C780-01 Creativity and Community

C780 Creativity and Community

Spring 2005 Graduate Seminar in English

Section 01 TR 4:30-5:45 p.m. CM 116

Dr. Mary Ann Cain

Office: CM 111

Phone: 481-6759 or 481-6841 (dept.)

Regular office hours: TR 1:30-3:00 p.m. and by appointment, or stop by anytime.

Email: cain@ipfw.edu

Required Texts

Most of the required reading is available online through the Helmke Library’s Reserve Express (REX). I encourage you to print out all of these texts as soon as possible and to use campus facilities to do so (either the library or any campus computer lab).

In addition, the following required books are available for purchase at The Bookmark, 3420 North Anthony: 484-2665. Bookmark offers a 15% discount for IPFW students.

· Wright, Richard. 12 Million Black Voices. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002

· Wright, Richard. Native Son . New York: Perennial Abridged edition, 2003 ISBN: 006053348X. NOTE: Please make sure you get the abridged edition from 1940; it has an introduction by Richard Wright.

Course Forum

Access to the C780 Creativity and Community Course forum is available online through IT Services: http://forums.ipfw.edu/forums/ . Scroll down to “English and Linguistics” and then to the courses listed under my name. (See below for more information regarding the forum.) The course syllabus and assignments, as well as online discussions, will be available at this site.

Course Description

This course addresses questions of community—what it is, how it forms, who gets to belong, and how individuals become participants—in the context of language and its role in creating community among writers, readers, scholars, teachers, and other workplace professionals. Studying language as a social practice is at the heart of our study this semester.

Despite its prevalence across English Studies (as seen in concepts such as “interpretive communities,” “discourse communities” and “audience”) scholars, writers, and teachers in the discipline rarely, if ever, question what such communities are, how they form, and how one comes to belong to them. First, we’ll compare divergent views of scholars who theorize the concept of community, while at the same time inquire into our own understandings and experiences of the term. We will then look at the problem of community creation through social practices of language, using early 20^th century Bronzeville, a neighborhood in south Chicago, as a case study for how various literary, rhetorical, political, professional, social, and cultural efforts converged to create a community identity around the concept of race. Like New York’s Harlem in the 1920s, Chicago’s Bronzeville experienced its own cultural and social renaissance during the otherwise troubled times of the Great Depression in the 1930s and 40s. Finally, we’ll take this knowledge forward into researching a community/communities that we belong to and/or wish to belong to, whether as a writer, scholar, workplace professional, teacher, and/or within social, cultural, and familial groups.

Service Learning Option: Students in this course have the option of learning about community creation firsthand by partaking in service learning. Service learning is a hands-on, experiential form of learning in which students provide needed service to a community organization in exchange for the opportunity to learn the concepts studied in class firsthand. The service learning site for this class is the Three Rivers Jenbe Ensemble, a Cultural Education Forum of the Fort Wayne Dance Collective for area children that specializes in West African drumming and dance. Service learning students will act as participant-observers to TRJE activities and include in their final project a text or texts that represent TRJE to another community in exchange for the opportunity to study and participate in community creation in the making. I’ll give more information on this option during the first week of class.

Course Goals:

The following goals reflect what I think is important us to learn together. However, I expect that you will have your own goals as well, and I hope to help you realize those, too.

To learn about rhetoric as a field of inquiry and its relationship to other fields within English Studies
To gain a greater appreciation for the complexities of how community is understood and enacted by studying it from various scholarly perspectives
To gain a greater understanding of specific social practices and contexts of language use and how those assist community formation.
To learn and apply specific methods of inquiry/research to study your own and other discourse communities
To understand the relationship of research, writing, and service as part of your overall disciplinary learning
To write yourselves into a discourse community that matters to you

Course Requirements and Grades:

Two short papers (at least five pages each): first, exploring divergent theories of community; second, a case study of a particular discourse community, Bronzeville: 10% each
Final researched project on a discourse community you wish to join or are already part of. (This project will include a collection of artifacts and texts that come directly out of your research journal): 50%
Weekly entries on an electronic course forum in response to readings and discussions:10%
Weekly entries in a research journal (in preparation for your final project): 5%
Formal presentation of final project to class: 5%
Active participation in class: 10%

One-on-One Conferences

Before midterm, I will cancel a week of classes so I can meet with you individually to discuss your final project. Prior to this meeting, I expect you will already have identified your subject, begun research (including weekly entries into a research journal), and begun collecting resources. During our conference, I will go over your work to date and help guide you towards specific audiences, formats, resources, and goals for your project. At the end of the semester, I will meet with you during finals week for exit conferences to discuss your final project and course grade.

