Instructor: Julia M. Wright
Office: McCain 2193
E-mail: julia.wright@dal.ca
Office hours: Tuesdays, 2:30-3:30pm in McCain 3042 (except November 17th); Fridays, 2:00-3:00pm in McCain 2193; by appointment.
 
This non-credit class fulfills the University requirement for a 21^st credit in the Honours degree.  It will focus on research skills and professional strategies that are broadly transferable to the various fields which our students pursue after an Honours degree, including graduate study, law school, teaching and various media and communications professions, as well as foster collaboration and peer-support as practices with broad applications. The class will involve a combination of lectures (including guest panels), in-class workshops and discussions, and class presentations. 
 

Recommended Resources

There is no required textbook for this class, but students are advised to consult recent editions of the basic resources for our discipline:  a good literary handbook (e.g., M. H. Abrams’ Glossary of Literary Terms), a writing handbook, The MLA Handbook on MLA style and research-paper practices, and a dictionary. The library will have such resources in the Reference section, and for most writing and MLA questions the OWL site at Purdue is more than sufficient; for an array of good dictionaries, go to onelook.com or, for etymologies and historical usages, the Oxford English Dictionary via the library database page.

 Evaluation
This is a pass/fail class, but to pass you must regularly attend classes and satisfactorily complete all assignments, including the tutoring sessions; in the event of documentation of significant health-related or other causes interfering with your coursework, some flexibility (e.g., alternative assignments) may be possible and required attendance for the relevant period will, of course, be waived.

Key Dates
September 24^th: sign up for presentation date for first part of Assignment #1
October 8^th: Assignment #2 due in class
October 15^th-November 5^th: Assignment #1, first part—presentations
November 19^th:  Assignment #3 due in class
November 26^th-27^th:  Public Colloquium (end of Assignment #1)
December 7^th: Assignment #4 due (drop off box in McCain) 

Assignments
All of these assignments will be discussed in class, in detail, before the duedate.

1.      Pick an essay from a previous class that you are interested in developing through further research and revision—not necessarily your best paper, or your worst, but the one you want to think about some more.  For this assignment, you will then revise the original essay, drawing on the research skills discussed in class and working with a faculty advisor, into a 15-minute paper that can be read to your classmates. We will rehearse these in October and you will present the final versions at a mini-conference on the last Thursday and Friday of November. (45%)

2.      Write two 250-word summaries of your essay project for Assignment #1 or, if you’re considering an MA, you may use this assignment to work on your idea for a thesis or graduate essay:  one 250-word summary should be written as if for a SSHRC MA-CGS application and so for an audience of professors; the other should be written as if for a general audience, that is, people who have finished high school but not studied literature in university (that’s about 75-80% of the Canadian adult population) (due October 8^th).  (10% each)

3. Prepare one of the following (15%; due November 19^th):

a)     an edition of a broadside ballad (select one from the collection posted in BbLearn) with a one-paragraph introduction (about 100-150 words) and at least three explanatory footnotes suitable for a first-year English class;

b)     a 300-word assessment (as if for a sponsor or boss) of a university or city event you attended, focussing on organizational elements (effective advertising, sufficient room/venue capacity, did the event suit the targetted audience?).

c)      a 300-word review of a movie (as if for a university newspaper)—it doesn’t have to be a recent film..

4. Tutoring (20%) and a 300-word report on your tutoring, identifying two areas in which your own writing and/or your teaching improved through the experience.  Report due December 7^th by 4pm.

Class schedule:
September 10^th: Introduction (syllabus); finding an advisor; overview of research tools
September 17^th: Introduction to tutoring
September 24^th: Research, Theory, and Presentation; pick your October dates for your presentations
October 1^st:  Writing for Different Audiences
October 8^th: Assignment #2 due in class.   Guest panel on research (details on print syllabus)
October 15^th: Colloquium papers
October 22^nd: Colloquium papers
October 29^th: Colloquium papers
November 5^th:  Wrapping up the Colloquium Papers: What Have We Learned?
November 12^th: no class (study day)
November 19^th: Guest panel on careers (details on print syllabus); Assignment #3 due in class.
November 26^th-27^th: Public Colloquium (completing Assignment #2)
December 3^rd: no class in recognition of the extended time commitment for the Colloquium. (Assignment #4 due on December 7^th).