ENGL 109 W23 Weiler

ENGL 109: Introduction to Academic Writing and Somatic Literacy

Instructor: Andrew J. Weiler

EV3 3408

Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30-4:00 pm

Office: PAS 2222   Hours: 4-5 pm M/W or by appointment.

Email:  a4weiler@uwaterloo.ca

Overview

English 109 is designed to get you comfortable writing at the university level. Because we value learning as a social activity, much of your work will involve collaboration with your peers. You will learn about different genres and explore crucial aspects of effective writing such as how to make rhetorical appeals, invention, argumentation, organization, style, and presentation, while being encouraged to develop your somatic literacy: your body’s response to texts and desire to communicate. Thus, this course is designed to familiarize you with somatic lines of thought, i.e., arguments from cognitive scientists, positions held by composition scholars, and various philosophers, whose contributions have resulted in a change in perspective on the body’s relationship to mind, thought, and to knowledge more broadly; to reading, writing, and learning.

In addition to cultivating your somatic literacy, much of the course content runs parallel to that offered in an orthodox ENGL 109 class. In this respect, you will have two smaller assignments that differ from a traditional ENGL course, however, the unit assignments and final portfolio – a mainstay in most first-year writing courses – remains the backbone of this course. In other words, each of you are being given a unique opportunity to explore what your bodies say about your writing, about the texts you encounter, peer work, revision, poems, and perceptions of the world more broadly. You might find this approach to academic writing more fun but more challenging. Or, it might be easier than writing papers in a traditional ENGL 109 class. Either way, feel free to email or ask me any questions or concerns at any point.

To begin, it is vital to clarify the term ‘somatic literacy.’ One way to think of somatic literacy is as a habit of mind that begins by acknowledging how the intertwining of body and mind provides functions as the generative source for meaning making, perception, and composing (Rule 31). To support this claim, consider the following: 1) Are the body and mind really separate? How many ideas did you have before you were born? 2) Can you think of any metaphors that involve bodily sensation(s), specifically, any phrases, quotes, or figures of speech that rely on the reader’s ability to recall past experiences involving bodily sensations assigned meaning by the mind? 3) Are these phrases positive or negative? (i.e. would you want to experience these sensations?)

The following definition of somatic literacy is not meant to be definitive or exhaustive but a guide in the context of this course.

Somatic Literacy: the ability to access knowledge encoded in kinesthetic and nonverbal material [and] … supports the authoritative knowing grounded in embodied experience (Johnson 94).

Course Objectives:

  1. To help you to think critically and communicate effectively.
  2. To give you the chance to learn and practice a variety of strategies for inventing, drafting, and editing texts.
  3. To familiarize students with a variety of genres and to write effectively therein.
  4. To provide offers students information and methods for incorporating the knowledges their bodies produce into various stages of writing within any genre.
  5. To help you learn to write persuasively by effectively employing elements of formal argumentation.
  6. Students will develop best practices for research, analysis, invention, and style.
  7. To instill effective somatic writing habits through a greater awareness of your own somatic responses and writing processes, the ebb and flow between thoughts and feelings, composition, and time and distance required for more effective revision.

Land Acknowledgement:

The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, land that was guaranteed to the Haudenosaunee of the Six Nations of the Grand River, and is within the territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples. This illegal acquisition of Indigenous land is the result of broken treaties. As a nation of laws, we have an obligation to be honest about past events, and how some groups have benefited by breaking the very laws and values this country claims to uphold. Ultimately, we have an obligation to be willing to change our perceptions of Canadian society by acknowledging the historical realities of Indigenous groups and their mistreatment by our government.

Required Texts: 

1. Ruskiewicz, John and Jay Dolmage. How To Write Anything: A Guide and Reference with Readings, 5th Edition. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s Press.

Evaluations:

  1. Somatic Journals 10%
  2. Short Writing Activities 10%
  3. Somatic Literacy Narrative 10%    
  4. Rhetorical Analysis of Tik Tok 20%
  5. Argument/Research Essay (Formal) 20%
  6. Final Portfolio including Reflective Memo 20%
  7. Course Somatic Reflection 10%

Somatic Journal (Beginning Jan 23rd)

Each Monday, before class, students submit a 300-500-word summary, usually from one of the assigned chapters posted on LEARN. You will write 5 over the course and they are each worth 4% of your final mark. The somatic journal provides a record of their somatic responses to ideas, texts, and situations. These journal entries will enable you to reflect on how the soma responses frames our perceptions of our world and world views. With respect to the end of the course, your somatic journal entries will also serve as the resource for your course somatic reflection worth 10% of your final mark. 

