Great Opportunity: Spring Creative Writing Course, Fiction Writing Workshop

Hi Guys -

I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity for a brand new Creative Writing Class I'm teaching in the Spring. It's called Fiction Writing Workshop, ENG 276.5672 and it meets Monday and Wednesday from 6-7:30. Please feel free to pass along to any LaGuardia Students who might be interested.

PLEASE NOTE: The catalogue lists Creative Writing (ENN 198) as a prerequisite for this class. HOWEVER, of you wish to enroll and haven't taken ENN 198, send me an email at laura.tanenbaum@gmail.com to see what arrangeents can be made.

Thanks, and hope to see you in the Spring.

Here's the description:

*NEW COURSE*

Fiction Writing Workshop

ENG 276.5672

Mondays and Wednesdays, 6-7:30 PM

Distilled moments, chance encounters, the internal thought and the external action, the spoken and the unspoken, the familiar made strange and the strange made familiar: in this class we will explore the boundless possibilities of short fiction. Students will be encouraged to experiment with a variety of forms and techniques, share their work with one another, give and receive constructive feedback, and to take risks throughout the writing and revision process.

We will use a reader containing short fiction (and some creative non-fiction) by a range of writers with diverse backgrounds and styles, including Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Allison, Sherman Alexie, Jamaica Kincaid, John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver and Miranda July. We will use these writers as inspiration, as idea-generators and as the jumping off point for a variety of writing projects.

We will undertake writing exercises and games that explore such elements of fiction as character, dialogue, description, plot, time, and place, using techniques and elements including collage, found texts, observation, chance, and collaboration. Throughout we will focus on multiple and overlapping elements of the writing process, with a special emphasis on the various possible approaches to revision.

All students will have the opportunity to have selected work published in a chapbook that will be created by the group. We will also discuss other opportunities for publication.

Please feel free to contact me at Laura.tanenbaum@gmail.com with questions.

Announcement

Hi guys - I'm sorry to report that I'm currently out of town due to a death in the family. You can still get your grades from 10:30-12:30 tomorrow (Friday) in E264 - Prof. Johnson and Lindskoog will have your exams and a sheet for each of you explaining all of your 101 and 103 grades.

If you have any questions or concerns about these, you can contact me at 917 710-7341 before the final grades go in at the start of next week.

I'm sorry to not be there with you; I've enjoyed working with all of you. I'll be back in Fall II if you want to come stop by.

Thanks for your understanding.

Invitation for Submissions and Holiday Luncheon

Next, Wednesday, December 8th, during club hours - 2:15-4, the Creative Writing Club will be holding an end-of-the luncheon and celebration in M317. We will have hot and cold food and wonderful treats from club officer and master chef Jennifer Phanomrat. Come take a break from end of the semester studying, meet other creative writers and hear about our exciting plans for the future.

We're pitching in with a food drive being held by the Natural Science department and Nursing club to benefit a soup kitchen in South Jamaica, so please bring a canned good or small cash donation.

The Club is also taking submissions for a chapbook of work from club members. Short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction are all welcome. If you'd like to submit, Next, Wednesday, December 8th, during club hours - 2:15-4, the Creative Writing Club will be holding an end-of-the luncheon and celebration in M317. We will have hot and cold food and wonderful treats from club officer and master chef Jennifer Phanomrat. Come take a break from end of the semester studying, meet other creative writers and hear about our exciting plans for the future.
We're pitching in with a food drive being held by the Natural Science department and Nursing club to benefit a soup kitchen in South Jamaica, so please bring a canned good or small cash donation.

The Club is also taking submissions for a chapbook of work from club members. Short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction are all welcome. If you'd like to submit, send your writing as an attachment to cwlagcc@gmail.com.

Hope to see you there!

In-Class work: Thursday, December 1st

Congratulations on being almost through the semester and turning in your research essays! Today we're going to review and prepare for our work next week: your presentations on Wednesday, December 8th and your in-class exit exam on Thursday, December 9th.


PART I: First, write a post giving an overview of your presentation next week. Remember your presentation should be between five and ten minutes. Answer the following questions:

- How will you begin, in order to catch our attention and introduce us to your topic?
- What is the central argument you make in your essay and how will you present it to us?
- What are a few key pieces of evidence that support your argument, and how will you describe and present them?
- What is your visual element, and how will you work it into your presentation? Remember that you'll want to do more than just show us something - you want to talk about what it shows us.
- What do you think makes for an effective oral presentation? What makes you want to listen? What can you do to achieve these qualities?

After posting, read the responses of some of your classmates. In the comments, ask questions about anything in the post that is unclear and offer one concrete suggestion for strengthening their presentation.


PART II:

After you've posted on your presentation AND given feedback to your classmates, you can use the rest of the time to do some reviewing for the final exam OR working on your revision of essay #2 or the research paper. (You can work on revisions of the research paper even though you haven't gotten it back yet - think about what you already know you need to do to make it stronger.)


Extra Credit Posts: Respond to one or more of these topics on your blog for an extra credit addition to your participation grade. This will be especially helpful if you have a lot of absences to make up. You can begin work on these posts today, and you can post as many as you like on your blog through Monday, December 13th.


1) Look at the Winter Soldier testimony from Iraq and Afganistan included in your packet. What
connections do you see between these soldiers' stories and the themes and ideologies we've been discussing all semester? How do they compare to the stories of soldiers we encountered during our unit about Vietnam?


2) Look at Moustafa Bayoumi's article "At the center of a sudden storm," about the controversy around the book from which we read an excerpt: How Does it Feel to be a Problem? Why and how did the book become an issue? What do you think this reveals about the ways racism works in the United States and the role of the media in creating and reporting on these issues?

We'll discuss Bayoumi's article in more depth next week. Be sure you've picked up a copy of the epigraph and the missing page.

(On a somewhat lighter note, here is Bayoumi's article about being an extra in Sex and the City 2 that he mentions at the end of the piece. And here is an interesting Tumblr using humor to combat the kind of racism Bayoumi describes.

3) Yesterday we discussed the idea that much media serves to defend the interests of the elite. We also talked about alternative sources that can give a different perspective. There's no one trick for deciding if a media source is useful or reliable. However, Chomsky's analysis suggests a couple things to look for.

First, because, as he notes, much media is owned by a handful of small corporations, it's useful to seek out indepent sources that work outside this corporations. Here are two: Democracy Now, a radio and TV show, and Indymedia, which produces the Indypendent, which I handed out in class.

Second, because the ideology of nationalism often influences the choice and framing of topics, it's useful to look at sources from different countries. Technology has made this much easier than it used to be. Here is the website for the Guardian, a British newspaper, and here is the website for the English language version of Al Jazeera, a large network serving the Middle East.

Choose one of the four sites linked into this question and notice what's on the front page and how it's discussed. In your post, compare this to what you see on the front page of the New York Times website. What differences do you notice in the kinds of stories that are covered? The way they are covered? What audience do you think each is trying to reach? How do you think these differences relate to the nationality of the source (ie where it is produced) or its ownership?

Fragments and Run-Ons

Take a look at these three sentences and then answer the poll questions along the side of the blog.

1) Swofford describes watching films about the Vietnam War with his fellow marines before leaving for Iraq during the first Gulf War for them these films were not antiwar in fact they made them more eager to have the opportunity to go and fight.

2) In his speech "Beyond Vietnam," King critiques not only U.S. policy in that war, but also the ideologies of materialism and militarism that he says will put the U.S. "on the wrong side of a world revolution."

3) As Appy shows, even though the U.S. army during the Iraq War are all volunteers, with many different ideologies and with many different reasons for joining the army.

Then fix the sentences that need fixing in the comments.

November 11th In-Class Work and Announcements

Here's an outline of what we'll do in-class, and then some important announcements about what's coming up:

In-Class:

1) Work with fragments and run-ons: look at the post below and answer the poll questions. We'll take some time to discuss the results and talk about how to fix this common problems.

2) Both post and print out your essay #2 draft. Take a few minutes to read over your work. I'll be responding to the posts, and your partner will respond to the written version.

3) Mark your partner's essay with check marks for something that made you think, question marks for something that was confusing, general, or not supported by the evidence. Also mark fragments and run-ons.

4) Use your partner's comments and mine to make corrections or additions to your draft. Ask them or me questions about their marks to help you with this.

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Announcements!

- Monday we have another guest speaker. I'm very excited that award-winning journalist Tracie McMillan will speak to us about her work on food issues, including undercover investigations. She'll touch on many of the issues you've discussed in Professor Johnson's class. We'll be joined by students from an Ethics of Food cluster and we'll be in room C431D at our regular time. You can learn more about Tracie and her work at her website.

- For next week, read President Obama's speech about Afghanistan from your course packs. Think about the ideology you think it puts forward and how you think it compares to that of the neocons we read about in Engler?

- Next week we'll also talk about how to expand your Power Analysis II assignment into your full research essay. To give you time to do a great job on these, we're pushing back the deadline until Wednesday, December 1st, the week after Thanksgiving. However, if you haven't yet turned in the Power Analysis II assignment, you need to turn it in as soon as possible. Talk to me, Professor Lindskoog and/or go to the writing with your questions about this. You are of course welcome to post part or all of your draft before the deadline for feedback.

- We'll also talk next week about the presentations of your research topic you'll be doing after the break, and a little about the exit exam in 101. For now, just be aware that the exit exam will deal with the readings from the third part of the class ("From Vietnam to Iraq") and that it will be an in-class, open-book exam.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Leave 'em in the comments!

November 4: Peer Reviewing

Today, you'll have about 45 minutes to work on one of your essays. You can work on essay 2 for ENG 101, about Vietnam, or you can work on your power analysis assignments, which lead into your longer research assignments. If you have part of a draft in your notes or a word file, begin by posting that on your blog.

After about 45 minutes, you'll pick a partner and respond to their draft. Leave a comment that responds to the following questions:

1) Does the writing make sense? Note any places where you as the reader are confused.
2) What is the writer's argument? (If she/he doesn't have one, tell her/him!)
3) Does the evidence given (direct or indirect citations; specific facts from sources) support the argument?
4) Are sources for the evidence introduced and cited correctly?
5) What else do you notice? What more do you want to know?

You'll have about 30 minutes to read your colleague's draft and respond. Then you'll have another 45 minutes or so to work on your drafts, using the comments you received.