Provisional Syllabus(3)

8/6/2019 Provisional Syllabus(3)

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S I X T H C O L L E G E, U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A , S A N D I E G O S U M M E R I 2 0 1 1

Culture, Art, and Technology 125

Articulating Expertise throughBlog Entries, the Informal Essay,

and the Long PitchMark L. Hineline

It is one thing to know many things, like the fox, or even to know one big thing, like thehedgehog. * It is quite another to say what you know that is, to articulate your expertise . Too bad, then, that the world doesnt do all of its business throughexaminations, for an exam is a fine way to demonstrate what you know.

The world is not so arranged. Often times, in order to accomplish something whether that something be getting into grad school or med school, getting a job, getting art out tothe public, or dealing with major contemporary issues such as climate change you needto make your expertise known to other people. Some people will share your expertise, butmost will not.

CAT 125 is designed to equip you with rhetorical tools so that you can say what youknow to a variety of audiences. Sometimes you will want to get to the point. If you arean artist, you will speak to other artists using a shared language. If you are a chemist,youll talk like a chemist. On other occasions, getting to the point is a dead end. Woe

be the musician who tries to talk to an engineer using words like legato or minor keywithout defining them. In cases like this, it sometimes helps to do more than define terms.Careful, effective descriptions and personal narratives go a long way toward makingideas clear to people who speak a different language.

Lectures, section discussion, and assignments in CAT 125 provide instruction and practice in discursive modes such as narrative and description, about which other generalwriting courses say little. In addition, students learn to organize their ideas and rhetoricaltools using short form blog entries , the informal essay , and the long pitch, an oral

presentation.

* The fox and the hedgehog is an allusion to an essay by Isaiah Berlin, and Berlinquotes from Archilochus: The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one bigthing.


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Lecture topics, readings, and assignmentdates

Week 1 Tuesday, June 28, First hour: Rumors, lies, and the

plain facts about CAT 125Youve heard things about CAT 125. What youve heard is lies, all lies, and rumors.Dont let your roommate psych you out. Todays lecture is about how CAT 125works, what you wont have to do, what you will have to do, and why what you willdo is important to do. To you. There will also be a short discussion of hyperbole.

Required reading: Read the syllabus. There will be a quiz. Really. In section. Aquiz.

Tuesday, June 28, Second hour: Public rhetoric andmodes of discourse

When you get done writing, what do you do with what youve written? Most writtenwork in higher education is turned in and read by one person. In CAT 125, as inthe world outside academia, written work is posted on blogs, passed around, printed,or spoken. Some of it gets thrown away, without ever being read by anyone.Welcome to the sphere of public rhetoric, where what you write may change your


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life and could change the world. Today I will talk about public rhetoric; and I willintroduce some categories of writing, known as modes of discourse , that we will useto shape our public rhetoric.

Required reading: William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways , Chapter 5.

Thursday, June 30, First hour: ExpertiseWhat have you learned at UCSD (and at other institutions of higher learning)? Whatdoes this knowledge help you to do? The answers to these questions define the scopeand depth of your expertise. Do not be afraid of the word! You are well on the wayto becoming expert in some area of knowledge and some set of skills and

proficiencies. Today we will start work to determine what these are, so that you cantalk and write about them.

Required reading: Mark Hineline, Never Had a Job

Blog assignment 1: Cataloguing and defining your expertise

Thursday, June 30, Second hour: Creating a tensionIn a formal essay, your thesis along with the promises you make in the introductionabout how you will defend your thesis constitute a tension that keeps a reader reading, just so long as the reader is interested in the thesis. In an informal essay, youmust provide the tension that keeps the reader reading. Whats a tension? Come tolecture. Ill tell you.


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Week 2 Tuesday, July 5, First hour: Inigo Montoya day

Three sentences: My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.Required viewing: Not exactly required, but if youve never seen The PrincessBride, get it from Netflix and watch it with at least one friend.

Blog assignment 1 is due

Tuesday, July 5, Second hour: DescriptionThe cat is on the mat. What color is the cat? Black and white. Long-haired or short?Short. Male or female? Female. What kind of mat is it? Its a yoga mat. The purple

kind? Yes. Where is the mat? Its on my patio. Whats the weather like? Its sunny.Is the cat awake or asleep? Shes sleeping. Curled up or stretched out? Totallystretched out. Why didnt you tell me all of this in the first place?

Today we work on describing.

Required reading: Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel , Chapter One, OnAnticipation

Blog assignment 2: Describe two places that have been important to you in the pasttwo years: one place where youve been intellectually stimulated, and another placewhere you go to for serenity.

Thursday, July 7, First hour: A musical metaphor foressay structure: guest lecturer Clinton McCallum

Because neither the informal essay nor the long pitch are arguments, per se, thelogical structure of an argument is a poor model for compelling your audience to gofrom the beginning to the end of your essay or pitch. For an alternative, we turn to


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music, where structure is a vital part of musical form. Guest lecturer ClintonMcCallum will demonstrate two musical forms, the sonata-allegro form and the songform, that we can use when writing informal essays and long pitches.

Required reading : Mark Hineline, The Sound of Wukoki

Thursday, July 7, Second hour: Working with themusical metaphor; Narrative

Today we will translate the musical metaphors from Clints lecture into structuralforms that we can use. Its possible to explain the most abstruse details of the mostarcane topic you can think of, and hold the attention of your audience, if you simplywrap it in a story.

Required viewing: If you have never seen an episode, or you havent seen itrecently, watch one or more episodes of How I Met Your Mother

Required reading: E. B. White: The Death of a Pig


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Week 3 Tuesday, July 12, First hour: The Long Pitch

ExamplesSome examples of informal speaking in formal settings.


Tuesday, July 12, Second hour: Making a pitch: Groupone

Group one will begin work toward doing their long pitches

Thursday, July 14, First hour: The Long Pitch Mechanics

I cannot say the plural of text. Texts. Cant say it. I avoid saying it at all costs. Andthis is important. Spoken English differs from written English. The rules of grammar are the same, but who cares about spelling when you are speaking? When speaking,


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it is pronunciation that matters. Sometimes its valuable to say important things threetimes. Sometimes its valuable to say important things three times. Also, you needsimpler syntax when you speak. And sometimes its valuable to say important thingsthree times.

Today well look at borrowing from your written work to find things to say. Borrow, but revise.

Thursday, July 14, Second hour: Making a pitch:Group Two

Group two will begin work toward doing their long pitches

A draft of your final essay is due.


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Week 4

Tuesday, July 19, First hour: Audience

The public in public rhetoric is neither nobody nor everybody. Nor is iteveryman or everywoman. It is an important step, if you are to be compelling, towrite for an audience that you can imagine in detail. My audience, when I writeabout environmental topics, is an undergraduate environmental studies major atOberlin College whom I met on top of Dorr Mountain in Acadia National Park. Idont know her name, but I think of her as Sarah. She took a picture of me with mycamera, and we talked for five minutes. I know who her instructors were, and what

books she read, not because she told me, but because I know the program at Oberlin.Who is your audience? What sorts of beliefs and prejudices do they hold? Will they

like what you have to say, or will they resist? And what if you must speak or write tomore than one audience, either in turns, or at the same time? We will attempt toanswer these questions.


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Tuesday, July 19, Second hour: CompellingSometimes, writing is performative . What this means is that the text itself, whenread, makes a change in the world. For the first days lecture I wrote that whatyouve heard about CAT 125 is all lies. My claim was hyperbolic. But it was also

performative: simply by writing that, I intervened or attempted to intervene in theway that you perceive CAT 125. This is part of a broader aspect of writing. Your job,when you write, is to compel your audience to do something. Maybe you want themto laugh, to cry, or both. Maybe you want some faceless reader to let you intomedical school. Maybe you want money to study gene expression. Your task is tocompel the reader, first, to pay attention to what you have to say, and second, to dowhat you want them to do.

Blog assignment 3: Choose a narrative passage from your essay and retell it for distinct audiences

Thursday, July 21, First hour: Group oneGroup one will begin work toward doing their long pitches


Thursday, July 21, Second hour: Group twoGroup two will begin work toward doing their long pitches



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Week 5 Tuesday, July 26, First hour: Authority

An important aspect of public rhetoric is how your audience perceives you relative to your topic . How do authors and speakers establish authority? Authority isnt merelyexternal to what you say. It requires constant grooming.