Attendance

The success of this course depends upon not only your regular attendance, but also your active participation. I rarely lecture, so that means that most of your learning happens through conversation and discussion. Thus there isn’t any way to “make up” for missing such a class; you really do have to be here to learn. That’s why I maintain the following attendance policy. Although I hope it becomes obvious to you why you have to be here to learn, I know that sometimes such realization only comes in hindsight. Thus, I am strict about the limits I set on absences.

You may miss two classes for any reason, with no penalty. Choose your absences wisely; you never know when you’ll need them.
If you miss three classes, your overall grade will be reduced by one-half a letter grade.
If you miss four classes, your overall grade will be reduced by a full letter grade.
If you miss more than four classes, you will fail the course.

If you must miss class, I always appreciate knowing that you won’t be in and, to the extent you feel comfortable telling me, your reason for missing. I don’t typically excuse absences, but on rare occasions I do take individual circumstances into account when calculating the final grade. Please communicate with me about any absences, either in person or via email. I appreciate knowing what’s going on.

Late Assignments

In a nutshell: I usually don’t take them unless you clear it with me IN ADVANCE of class time. If you have to miss class, please email me your assignment (cain@ipfw.edu) before class meets. Late assignments throw everyone, including me, off pace, so that’s why I don’t usually accept them.

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Tentative Weekly Schedule*

*Subject to change as needed. If you miss class, be sure you check for any changes

1/11/05

Introduction: What is rhetoric?

Locating yourself within English Studies

1/13

What is Community?

Read: Introduction and Chapter One, “The Problem of Place in America” by Ray Oldenburg, from A Great Good Place

Introduction to service learning

Visits by Co-directors of Three Rivers Jenbe Ensemble, site for the service learning option

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1/18

Read: “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” by Kenneth Bruffee

1/20

Read: “Is There a Text in This Class?” by Stanley Fish, from Is There a Text in This Class?

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1/25

Read: “Community” by Joseph Harris, from A Teaching Subject and Forward and Prologue to Campus Life: In Search of Community by Ernest Boyer.

1/27

Read: “Service Learning as the New English Studies” by Ellen Cushman, from Beyond English, Inc. and “Community and Community Literacies” by Jeffrey Grabill, from Community Literacy Programs and the Politics of Change

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2/1

Read: “Old Chestnuts and New Spurs” by Amitai Etzioni, from New Communitarian Thinking

2/3

Read: “Discursive Conflicts in Communities and Classrooms” by Trish Roberts-Miller

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2/8

Write: Draft of first paper due

Video Interview with Community leaders on What is Community?

2/10

Read: Peer drafts

Write: Responses to peer drafts

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2/15

Write: Final drafts of first paper

Read: “To Go Again to Hyde Park: Public Space, Rights, and Social Justice” by Don Mitchell, from The Right to the City

2/17

Read: “Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities” by Amy Devitt, Anis Bawarshi, and Mary Jo Reiff

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2/22

Class canceled for individual conferences; research proposals due at conference

2/24

Class canceled—conferences continue

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3/1

Virtual tour of Bronzeville, a Chicago neighborhood community

3/3

Read: Excerpts from Black Metropolis by St. Claire Drake and Horace B. Cayton

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3/8 &3/10

Spring break—no classes this week

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3/15

Read: “Streets of Heaven: Chicago’s South Side” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., from America Behind the Color Line and “Looking Back, Looking Up” by Timuel Black, from the same book.

3/17

Read: 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright

Video of Henry Louis Gates’ documentary America Behind the Color Line. I will be out of town but class will still meet.

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3/22

Continue discussion of 12 Million Black Voices

3/24

Read: Native Son by Richard Wright (including author’s introduction)

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3/29

Continue discussion of Native Son

3/31

Research exchange—discuss research proposals and progress to date

I will be out of town, but class will still meet.

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4/5

Read: Bronzeville poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks (class handout); excerpts from Life with Margaret by Margaret T.G. Burroughs; and excerpts from Design for Life (an unpublished autobiography) by LeRoy Winbush (available on the course forum)

4/7

Write: Draft of second paper due

In class: Rhetorics of race in Chicago newspapers

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4/12

Read: Peer drafts

Write: Responses to peer drafts

4/14

Write: Final draft of second paper due

Updates on research projects due

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4/19