The more immediate goal of the somatic journal entries is to offer a participation grade for those learning strictly online or more hesitant or shy public speakers. Each entry should be a combination of summary and analysis (about a paragraph each) of an assigned reading. There will be questions to guide your answers posted on LEARN.

Final Portfolio - No Exam

Final Portfolio and Somatic Reflection (Due Wednesday April 12th)

Over the course, we will be developing research skills, analysis, invention, organization, style, somatic composition and revision, thesis development and the structure and mechanics of paragraph and essay writing. The long-term goal is to get students more comfortable writing within an academic context, and hopefully, toward the level of writing necessary to publish scholarly journals. The final portfolio showcases the best of your work, and gives you the chance to revise and resubmit your work. Your final portfolio includes: all 3 major papers - revised of course - 2 of your best activity writing samples, and your somatic reflection.

The reflection should be between 4-6 pages; you are asked to make connections between how you learned, prior to the course, how you learn now, and whether you are in the “developing” stage of building you somatic literacy or in the “honing” stage, tweaking and adjusting your learning strategies to account for somatic knowledges. Additionally, it might be best to comment on this process within the context of the course. For example, did your learning change somatically as it relates to invention, argumentation, composing, and revising? Perhaps you use somatic knowledge more in reading and revision than composing or editing. Provide as much detail as you want within the page limit (6-10 pages). Please note: the reflection must be part of the submission but can only be used to improve your final mark.

*All assignments are to be submitted on LEARN prior to class on the day they are due. Journals will be returned within 1 week; major papers will be returned within two weeks.

Unit 1: Narrative

As we become more familiar with somatic literacy and its affordances, this assignment asks you to detail a personal memory or event(s) that, in some way, incorporate your body’s formation of knowledge to judgement – your gut reaction – to a situation or a text. Consider past experiences as a story, or narrative, with a potential throughline when thinking about the following: did you listen to your gut/intuition? In hind sight, what was the message from your body? What was it warning you about or how did it inform a decision you made in navigating this event or event(s)? How has it shaped you as a learner? Do you ignore this information or let it inform your view of texts and situations?

Unit Goals:

  1. Explore your thinking about your own experiences and beliefs, and about the cultures and communities you are a part of.
  2. Develop knowledge about your somatic literate strengths and goals, and about what processes work best for you as a writer.
  3. Analyze your experiences within different contexts – social, cultural, physical and so on.
  4. Understand how writing is a process, and that one piece of writing might take several drafts, some conversations with peers or your instructor, and several revisions before it is fully developed.  Also, be able to give others useful feedback about their writing.

Somatic Literacy Narrative (Due Monday January 30th)

It might be useful to think of the somatic literacy narratives as akin to personal narratives and counter-hegemonic stories, common practice in many composition courses. This is the time to consider and reflect upon your somatic or physiological reactions to discourse, to experiences in life, the flow between the two; that is, the ways in which your somatically respond to a text based on your past experiences that frame your understanding of texts. In part, this should draw attention to how subject positions shape and are shaped by discourses. Unlike the journals, this narrative tells a story about you as a learner, your voice as a writer, your strategies as a reader. It should detail an event in your journey as a student, anytime from grade 1 until now, a time that your learning or thinking changed due to an event, which, helped shaped who you are.

Although informal, we will be following the conventions of the Literacy Narrative, to be covered, in full, during class instruction and activities, and assigned readings.

Unit 2: Analysis

In this unit, we will learn about the construction of rhetorical appeals and the rhetorical situation with a particular focus on audience. The disembodied view of composition is not just a problem for the non-digital but the digital world as well (Butler paragraph 16). While it is intended to facilitate an exploration of the association between movement, language, and corporeality on TikTok, it can be adapted to explore any digital space (snapchat, twitter, Instagram). And since digital space incorporate various ethnic, cultural, and linguistic communities, you may analyze the rhetorical and kinesthetic (physical performance and dance) traditions from any account on any platform so long as: 1) they are appropriate for university learning and public conversation, 2) You provide a transcript for any Tik Tok performed in a language other than English.

Unit Goals:

  1. Understand and think critically about texts you encounter. Collect relevant cultural texts (in this case ads) for analysis.
  1. Read/analyze rhetorically, paying attention to strategies of persuasion, the purposes of an author, and the effect of a text on an audience. Analyze texts in order to better compose your own.
  2. Integrate other voices into your writing—through summary, paraphrase and quotation.
  3. Engage both in the process of analyzing texts in conversation with others, and in developing analytical writing with the input of others.  Be able to give others useful feedback about their writing and their ideas.

Rhetorical Analysis of TiK ToK (Due Wednesday Mar 1st)

For this assignment, you are being asked to analyse how different subject positions are constructed by digital discourses and kinesthetic performances, to connect your observations to gender and queer theories, critical race theory, questions of cultural bias, and or cultural and Indigenous epistemologies in digital spaces.

Readings: prior to the assignment, you will be asked to read excerpts from Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Butler’s Gender Troubles, Gibbs Embodiment and Cognitive Science. The goal is to facilitate connects between how discourses of power shape understanding of different bodies demonstrating the materiality of language (Watkins 20, 21). Comparing and contrasting these claims with a somatic view of embodiment, using the somatic journal as a resource, students are encouraged to see how bodies navigate the very texts that construct identities. In other words, how the body is read as a text and might be misinterpreted - that if the body is text personified, how do “we compete when we perform, we enact an embodied rhetoric: presenting our bodily differences through changes in posture to build ethos through stance or exemplify emotions through gesture” (Butler paragraph 29).

Reflecting on the somatic journal, consider you body as a text, focusing on experiences as audience and composer: what kinesthetic performances highlighted tensions between the felt experience inside the body and the movements and postures of external performances? (i.e. when you cringed, did a part of your body aside from your face feel tension? What word, image, or movement provoked this?).

Analyzing Embodied Composition: Movement Across Digital Communication

Whether students prefer auditory, visual, or kinesthetic oriented forms of communication, this assignment considers how the mind’s coupling to the body allows for opportunities for creating meaning across different modes (textual, pictorial, visual, spatial) through movement. As always, feel free to take any position on this debate but focus in a one type of medium to discuss whether or not composing is a disembodied endeavour.

In “Bodies in Composition: Teaching Writing Through Kinesthetic Performances,” Janine Butler argues that bodily movement should be accounted for when students think through a problem or idea, how movement is necessary for processing knowledge, and how “kinesthetic movement involves and awareness of both our bodies and our interactions with other bodies and media – including texts, the technologies we use, and the writing process” (paragraph 6). By making the kinesthetic nature of composition more apparent, students are afforded the opportunity to make connections between embodied uses of space and visual spatial arrangement in various multi-model texts. Prompts for inquiry: how does the use of space, and the elements of an image, work with or against each other? Does the use of space strategically effect the organization of the paper, image, or speech? (ibid). Butler connects the textual, visual, and kinesthetic by examining spatial relationships within a variety of texts and across different modes of communication (paragraph 21). This assignment asks you to consider how meaning making is multimodal and that all acts of composition are embodied or disembodied, to various degrees, regardless of mode (paragraph 22).

Topics will be provided to help students develop a narrow focus for analysis. You may choose a topic that is not on the list but should communicate with the instructor first and ensure it is an appropriate alternative. For example, students may choose to examine spatial relationships in metaphors, the various ways metaphorical meaning moves or is represented through movement (textually, visually, kinaesthetically performed). Students could look at a variety of other literary devices such as synecdoche, and the spatial relationship involved in transforming the original idea into a smaller or more simple part signifying the whole. Other options include an analysis of rhyme and meter in poetry or rap, highlighting the ways in which bodily movement is induced and how meaning is associated with movement and emotion (Hawhee 139), stressing the idea that all knowledge is kinaesthetically based or is not.

Unit 3: Argumentation

You will use the data collected during the research sessions in the library to develop arguments that address the rhetorical situation and purpose of your writing. The goal of this unit is to provide students the opportunity to develop an authentic, somatically informed response to a topic or trend, to write freely and passionately - with a focus on the elements of sentence construction - but ultimately persuasively.

Unit Goals:

  1. Explore a relevant and contentious issue from a variety of perspectives, considering multiple viewpoints and arguments, using a variety of research strategies
  2. Creatively and critically synthesize research from multiple sources—develop awareness of different personal, academic, and civic contexts and express your unique ideas in relationship to the ideas of others.
  3. Formulate academic research questions and theses.
  4. Use academic citation systems for documenting work, and know where to find resources that will help you with this.