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Required reading: Paul Krugmans blog

Tuesday, July 26, Second hour: Revision and

ConsistencyRequired reading: Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: Why Citieswithout Gays and Rock Bands are Losing the Economic Development Race.

Thursday, July 28: Best of the Long Pitches

Final essay is due today in lecture


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People, Policies, and Requirements

Course instructorMark L. HinelineOffice: 219 Pepper Canyon HallEmail: [email protected] hours: Tuesday, 2:00-3:00, Wednesday 1:00-2:00, Thursday 10:00-11:00

There is a biographical sketch of the instructor on the CAT website

Teaching assistants: You will meet the TA for your section during the first week of classes. It is vital that you know your TAs full name and email address. All initial

inquiries about course policies, absences, grades, and assignments should be addressed toyour TA.

Grades will be based on performance in the following categories:

Participation: Attendance at lectures and sections, contributions to sectiondiscussions, making use of scheduled office hours. Participation counts for 20% of the course grade.

Blog assignments: There are three blog assignments. Each is worth 10% of thecourse grade for a total of 30%.

Long pitch: Your long pitch is worth 20% of the course grade.

Final essay: The final essay is 30% of the course grade.

Extra credit: There is an additional assignment that you can undertake for extracredit. Your TA will provide details about this.

Attendance . Attendance at all lectures and sections is mandatory. You may be absentonce during the quarter without explanation. (Absence in lecture and absence in sectionon a single day constitutes one absence.) In addition, you may be absent on oneadditional occasion for illness or with the permission of your TA. Additional absencesmay be excused for good cause, with advance notice or a note from a medical

professional.

The primary justification for mandatory attendance is fairness.

Readings. All required readings will be available on WebCT. In addition, your TA maysuggest readings to support points made in section.


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Oral presentations. You are required to prepare and to present some portion of your final essay in spoken form. The other students in your section, plus your teachingassistant, will be your audience. These oral presentations are to be four minutes in length,and may be followed by questions.

Best presentations. Sixth College takes CAT 125 seriously as a culmination andfulfillment of each students undergraduate education. With this in mind, some of the

presentations in section will be of such quality that they deserve to be heard by the entireclass. Accordingly, students in sections will determine, by a vote, the best presentations,and these will be presented at somewhat greater length before the full class during thefinal week. Students who are chosen and who deliver best presentations are invited to aninformal congratulatory reception where the provost will present them with certificates of merit.

Assignment Submissions Policy

All assignments must be submitted in writing by the day and time specified in thesyllabus, above.

Additionally, all assignments must also be submitted digitally via turnitin.com bymidnight of the day in which they are due.

All graded writing must be submitted to Turnitin.com to receive credit. Late submissionswill be penalized. If an assignment is not time stamped in Turnitin.com by midnight onthe date it is due, it will be reduced by one full grade (i.e.: An A would be lowered to a

B). Papers not submitted to turnitin.com by the time of the final exam will be loweredtwo full grades (i.e.: An A would be lowered to a C ).

If you have an emergency and you discuss it with your TA before the deadline, it may be possible to make arrangements but this is not guaranteed.

By university policy, the final exam will not be accepted late.

You must submit all assigned work to pass the course.

Students With Special Needs

Students with physical or learning disabilities must work with UCSDs Office for Students with Disabilities to obtain current documentation, then contact instructor andTAs to arrange appropriate academic accommodations. For pre-existing needs thisshould be accomplished in the first two weeks of the quarter; for emerging needs do it assoon in the quarter as possible. To be fair to all students, no individual accommodationswill be made unless the student first presents the proper documentation.


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Electronic Devices And Course Participation

Electronic devices, including laptops and cell phones, may only be used in class to theextent and for the purposes permitted by the course instructor. Please be aware that evenwhen their use in lecture or discussion section is permitted, using these devices in wayswhich are distracting to other people in the room, irrelevant to the class, or counterproductive to learning is not acceptable.

Participation Grades

Here is a description of the kind of participation in the course that would earn you an A,B, C, etc. Your TA may use pluses and minuses to reflect your participation moreexactly, but on this sheet we will simply show a general description for each letter grade.

