Principles of Literary Scholarship

English 606 Fall, 2007 M 4:30-7

Dr. Chidsey Dickson Office: Carnegie 222 544-8110 dickson_c@lynchburg.edu Office Hours: M 3:45-4:30 or by appt.

Required Materials

The Craft of Research. Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb and Joseph Williams.

What Writing Does and How It Does It. Charles Bazerman and Paul Prior.

Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. Eds Todd Olson and Todd Taylor.

Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge. Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle.

Course Description

This is an introduction to research in professional English Studies. Most of the course work consists of reading about how various specialists in the broad discipline of English Studies design their research and then writing Journal Entries about what you’ve read and how it might relate to your own interests in the field, and discussing in class (and perhaps arguing about) what you discover.

Journal Entries are roughly 3-4 pages in length, but quality matters more than quantity. The purpose of this kind of “informal, low-stakes writing” is to prompt you to get a better handle on what you’re reading (some of it is dense) and to aid you in making discoveries about the big questions in research design. I’ll collect these every other class, read and gloss them, and return them to you the next class.

Given the fact that insights often happen when you compare and/or contrast something you’re reading or thinking about with previous readings and thoughts, you will be required to gloss your own entries after I’ve returned them to you. I will collect the annotated entries Sept 24 and Dec 3 and grade them with a rubric we will develop together in class.

After you finish reading the main texts, you will expand/revise (or create from scratch) a piece of scholarship that could be published in a particular journal (which you will name, read examples of, and analyze for discourse requirements). You will share your work-in-progress with peers and you will meet in a private conference with me during the week of Nov 19-23.

Grades

Participation (Attendance, Discussion, Group Work, etc)	30 pts
1-1 Conference Preparation (1 required @ %5)	10 pts
10 Journal Entries (evaluated Sept 24 and Dec 3)	100 pts
Draft	20 pts
Revision	20 pts
Total	180 pts

“A”: 160-180

“B”: 100-159

“C”: 75-99

“D”: 50-74

Missed Classes

Due to sickness, athletic events, family problems, etc., you will probably miss one class during the semester. There’s no need to notify me if that’s all you miss. It is your responsibility, though, to have contact information for another person in the class (email and phone number) so that if you do miss a class you can find out what you missed, possible changes to the syllabus, etc.. Three absences (excused or unexcused) results in a drop in your semester grade by ½ letter grade.

Late Assignments

Late assignments are penalized a half a letter grade for every day they are late.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a serious act of intellectual theft and will not be tolerated. All language and ideas you deploy in formal projects that you derive from sources must be credited. We will discuss the MLA guidelines for incorporating and documenting sources. As far as CW posts go, you are on your honor not to read your peers’ posts and merely paraphrase what they say. If I see that this is a problem, I will speak to you individually. If the problem is not addressed, I may choose to turn off your ability to see your peers’ posts, which disrupts part of the point of the electronic forum: seeing what others have to say.

What to Bring to Class

• Notebook and pen
• Any text from which there is a reading assignment for that particular day
• Any work (drafts, notes, etc.) from the major writing project you’re working on

Writing Center (Hopwood 04)

All writers can benefit from discussing their work with another interested writer; hence, the individual attention provided by the Writing Center tutors is a helpful resource for all students in ENGL 111-112.  You should decide at what point in your writing process discussion with a tutor would be most helpful: 

-          invention and focusing your document in the early stages

-          developing and organizing ideas in the rough draft

-          integrating and documenting sources (when applicable)

-          editing and proofreading before a final draft

You may like to visit the Writing Center more than once per assignment as your purpose changes at various points in the writing process, but a requirement of this course is that you make at least two visits to the Writing Center.  To avoid being blocked out of the Writing Center, make the appointments well in advance.  Afterwards, the tutor will send me an email form, which outlines the main points of your discussion.  This is how I know you have gone. This is worth 5% of your semester grade.

Teacher Licensure

This course is designed to assist students preparing to meet Virginia Department of Education, Teacher Licensure Competencies in English as follows: 

Competency 1: Understanding of the knowledge, skills, and process of English as defined in the Virginia Standards of Learning. (SOLS are 9.6-9.7; 10.7-10.9; 11.7-11.8 for ENGL 111; and all of these plus 9.8-9.9; 10.10-10.11; 11.9-11.10; 12.7-12.8 for ENGL 112).

Competency 3: Knowledge of grammar, usage, and mechanics and their integration in writing

Schedule of Assignments Fall 2007

Date	Reading and Writing Assignments
AUGUST
27	To give our first conversation a reference point, please read the essay “On Scholarship and Literary Interpretation: An Introductory Note” before coming to class. Available here: http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/eng366/interpretation.htm as well as pgs 3-33 in The Craft of Research		Journal Entry (JE): 1. what strikes you as important points/definitions in Johnston’s article? How does his understanding of literacy criticism sit with your own knowledge? 2. what does Booth et al’s treatment of research add to Johnston’s account?
SEPTEMBER
3	Read pages 37-107 & 222-240 in The Craft of Research. [In class, please remind me that we need to collaboratively devise the grading rubric for the Jes]	JE: Go the library, and read through a single volume of one journal in English Studies (your choice). Explore your sense of how the writers in the journal seem to find their questions, problems, and sources.
10	Re-read the assigned sections of The Craft of Research that strike you as the most engaging and helpful for what you want to do in the profession.	JE: select an essay you wrote within the last year, one that you might be interested in expanding/revising, and gloss it with commentary derived from insights you’ve had reading The Craft of Research (e.g., what they say about Introductions on 226 or what they say about wider significance on 49). After making 10 or so comments, write a plan (or just a list of questions—but specific) you could use to revise your essay for publication.
17	Read all articles in Part I of What Writing Does & How It Does It.	JE: give a brief (1/2-1 page) summary/response to each of the articles in Part I and then a final reflection on which of the articles offered tools that you might want for your interpretive toolbox (and why?)
24	Read all articles in Part II of What Writing Does & How It Does It.	JE: give a brief (1/2-1 page) summary/response to each of the articles in Part II and then a final reflection on which of the articles offered tools that you might want for your interpretive toolbox (and why?)
OCTOBER
1	Read the Forward and pages 5-55 &89-143 in Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition	JE: give a brief (1/2-1 page) summary/response to each of the articles you read in PRC and in a final reflection explain which of these interest you if you were to end up as a Rhet/Comp teacher/scholar.
8	Read pages 147-235 in Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition & “The Case for Collaborative Scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition” (article by Roen)	JE: give a brief (1/2-1 page) summary/response to each of the articles you read in PRC and in a final reflection explain which of these interest you if you were to end up as a Rhet/Comp teacher/scholar.
22	Read “Following Paper Trail” (249-255), “Lighting Fires” (241-249), “My Question (283-289), the Forward, the Preface and pages 1-62 in Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge	JE: give a brief (1/2-1 page) summary/response to each of the articles you read in I/O:TRK (pgs 1-62) and in a final reflection explain which of these interest you if you were to end up as doing teacher research.
29	Read pages 121-169 & 203-230 in Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge	JE: give a brief (1/2-1 page) summary/response to each of the articles you read in I/O:TRK for this class and in a final reflection explain which of these interest you if you were to end up as doing teacher research.
NOVEMBER
5	Give a 5-minute report on what you’ve found potentially useful about the NCTE, the professional organization for teachers of English. http://www.ncte.org/	JE: Identify where on the NCTE website there are resources, journals, conferences, etc. that relate to the 4 books you’ve read. In a final reflection, explain how this website might be helpful to someone interested in making teaching their profession (for instance, if you’re going to teach at a particular level (K-12, college) or a particular student population, which kinds of research, which particular journals, which conferences, etc would be important for you?).
12	Due: 4-5 page Proposal for a Research Essay (include a description of a research question, a methodology, and an analysis of the particular journal you’re targeting for your essay)
19	Due: 5-8 page draft ready to share (hard copy)
26	Due: 10-15 page draft ready to share (hard copy)
DECEMBER
3	Due: Revision (final draft should be 10-15 pages)