Argument to Advance a Thesis: Research Paper (Due Wednesday March 29th)

Begin by choosing a current issue that you are interested in.  This issue, ideally, will be a complex one. There will be more than just a “for” or “against” position to be taken, and the issue won’t be so charged and loaded that people’s minds are already made up about it.  Your instructors will help you very carefully choose your issue.

Then, you will do some research to learn more about the issue and about various viewpoints and stakeholders. Eventually, you will form a unique thesis about this issue, and use research to support a series of claims.  You will organize your essay and write persuasively to change people’s minds about your issue. The course textbook, HTWA, has much more detailed information about what an argumentative essay is, and how to write one.

Your assessment on this paper will be based on the goals of this unit.

Day in the Library

On Wednesday March 8th (tbc) we will in the library with research specialist Victoria Feth. We will review various research tools, methodologies for literature reviews, resources scholars utilize when collecting data on a topic. The goal is to develop a method for research and analyzing source biases that inform the arguments made in your informal and final essays. The final product will be a 4-6 page reflection and review of the strategies and resources for research and analysis presented by Rebecca Hutchinson. You will have the option to conduct the research project or use the research skills to construct an analysis of embodied composition.

Grading

Essays that receive A’s (80-100%): these essays have all the required elements and demonstrate a thorough and detailed engagement with all the required elements. They do an excellent job of formulating a thesis, providing evidence for their claims, analyzing its cause and/or effects, and contextualizing it within logical and coherent sentences that are persuasive. In addition, such essays include a clearly articulated description of the connections between the research process and the essay.  “A” range indicates that the quality of work is excellent.

Essays which receive B+/B/B- (70-79%): these essays have all the required elements but are not as thorough or developed as the essays which receive A’s. “B” range indicates that the quality of work is good.

Essays which receive C+/C/C- (60-69%): these essays have all the required elements but the information presented in them is vague, undeveloped and/or superficial. “C” range indicates that the quality of work is adequate.

Essays which receive D’s and F’s (22-59%): these essays are missing one or more required element or are significantly deficient in all areas. “D” and “F” range indicates that the quality of work is unsatisfactory.

Resources

Electronic Device Policy

We will devise a class policy together.

Attendance Policy

Students are expected to attend class, to do the readings thoughtfully and ahead of time, and to participate fully in the class discussions. Much of the content of this course is generated through class discussion and debate.

Institutional-required statements for undergraduate course outlines approved by Senate Undergraduate Council, April 14, 2009

Academic Integrity

In order to maintain a culture of academic integrity, members of the University of Waterloo community are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility.  See the UWaterloo Academic Integritity webpage (https://uwaterloo.ca/academic-integrity/) and the Arts Academic Integrity webpage (https://uwaterloo.ca/arts/current-undergraduates/student-support/ethical-behaviour) for more information.

Discipline

A student is expected to know what constitutes academic integrity, to avoid committing academic offences, and to take responsibility for his/her actions. A student who is unsure whether an action constitutes an offence, or who needs help in learning how to avoid offences (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about “rules” for group work/collaboration should seek guidance from the course professor, academic advisor, or the Undergraduate Associate Dean. When misconduct has been found to have occurred, disciplinary penalties will be imposed under Policy 71 – Student Discipline. For information on categories of offenses and types of penalties, students should refer to Policy 71 - Student Discipline. For typical penalties check Guidelines for the Assessment of Penalties (https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/policies-procedures-guidelines/guidelines/guidelines-assessment-penalties).

Grievance

A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of his/her university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70 - Student Petitions and Grievances, Section 4 (https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/policies-procedures-guidelines/policy-70). When in doubt please be certain to contact the department’s administrative assistant who will provide further assistance.

Appeals

A decision made or penalty imposed under Policy 70, Student Petitions and Grievances (other than a petition) or Policy 71, Student Discipline may be appealed if there is a ground. A student who believes he/she has a ground for an appeal should refer to Policy 72, Student Appeals (https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/policies-procedures-guidelines/policy-72).

Note for Students with Disabilities

The AccessAbility Services office, located on the first floor of the Needles Hall extension (NH 1401), collaborates with all academic departments to arrange appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities without compromising the academic integrity of the curriculum. If you require academic accommodations to lessen the impact of your disability, please register with the AS office at the beginning of each academic term.