Spring 2005
Existential Cinema in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
UWS 16b Tuesday and Friday 9:40-10:30
Mr. Carlos Martinez
Office: Rabb 248 # 6-2151 Office Hours: T, F 10:30-12:00 or by appointment
Mailbox: Behind English Office - Rabb 144 Mailstop 023
Email: carlosm@brandeis.edu
Course Objectives: This course is designed as a writing workshop. Together we will work through the process of drafting, revising, and crafting clear and interesting papers. For your part, you will increase your ability to read complicated texts closely and explain their workings succinctly. You will become fairly adept at wielding historical and literary theoretical lenses. Perhaps most importantly, the course is designed to instigate intuition, insight, ethical self-questioning, ironic self-awareness, and a dialectical relationship to everyday life. Ultimately, this class is designed to get you to look at everyday experiences in a new way. You will learn to critique the world around you.
Required Texts:
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Mathew Ward. New York: Vintage, 1988.
Hacker, Diana. Rules for Writers. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004 . (Hacker)
Packer, Nancy Huddleston, and John Timpane. Writing Worth Reading: The Critical Process. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1997. (WWR)
Written Assignments:
During the semester you will be required to write five or six short papers, some one to two pages and some two to three pages, and three longer papers. Revision of some of the short papers and all of the long papers is already a component of class workshops. In addition, at the end of the semester you will be allowed to revise one of the last two longer essays. All revisions can only bring your score up one full letter grade. Please remember to use the Writing Center or each other for help with revision. The Writing Center is located on the mezzanine level of the Goldfarb library. All assignments completed outside of class must be typed, double-spaced, in 12 pt. font, and have margins (top, bottom, right, and left) set at one inch. Improper formatting as well as incorrect grammar will lower your score on all short and long papers.
Late Policy:
In the interest of fairness, I lower grades a fraction of a full grade point (e.g. from a B+ to a B) per class day assignments are late. If you know that you will not be able to turn in your work on time, get in touch with me and let me know as far in advance as possible. If you cannot make the class on which a paper is due, then try turning it in ahead of time or sending it along with someone you know.
Class Participation:
Class participation is a component of your grade. Please come to class having done the reading and prepared to discuss it. Please do not miss class because you are scrambling to finish a written assignment that is due. If class is in a couple of hours and you are at a couple of paragraphs, give it a rest, do the reading, and make it to class. In other words, please come to class even if you do not have an assignment to turn in; it snowballs when you don’t.
Attendance:
Please try to make an effort to get here bright-eyed and on time. I will allow up to three absences where I will not ask and will not want to hear about your reasons for missing. After these your grade will begin to shift in a downward direction unless you have unrelenting circumstances you have cleared with me first. For those of you who are present, I do reward perfect attendance at the end of the semester.
Group Work:
Your work on other people’s papers counts toward your class participation grade. You are depending on your peers’ comments as much as they depend on yours, so please be considerate and ample when giving advice.
Conferences:
You must meet with me outside of class several times this semester: both before and after mid-semester. I distribute sign up times in class and post them on the WebCT. It will be your responsibility to come and see me. I will take off a full letter grade from the paper we would have been discussing if you miss a conference. Aside from conferences, please feel free to come and see me throughout the semester as necessary.
Academic Honesty:
You are expected to be honest in all of your academic work. The University policy on academic honesty is distributed annually as section 5 of the Rights and Responsibilities handbook. Instances of alleged dishonesty will be forwarded to the Office of Campus Life for possible referral to the Student Judicial System. Potential sanctions include failure in the course and suspension from the University. If you have any questions about my expectations, please ask. In this class, academic dishonesty would most likely mean using ideas from a book, a journal, or the Internet without adding a citation or footnote indicating the source of the ideas. Academic dishonesty is otherwise any deliberate attempt on your part to present someone else’s ideas as your own. On the other hand, using the ideas generated in your peer editing sessions and group discussion does NOT constitute academic dishonesty in this class.
Grading:
Class Participation (Includes homework and peer editing) – 20%
Short Papers – 30%
Essays – 50%
If you are a student with a documented physical, psychological, or learning disability at Brandeis and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me.
Course Schedule:
discussion of syllabus, goals, short in-class reading and discussion
Week 2: Style: Audience.
January 17 NO CLASSES –
Martin Luther King Day
reading due: “The Learning Curve” David Sedaris (pp. 83-96 WebCT)
“Notes on Punctuation” Lewis Thomas (WebCT)
January 21
reading due: “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction” Walter J. Ong (focus on.57-64 WebCT)
“Getting Ready to Write” (WWR pp. 61-68)
“The Critical Sense” (WWR pp. 3-9)
“Punctuation” (WWR pp. 522-537)
Week 3: Style.
January 25
reading due: “Evaluating Rhetoric: Seeing Behind the Words” (WWR pp. 10-20)
“Developing Your Own Style” (WWR pp. 302-305)
short paper # 1 due
January 28
reading due: “Subliminal Chainings: Metonymical Doublespeak” Don L. F. Nilsen (WebCT pp. 147-152)
“Criteria for Good Evidence: Making Sure” (WWR pp. 142-151)
“Evaluating Arguments” (Hacker Section 47)
Week 4: Organization: Sentences and Paragraphs.
