TEXTS
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
Attend class. This travel class involves workshops and discussion, morning and afternoon excursions, and day trips, all of which require your presence and full participation. If you’re not feeling well, let me know as soon as possible and make arrangements for a classmate to pick up any material distributed in class and to inform you about any assignments.
Turn in assignments on time. Late work will be penalized one letter grade for every day that it is late. Late work will not be addressed in our workshop sessions. All work will be submitted via Google Drive or on the class blog. If you do not know how to use Google Drive, you should consult with the academic computing office. Documents should be named in this manner: YourName.Exercise1.docx.
Complete required blog posts prior to class discussions of the assigned reading. In order to most effectively discuss your own observations and ideas on the assigned reading, you should plan to complete your reading in time to compose, revise, and proofread your blog posts prior to class discussions of these works. You are welcome — even encouraged — to go back and revise or expand your posts after class discussions, and you are welcome to write extra posts when you’d like to discuss additional topics.
Be prepared for class. You are expected to participate in class discussions in a thoughtful, responsible, and energetic manner. You can’t meaningfully participate in class discussions if you haven’t read the required texts. Our schedule will no doubt require adjustments as the session moves forward, but assume we’ll get to whatever’s on the schedule unless I explicitly push back (or forward) an assignment.
Proofread your work. Your work should be as free of mechanical errors as possible, so take the time and effort to carefully proofread your exercises, blog posts, and stories. Assignments with persistent and egregious errors will be returned for revision. If you are unsure about mechanics – when to properly use a semicolon, for example, or how to correctly punctuate dialogue – please consult one of the many guides or make an appointment at the Academic Resource Center.
ASSIGNMENTS & GRADES:
Blog posts 25%
Exercises 25%
Stories 25%
Class participation and preparation 25%
BLOG POSTS:
The focus and length of your blog posts will vary for this course, but those composed in response to the reading assignments should offer an analysis of thematic concerns or a discussion of elements of craft in the works we’ve read. These posts should be made before we discuss the works — in fact, we’ll use these posts as the springboard for many of our conversations. Your blog posts in response to the reading assignments should not be commentaries on the quality of the works we’ve read, nor should they be reminiscences of personal experiences. They should be well-written, well-developed, clear, and engaging. These are not formal academic papers, but they are also not impromptu casual musings. Examples of well-written and well-developed blog posts can be found on the Sample Blog Posts page.
You should also plan to comment — in a meaningful way — on your classmates’ blog posts. Here, the goal is not to praise (or, much worse, criticize) your classmates for the quality of their posts. Your goal is to respond in a thoughtful manner to the ideas and observations you encounter.
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
A writing workshop has a number of purposes. It offers a critical but supportive environment for the apprentice writer, providing an audience that is willing to read, with a careful eye, works that stand to be improved through sustained and repeated revision. It offers an opportunity for discussion of the formal and thematic elements of particular genres through the use of both professional and apprentice models. Finally, since the writing workshop addresses how a work is made as well as what that work becomes, it offers an opportunity to explore how experience and imagination are used in creating a work of art.
An appreciation for literature begins with enthusiasm. By learning to identify what makes a particular text interesting, entertaining, informative, or compelling, you will begin to understand the relation between literary texts and life itself — i.e., how the formal qualities of a particular literary genre may be used by the writer to explore the various subtleties, difficulties, moral dilemmas, and triumphs that are a part of being human.
By organizing your ideas and presenting them to your classmates in our discussions and in your blog posts, you should come to see that literature is comprised of many components, each of which is part of a complex, integrated whole, each of which is available for discussion, analysis, and debate.
OTHER MATTERS:
A number of the standard topics below don’t specifically apply to this travel course, but the idea behind them stands: The instructor and participants in this course honor and respect diversity and strive to support the physical and emotional well-being of all participants.
Professor/Student-Athlete Academic Contracts:
If you are on an athletic or riding team this term, please provide me with a completed Professor/Student-Athlete Academic Contract to consider and sign.
Accommodations:
Sweet Briar College is committed to upholding and maintaining all aspects of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), as amended in 2008, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. If you are a student with a disability and wish to request reasonable accommodations, please contact the Office of Accessibility Services (accessibility@sbc.edu) for an appointment. Because many accommodations require early planning, requests for accommodations should be made as soon as possible.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:
At Sweet Briar, administrators, faculty, and staff are committed to the creation and maintenance of “inclusive learning” spaces. These are classrooms, labs, and other places of learning where you will be treated with respect and dignity, and where all individuals are provided equitable opportunity to participate, contribute, and succeed.
In this course, all students are welcome regardless of race/ethnicity, gender identities, gender expressions, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, disabilities, religion, regional background, veteran status, citizenship status, nationality and other diverse identities that we each bring to class.
Mental Health:
As the last few academic years have been, this semester will no doubt continue to be challenging for all of us, collectively and individually, and although we’re hoping to eventually return to some degree of normalcy, the state of the world will undoubtedly continue to influence our daily lives, testing our powers of concentration, the accuracy and fairness of our judgment, our levels of energy and endurance, and our tolerance for conflict and stress. It will be important that we continue to treat one another with kindness and respect and take seriously not only our academic commitments but also our civic responsibility for safe and healthy practices. My goal is for this class to do what an education should always do: challenge your assumptions, expand your mind, and enlarge your heart.
As we all know, mental health issues can lead to diminished academic performance and can interfere with daily life. If you experience mental health issues and would like help, a variety of confidential services are available. Please consider taking advantage of these resources. Horizon Health Services are located on campus in the Health and Wellness center in the basement of the Chapel. Counselors are available for appointments Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Students may schedule appointments by calling 434-946-2316. You can also email questions to HorizonBehavioralHealth@sbc.edu.