 3 should concentrate on several visits you've made to a faith not your own Ü to a mosque, a synagogue, a church, a Friends meeting, etc. In this assignment, you will concentrate on theology, ritual, rite, liturgy Ü the "mechanics" and the ideas of faith. But you will make this come alive by focusing on a particular member of that faith and how he/she relates to the event/worship/ritual and what meaning it has for them and how it affects them. You can also bring yourself into the essay: how does any of what you see/hear/smell/ponder affect you? Other than the journal, 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: Most writing assignment can be revised twice. The grade for the latest revision will replace any previous grades received for that assignment. No revision will be accepted unless all previous versions of that assignment are stapled to it. The only revisions which will receive separate grades for the original and the revision are those due October 15 and Nov. 26. ORAL PRESENTATIONS: Around mid-semester, the class will divide into different faiths Ü Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Ba'hai, etc. Each group will make a presentation to the class on November 19 or 26. The presentation will reflect having immersed yourself in that particular faith over several weeks. You will be conversant with that faith's theology, rituals, observances, holidays, etc. That knowledge plus your experiences attending services and such events as communions, funerals or bar mitzvahs will be the basis of your presentation. For your presentation, each of you might discuss a certain aspect of "your" faith's theology and then talk about a particular worship event or ritual you observed and how theology undergrids that event or ritual. You might compare this to other faiths/denominations we've discussed or with a faith/denomination you're familiar with Ü maybe your own. Also discuss any writings that profoundly helped you understand "your" faith Ü how did they help you? how can they help your writing reach the same level of clarity and understanding? The same rules apply to the presentation that apply to your final 1,500-word article: it should not be "dry" and "academic." Talk about your experiences. Talk about meeting "real-live" Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. and having heart-to-heart discussions with them about their faith. Talk about how any of this has affected your own faith or your (mis)perceptions about another faith. Since your presentations will occur as you are researching and writing your 1,500-word article (due Dec. 3), you can use this as an opportunity to refine your thinking and your perspective on your article. 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 religion and writing. Class participation is not class attendance. Attendance means your are bodily and 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, etc. 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 to use original language, please ask me in advance Ü 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. most Mondays and Tuesdays. 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. 3 Get acquainted; general lay of the land; writing and reading assignments for Week #2 Week 2: Sept. 10 READING: Handouts on September 11 & the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. DUE: 750 word essay on you, God, religion, faith. You can take this in any direction you want Ü your relationship to the faith you were born into, the faith you left, the faith you are now in, the faith you will never be in. Why you practice a certain religion; why you don't. What aspect of your faith are important to you; what aren't. What God is, isn't, can't be, shouldn't be. Is there a God? Make this personal/ philosophical/theological. Make it clear, passionate, self-critical, God-critical, faith-critical, etc. Week 3: Sept. 17 Outside speaker: a Quaker READING: Handouts on Quakers. DUE: 750 words interpreting/comparing handouts last week from Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Week 4: Sept. 24 Outside speaker: a Muslim READING: New Handbook of Living Religions, Chapter Three, "Islam," and a handout -- "Hymn" by Emily Hiestand from The Atlantic. 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 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. 1 Reading: TBA DUE: 750 words on going to a Quaker meeting or a mosque. Week 6: Oct. 8 Outside speaker: a Buddhist READING: New Handbook of Living Religions, Chapter 8, "Buddhism." DUE: TBA Week 7: Oct. 15 Field trip to Shambhala meditation center READING: TBA DUE: Revise any of the assignments for which you have received a grade and comments from me since the beginning of the semester. That should be the essay on you/God/religion/faith that was due 9/10, the comparison of texts that was due 9/17, the essay on attending a Quaker meeting that was due 9/24. 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. Week 8: Oct. 22 Outside speaker: a Greek Orthodox priest READING: New Handbook of Living Religions, Chapter 2, "Christianity." DUE: 750 words about the meditation experience the previous week at the Shambhala meditation center. IMPORTANT: This class will run from 8:15 to about 9:30 p.m. After that, I'll meet individually with each student for 15-minute sessions in my office (Room 504) to review progress to date, discuss any problems, review proposal for the 1,500-word final piece. Week 9: Oct. 29 No class Ü focus on visiting the faith you are concentrating on. Week 10: Nov. 5 Class discussion of your visits to "your" faith. Week 11: Nov. 12 No class Ü focus on visiting the faith you are concentrating on. Week 12: Nov. 19 Class presentations∞. DUE: Turn in your journals. Week 13: Nov. 26 Class presentations∞∞ DUE: Revision of the first writing assignment Ü the 750-word essay you submitted on Sept. 10 on God, religion, faith. Use the revision as an opportunity to 1) refine your writing. 2) assess if your attitude toward God, religion, faith has changed during this course. (NOTE: Its OK if your attitude has not changed. But if it hasn't, state why not.) Week 14: Dec. 3 READING: TBA. DUE: 1,500-word article. Week 15: Dec. 10 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