A EXCELLENT. You are always well-prepared for discussion in lecture and for section, with almost no

absences. You can explain each reading in your own words. In addition, you have alreadyasked yourself questions about what it means, focusing on specific passages that areinteresting to you and making connections between various readings and ideas.

You express your thoughts clearly and politely, making and supporting specific claims.You respond to what other students are saying in order to have a dialogue with them. You find ways to connect the course material with issues that matter to you personally.

You do all section activities with high energy and attention to detail, taking personalresponsibility for achieving the assigned goal.

B GOOD. You attend lecture and section with few absences. You have done most of the

preparation. If you dont understand the reading the first time you read it, you wait tohave it explained by the TA. You talk on a regular basis. Sometimes you offer well-thought-out ideas andconnections, supported with evidence; sometimes your contributions are merely astatement of opinions or initial reactions. You do assigned activities willingly; but if you run into obstacles, you let the TA or someone else figure out how to overcome those obstacles.

C SATISFACTORY. You are present in lecture and section, with few absences, and have done some readingsome of the time. You occasionally contribute to the discussion; your contributions are more oftenopinions than thoughtful efforts to make connections. Youre not a real self-starter, andyou have to be nudged to participate.


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You do activities when asked, because its required.

D UNSATISFACTORY. You have multiple absences from section.

When you come, youre often not very prepared, and you dont say much.

You may have a habit of using your cell phone or computer in class to chat or dothings not directly related to the course. Playing online poker or shopping for surfboardsin either lecture or section, for instance, would be ways to earn a D (or lower) in

participation.

FFAILING. You have many absences, are habitually unprepared, or are uncooperative.

Academic Integrity

You are expected to uphold the standards of academic integrity in all your work.

All work that you submit for credit in CAT is expected to be your own original work,created specifically for this class. Where you are making appropriate use of the work of another person, which may include brief quotations, photographs or drawings, charts,special information, specific arguments, etc., you must credit the author of that work byusing appropriate and complete citations. If you choose to include in your CATassignments any data, information, argument or artwork that you have produced for another course, you should identify it as such with an appropriate self-citation, and it

should in no way constitute the bulk of the assignment that you are submitting for creditin CAT.

UCSD has a university-wide Policy on Integrity of Scholarship, which can be foundonline at http://www- senate.ucsd.edu/manual/appendices/app2.htm. All students mustread and be familiar with this Policy. All suspected violations of academic integrity will

be reported to UCSDs Academic Integrity Coordinator. Students found to have violatedUCSDs standards for academic integrity may receive both administrative and academicsanctions. Administrative sanctions may extend up to and include suspension or dismissal, and academic sanctions may include failure of the assignment or failure of thecourse.

Specific examples of prohibited violations of academic integrity include the following:(although this should in no way be considered an exhaustive list of examples):

Academic stealing refers to the theft of exams or exam answers, of papers or take-homeexams composed by others, and of research notes, computer files, or data collected byothers.

Academic cheating, collusion, and fraud refer to having others do your schoolwork or


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helping or allowing them to present your work as their own; using unauthorized materialsduring exams; inventing data or bibliography to support a paper, project, or exam;

purchasing tests, answers, or papers from any source whatsoever; submitting (nearly)identical papers to two classes. Helping other students to cheat or steal is also cheating.

Misrepresenting personal or family emergencies or health problems in order to extend deadlines and alter due dates or requirements is another form of academic fraud.Claiming you have been ill when you were not, claiming that a family member has beenill or has died when that is untrue are some examples of unacceptable ways of trying togain more time than your fellow students have been allowed in which to completeassigned work.

Please do not ask or allow friends or family members to write or substantially edit your work. That is both a violation of academic integrity and a short-circuiting of thelearning process.

Plagiarism refers to the use of anothers work without full acknowledgment, whether bysuppressing the reference, neglecting to identify direct quotations, paraphrasing closely or at length without citing sources, spuriously identifying quotations or data, or cutting and

pasting the work of several (usually unidentified) authors into a single undifferentiatedwhole.

Receipt of this syllabus constitutes an acknowledgment that you are responsible forunderstanding and acting in accordance with UCSD guidelines on academicintegrity.

Provisional Syllabus(3)

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