February 1
reading due: “Orchestrating War” Carter Burwell (WebCT)
“Description: Showing It” (WWR pp. 191-204)
“The Sentence from Many Angles” (WWR pp. 251-262)
short paper #2 due
February 4
reading due: “We Have a Pope” Christopher Buckley (WebCT pp. 69-95)
“Build Effective Paragraphs” (Hacker Section 4)
“The Structure and Strategies of the Paragraph” (WWR pp. 177-185)
“Linking Paragraphs” (WWR pp. 228-232)
Week 5: Persuasion.
February 8
reading due: “Coherence: Hanging Ideas Together” (WWR pp. 212-223)
“Your Opening Paragraph: A Bold Beginning” (WWR pp. 241-244)
“Your Conclusion: Finishing in Style” (WWR pp. 245-248)
“Overarching Strategies: Throughlines” (WWR pp. 233-240)
“Revising: Getting the Writing Right” (WWR pp. 101-106)
“The Title” (WWR pp. 249-250)
“Revising and Writing the Final Draft” (WWR pp. 400-403)
Essay #1 (ad analysis) due: one to me one to peer groups
formation of peer groups: sentence and paragraph workshop
conferences
reading due: “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness” Jon Gertner (WebCT)
“Critical Reading” (WWR pp. 38-57)
“Experiment with Ways to Explore Your Subject” (Hacker Sections 1b-d)
“Invention: Generating Ideas” (WWR pp. 69-79)
Week 6: Argument: Existential Crisis
February 15 Meet In Goldfarb Mezzanine: Vershbow Library Training Room
reading due: Important Ref. Materials
Research (Hacker Section 48)
“Limiting Your Area of Research” (WWR pp. 353-362)
reading due: The Stranger Albert Camus (Translator’s Note, M. Ward pp. 3-18)
“Making the Argument” (WWR pp. 152-170)
“Choosing a General Subject” (WWR pp. 330-333)
Find three scholarly articles on Camus
or Existentialism
in-class workshop on Annotated Bibliographies
February 21-25 – Finish The Stranger
Week 8: Documenting Sources: How to come up with a thesis.
March 1
reading due: “Compiling a Working Bibliography” (WWR pp. 333-352)
“Using Evidence” (WWR pp. 135-150)
“Documenting Your Sources” (WWR pp. 376-400)
“MLA documentation” (Hacker Section 54)
“Generate Ideas and Sketch a Plan” (Hacker Section 1)
“Supporting a Thesis” (Hacker Section 51)
short paper # 3 due to peer groups (Annotated Bibliography) source workshop/peer editing
March 3 Film Viewing: Garden State Zach Braff and Co. (attendance mandatory)
reading due: “Film Terminology” Giametti and Co.(WebCT )
Garden State and The Stranger
Week 9: Existential Cinema.
reading due: “Film Terminology” Giametti and Co. (WebCT )
short paper #4 close reading/scene analysis – The Stranger and Garden State
reading due: “Restating Your Thesis” (WWR pp. 362-372)
“Rough Out An Initial Draft” (Hacker Section 2)
“Constructing Reasonable Arguments” (Hacker Section 46)
“Managing Sources: Avoiding Plagiarism” (Hacker Section 50/52)
“Developing, Organizing, Drafting: Getting the Ideas Written” (WWR 91-101)
Week 10: Revision.
reading due: Maman died today...That’s my mom.
Draft due to peers
Outline, Introductory Paragraph, Working Thesis, Best Body Paragraph, and Conclusion due to me
conferences
March 18
reading due: Selections from “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Walter Benjamin (WebCT)
Week 11: Writing About Film.
reading due: Selections from “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (WebCT)
Essay #2 due by the end of the week
March 25 No Classes: Good Friday
Week 12: Writing Critically.
reading due: “From Realism to Virtual Reality: Images of America's Wars” H. Bruce Franklin (WebCT)
Selections from “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (WebCT)
short paper #5 due
Film Screening: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Charlie Kaufmann, Michel Gondry, and Co. (attendance is mandatory)
April 1
reading due: Selections from Paul de Man on Irony (WebCT)
Week 13: The Critical Distance.
reading due: “A Plague of Tics” David Sedaris (WebCT)
April 8
reading due: Hello Can You Hear Me Up There I Said I Don’t Want To Do This Anymore!
Essay #3 due to me and to peers
conferences
Week 14: Revision.
reading due: “Emphasis: Strengthening the Thought” (WWR pp. 262-283)
“The Personal Voice: Being There in Your Writing” (WWR pp. 306-312)
“Writing with Flair: Risks that Pay Off” (WWR pp. 313-320)
April 15
reading due: “Introduction” Viggo Mortensen (WebCT)
“Hubcap Diamond-Star Halo” (WebCT)
Week 15: Personalizing Your Point.
April 19
reading due: “Please Don’t Kill the Freshman” Zoe Trope (WebCT)
course evaluations
short paper #6 due
April 22
LAST CLASS!
Revisions due by May 13th
THIS SYLLABUS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE