The following descriptions of individual courses and sections supplement the
general catalog descriptions.
Most, but not all, sections of English 100 are described here. For the
complete registration listings with CRNs, see the
official schedule.
This course will be the foundation all the writing and research and much of the classwork, including directed and open discussion and oral presentations, that you will be doing at the University until you graduate. Besides being a member of a community of writers, you will find yourself being challenged and enabled in this course to find your voice within a number of other communities that have helped and will help to shape (and perhaps will be shaped by) your own life over the next several years: your academic major, the university, the nation, and Hawai‘i in relation to these other communities. The eight required papers will both require and help you to develop yourself intellectually within these communities: a self-description of your academic background (5% of your final grade); a comparison of two people who have influenced it (5 or 10%); an extended etymology of an important academic word (5 or 10%); a summary of an academic essay (10%); a rhetorical analysis of the same article (10%); an argument in favor of an academic major that you intend to pursue (15%); a research paper on one of the Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (15%); and an argument favoring or opposing an actual amendment that has been proposed (20%).
Classes will be conducted as workshops in a sequence that includes introduction of each assignment, suggestions and prewriting exercises, discussion of relevant reading in Kiniry and Rose, analysis and evaluation of student examples, work on grammar/punctuation/ mechanics/sentence-level revision, shared first drafts with peer feedback, submission and then return of final drafts with suggestions for improvement. Attendance and participation in class, including required extra-class writing, will determine 10% of your final course grade. At least two required individual conferences will be part of the instruction.
As in all first-year writing courses at UHM, you will be expected to achieve the following student learning outcomes: writing for an audience and purpose; generating, revising, editing, and proofreading each paper; using relevant and credible source material in accordance with MLA documentation style in order to compose an argument.
Required Texts:
Diane Hacker, POCKET STYLE MANUAL;
Malcolm Kiniry and Mike Rose, CRITICAL STRATEGIES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING;
In this course you’re going to read, write, think, analyze, and argue. You’re going to become a better writer, a closer reader, a deeper thinker, and a wiser person. You’re going to read great literature. You’re going to think seriously, rigorously, and passionately about each and every word you read, and you’re going to learn to express your ideas, feelings, and thoughts—on the page, and out loud, and in your mind—with clarity and conviction, force and focus, energy and personality. You’re going to ask questions. You’re going to answer questions. You’re going to question yourself and question one another and question the readings. If you take this class, you’re going to find yourself, every day, in the midst of enormous, exhilarating, complex debates that never lead to absolute conclusions. In class, and in your mind, you’re going to examine, discuss, and write about issues such as identity and existence, meaning and purpose, right and wrong. You’ll see, once you start doing the work, how all of these issues arise naturally from the reading and the writing assignments. You’ll write five essays (3-5 pages each): a personal narrative, an exploratory research essay, a classical argument, and two interpretive analytical essays. Plus, you’ll take a few in-class quizzes. In class and for homework, you’ll write informal critical responses to the readings. If you’re not satisfied with your grades, you’re free to re-write the essays, re-take the quizzes, and re-do the homework; you’ll keep working until you get the grade you want to deserve. Be ready to read a lot: two books, one play, and a handful of articles; and you’ll watch at least one movie in class. If you’re not prepared to work hard, write often, read every page assigned, complete every assignment, and commit yourself—heart and soul—to becoming a better writer, reader, and thinker, then you really shouldn’t enroll in this course. But remember that the assignments are going to be so exciting and meaningful that they really won’t feel like work. You don’t need to worry too much about grades: If you do the assignments and attend regularly, you’ll do well. More important, you’ll emerge from the course with the kind of knowledge that you can carry with you for the rest of your life.
Based on the idea that effective writers are strong communicators in any context, this course prepares students for the writing they will need to do throughout their lives. The goal is to help students grow as writers and critical thinkers. Starting out with basic questions such as why we write and whom we write for, students will be required to write personal essays and eventually submit a research-based essay. In the process we will explore areas such as critical reading, analytical writing, argumentative essays, etc. One unit will also focus on creative writing in which students will be required to write a short story and analyze how fiction can act as a bridge between the personal essay and the research-based essay.
One day a man of the people said to the Zen master Ikkyu: “Master,will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?”
Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.”
“Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more?” Ikkyu then wrote twice: “Attention. Attention.”
“Well,” remarked the man rather irritably, “I really don’t see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written.”
Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times: “Attention. Attention. Attention.”
Half angered, the man declared: “What does that word attention mean anyway?”
And Ikkyu answered, gently: “Attention means attention.”
What does all of this have to do with you? In this class I want you to think about attention in terms of critical thinking and self-reflection. Using our text book THE WORLD IS A TEXT: WRITING, READING AND THINKING ABOUT CULTURE AND ITS CONTEXT and, of course, our minds, we will examine issues involving gender, race, ethnicity, and pop culture while paying close attention to what these issues mean to you. As this is a writing class, you will of course be expected to hone your writing skills, with a number of essays and regular journal entries, in ways that effectively convey your attention to the texts we will be reading, our group discussions, and the world around you. All of you are unique, and I want you to remain attentive to that which makes you unique--your interests, your families, your histories, and your senses of place. The issues we will discuss in class will provide a lens for you to think about and even challenge your understandings of yourself, others, and the world around you.
Welcome to ENG100! What it means to write successfully varies a great deal from one situation to another. We communicate our opinions, ideas, and feelings everyday in different forms: letters, poems, narratives, essays, lists, blogs and status updates, just to name a few. In this course we will focus on the various choices writers make, and how they relate to that particular writer’s goals and audience. We will look at writers who write about writing as well as writers who are using innovative mediums for expression. Writing is something we have to work at, and in order to be successful writers we must be active readers and writers. One of the central topics of this course will be the process of writing. Through individual and collaborative writing you will discover your own process and learn how to make your writing purposeful and effective in different contexts. As academic writers, we will also be attentive to the proper use of grammar.
Required Materials:
Lisa Linn Kanae, SISTA TONGUE (which can be purchased at the University Bookstore)
An active email account & access to the internet. We will be actively posting and checking material on:http://eng100uhm.blogspot.com/
In this course you’re going to read, write, think, analyze, and argue. You’re going to become a better writer, a closer reader, a deeper thinker, and a wiser person. You’re going to read great literature. You’re going to think seriously, rigorously, and passionately about each and every word you read, and you’re going to learn to express your ideas, feelings, and thoughts—on the page, and out loud, and in your mind—with clarity and conviction, force and focus, energy and personality. You’re going to ask questions. You’re going to answer questions. You’re going to question yourself and question one another and question the readings. If you take this class, you’re going to find yourself, every day, in the midst of enormous, exhilarating, complex debates that never lead to absolute conclusions. In class, and in your mind, you’re going to examine, discuss, and write about issues such as identity and existence, meaning and purpose, right and wrong. You’ll see, once you start doing the work, how all of these issues arise naturally from the reading and the writing assignments. You’ll write five essays (3-5 pages each): a personal narrative, an exploratory research essay, a classical argument, and two interpretive analytical essays. Plus, you’ll take a few in-class quizzes. In class and for homework, you’ll write informal critical responses to the readings. If you’re not satisfied with your grades, you’re free to re-write the essays, re-take the quizzes, and re-do the homework; you’ll keep working until you get the grade you want to deserve. Be ready to read a lot: two books, one play, and a handful of articles; and you’ll watch at least one movie in class. If you’re not prepared to work hard, write often, read every page assigned, complete every assignment, and commit yourself—heart and soul—to becoming a better writer, reader, and thinker, then you really shouldn’t enroll in this course. But remember that the assignments are going to be so exciting and meaningful that they really won’t feel like work. You don’t need to worry too much about grades: If you do the assignments and attend regularly, you’ll do well. More important, you’ll emerge from the course with the kind of knowledge that you can carry with you for the rest of your life.
One day a man of the people said to the Zen master Ikkyu: “Master,will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?”
Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.”
“Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more?” Ikkyu then wrote twice: “Attention. Attention.”
“Well,” remarked the man rather irritably, “I really don’t see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written.”
Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times: “Attention. Attention. Attention.”
Half angered, the man declared: “What does that word attention mean anyway?”
And Ikkyu answered, gently: “Attention means attention.”
What does all of this have to do with you? In this class I want you to think about attention in terms of critical thinking and self-reflection. Using our text book THE WORLD IS A TEXT: WRITING, READING AND THINKING ABOUT CULTURE AND ITS CONTEXT and, of course, our minds, we will examine issues involving gender, race, ethnicity, and pop culture while paying close attention to what these issues mean to you. As this is a writing class, you will of course be expected to hone your writing skills, with a number of essays and regular journal entries, in ways that effectively convey your attention to the texts we will be reading, our group discussions, and the world around you. All of you are unique, and I want you to remain attentive to that which makes you unique--your interests, your families, your histories, and your senses of place. The issues we will discuss in class will provide a lens for you to think about and even challenge your understandings of yourself, others, and the world around you.
Welcome to ENG100! What it means to write successfully varies a great deal from one situation to another. We communicate our opinions, ideas, and feelings everyday in different forms: letters, poems, narratives, essays, lists, blogs and status updates, just to name a few. In this course we will focus on the various choices writers make, and how they relate to that particular writer’s goals and audience. We will look at writers who write about writing as well as writers who are using innovative mediums for expression. Writing is something we have to work at, and in order to be successful writers we must be active readers and writers. One of the central topics of this course will be the process of writing. Through individual and collaborative writing you will discover your own process and learn how to make your writing purposeful and effective in different contexts. As academic writers, we will also be attentive to the proper use of grammar.
Required Materials:
Lisa Linn Kanae, SISTA TONGUE (which can be purchased at the University Bookstore)
An active email account & access to the internet. We will be actively posting and checking material on:http://eng100uhm.blogspot.com/
English 100 is a course dedicated to writing – and, more, specifically, the critical inquiry process that must attend the practice and production of academic writing. In English 100 we will focus on following a path of inquiry through various possible formations, including (but not limited to) literary analysis, argument, personal narrative, and reflective commentary. Our exploration of critical inquiry will be conducted through course requirements that include: assignments dealing with the rudiments of writing; class discussion; independent academic research; peer evaluation and review; extensive conferencing opportunities; the incorporation of technology; six to eight reading responses; and four formal academic essays, among other things.
The Student Learning Outcomes for English 100 require that each student learn to: compose a text to achieve a specific purpose and respond adeptly to an identifiable audience; provide evidence of effective strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading a text in order to produce finished prose; compose a text that makes use of source material that is relevant and reliable and that is integrated in accordance with an appropriate style guide; and compose writing that expresses the writer's viewpoint and is supplemented by outside sources. In accordance with these objectives, this section of English 100 will work with Joseph Harris’s Rewriting (a required course text, which will be available at the UHM bookstore) to provide a communal language and understanding of the writing process. Additional texts (provided at a later date) will include six to eight academic essays and a variety of stylistic and rhetoric-focused electronic sources.
Language and place are often tied together. The way a person speaks can point to where they are from. Also, a geographical area can determine the characteristics of a people's language, in terms of things like structure and vocabulary. This semester, we will be using different genres of writing to explore issues of place and language (sometimes these issues will overlap, sometimes not), specifically in the context of Hawai‘i. Along with that overarching goal, the purpose of this Composition I (Eng 100) class is to hone the tools of writing and language that you already have. We will do this by focusing on writing for specific purposes, situations, and audiences as well as on various aspects of the writing process, such as freewriting, brainstorming, outlining, writing, and revision. By looking at language and place in Hawai‘i, we will examine and develop understandings of current conversations about Hawai‘i's history and its cultures, along with the way that Hawai‘i and its people are represented in contemporary culture. To allow us to actively participate in these conversations (inside the classroom and out), we will discuss various sources, such as newspaper articles, visual representations of Hawai‘i, Youtube videos, documentaries, stories and legends, and essays that deal with these issues.
Course Work:
You will be required to complete five formal essays and frequent writing exercises.
Required texts:
Readings will be disseminated electronically. I encourage student feedback on topics that they are interested in (in regards to Hawai‘i and/or language) and try to shape the reading list accordingly. For example, last semester, our assigned texts included Ho‘iho‘i Hou and music by and about George Helm, translations of articles from the Hawaiian-language newspapers, testimony against the genetic modification of kalo, Hawaiian poetry, stories about surf spots, etc.
Because most of the writing you will do in your college courses involves responding to outside reading, this course will be focused primarily on your responses to essays written by others. Although some assignments will ask you to summarize the material you have read, this is only as an exercise in reading carefully and extracting the important points. The primary goal of the course is for you to learn to write about the material you have read, to formulate an argument about one or more of the essays, or to present your own argument using the material from other sources to substantiate what you say.
“Argument” in writing is a tricky word. It does not mean making sweeping statements or judgments against an author’s or authors’ positions, setting your opinions on an issue against theirs. What it does mean is thinking carefully about the material you read, including its complexities, discussing the terms of the authors’ own arguments and analyzing how those arguments are put together. It also means expressing your thoughts clearly and effectively, with an emphasis on communicating your own complicated ideas (and the ideas of the material you are discussing) fluently to your reader. Good writing is making difficult ideas easy to understand; poor writing is making them sound even more difficult.
Because the writing for this class is probably very different form writing you have done in the past, it will undoubtedly be rough going at first. The assignments and the formats might seem difficult, but remember that the goal is to help you learn to write effective college papers, a process that will probably require “re-training” in your approach to writing. “Retraining” also involves writing the same assignment more than once—to learn the value of careful revision—a process that may sometimes be frustrating but is also important. It is hard to learn a new way of writing. But it will be worth effort!
Reading will be from a collection of essays available for purchase at Professional Image. Assignments include several short expository essays and one final research paper.
You will be introduced to various forms of writing, with a particular focus on the personal essay, the analytical essay, and the argumentative essay. The course is designed to explore writing as a process, with the purpose of helping you develop the ability to read analytically and write clearly and, when required, critically, all while paying attention to detail and supporting evidence. Class time will be spent discussing the reading, which will include but may not be limited to: personal essays, newspaper articles, travelogues, critical/persuasive essays, letters, and journal entries. Class time will also be spent discussing student writing, so expect to analyze and critique your own work, as well as that of your peers.
Requirements:
Attendance and regularity play a significant role, since you will be expected to respond to the assigned reading in the form of quizzes and short in-class essays (which may be analytical or personal), as well as through individual and group presentations. In addition, there will be four formal papers, including drafts and revisions.
Through reflecting on the complex connections between art and politics, we will learn to make thoughtful rhetorical and linguistic choices as writers, as we explore the boundaries between critical and creative composition in this class. In reverse order of the traditional freshman writing course, which moves from personal to sociological writing, we will start with genres of professional and college-level writing for formal audiences that develop critical thinking, abstract reasoning, and information retrieval and source analysis skills. Thus, we will first write an image analysis paper that defines and explores an important philosophical concept, and next, a persuasive research paper that marshals evidence and argument to get readers to understand a political position on a social issue. In the second half of the course, we will focus on personal narrative, using tone, perspective, voice, dialect, characterological details, and world-building techniques of the creative non-fiction and life writing genres to reflect upon the social dynamics and moral lessons of your life (including a paper on your roles in a specific group or community and another on a key incident that transformed your values and beliefs about society).
The schedule of class assignments will not only 'frontload' the more left-brain papers and exercises in the beginning of the semester--leaving the latter half for relatively fun and intuitive approaches to writing (as you focus on exams and papers for other classes)--but move, in terms of genre, from expository to creative composition. This is a hybrid course, so regular Internet access via Laulima and email checks are expected.
Please pick up these texts:
Buscemi, Santi V., and Charlotte Smith, eds. 75 READINGS: AN ANTHOLOGY, 11TH EDITION. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
Maimon, Elaine P., Janice H. Peritz, and Kathleen Blake Yancey, eds. THE BRIEF MCGRAW-HILL HANDBOOK WITH MLA UPDATE. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
Composition I (English 100) fulfills your Written Communication requirement because it introduces you to the “rhetorical, conceptual, and stylistic demands of writing at the college level.” As college students you will be asked to develop, support, and communicate ideas by writing essays, and also in writing to analyze and critique what you read or view. Thus, in this class we will devote our attention to specific writing purposes, situations, and strategies as well as to various aspects of the writing process. Increasing your abilities, preparation, confidence and persuasiveness as writers in college is our main goal. And, since critical thinking and reading are inextricably tied with writing, we will focus on all three during the semester. Specifically, our focus will be on analyzing and writing about current discussions of Hawaiian history and culture, representations of Hawai‘i within American popular culture, and Hawai‘i-based and especially Kanaka Maoli responses to these images. We will discuss newspaper articles; images in advertisements promoting Hawai‘i as a tourist destination; documentaries; and essays articulating concerns about and identification with a place, group, or culture.
Individual conferences and collaborative work will play a significant role in this course. Requirements include completing five formal writing assignments, attending and reviewing a cultural event TBA, doing an oral presentation, and assembling a portfolio that includes a self-assessment essay.
Students who complete the course successfully should demonstrate (a) awareness of how feedback contributes to the process and effectiveness of writing; (b) solid capacity for constructing reading-based analysis and argument; (c) awareness of a variety of (academic) discourses, audiences, and forms; (d) attention to and appreciation of language; (e) ability to locate, evaluate, use, and document sources. In other words, we will develop writing topics based on readings and issues, discuss ideas, form lines of inquiry, find our own positions and articulate reasons that justify them, and conduct research to develop our understanding. We will work together towards accomplishing these goals.
Books:
Hacker, Diana. A POCKET STYLE MANUAL. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009 (5th edition);
Kihleng, Emelihter, Ryan Oishi, and Aiko Yamashiro, eds. ROUTES. Honolulu: Kahuaomanoa Press, 2010, vol 1.
“Home and Away: Writing and the Performance of Self”
This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of writing at the university level. Students will be introduced to various modes of writing, including narrative, argumentative, descriptive, expository, and others. There will be an emphasis on writing as a collaborative social act of constructing and performing the self for particular public audiences, both at and away from one’s “home”—broadly conceived. Students will also develop critical reading skills in analyzing literary texts FUN HOME—a graphic novel by Allison Bechdel—and SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A LITTLE TOWN—a comic novel by Canadian author Stephen Leacock. Reading and critically engaging with these texts, we will consider concepts around the nature of home, writing, reading and performance of self.
Texts:
(Available from Revolution Books)
Stephen Leacock, SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A LITTLE TOWN Norton Critical Editions, 978-0-393-92634-7
Allison Bechdel, FUN HOME: A FAMILY TRAGICOMIC Mariner Books, 978-0618871711.
The reader for this course contains excerpts from writings by history’s most influential thinkers in a wide variety of areas: government, justice, social class, intellect, science, religion, gender, and art. We will be studying, among other writers, Lao-Tzu, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Aristotle, Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau, Marx, Plato, Freud, Darwin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nietzsche. We will also look at parts of the Koran and the Bible. Since no student becomes a good writer without first becoming a good thinker, the objective of this course is to enable the student to absorb and evaluate some of the complex ideas that have shaped today’s world and to respond to those ideas in well-reasoned and carefully revised essays. Beginning with short response papers, students will gradually work up to a research project at the end of the semester.
Course Requirements:
Mandatory attendance, class participation, six short essays, three in-class responses, and one final paper demonstrating competence in the use of finding and documenting secondary sources.
Texts:
(available in the UH Bookstore)
Glenn, Cheryl and Loretta Gray. THE HODGES HARBRACE HANDBOOK, 17th Edition. Wadsworth Publishing, 2009
Lee A. Jacobus, ed. A WORLD OF IDEAS: ESSENTIAL READINGS FOR COLLEGE WRITERS, 8th Edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.
This class will use a variety of texts from popular-culture to learn to think critically, come to our own conclusions, and express our ideas in a clear and concise manner. Since we all “know” pop-culture, we will use what we already enjoy and “know” to engage critically with our everyday world. We will use movies, facebook, blogs, and television as texts for our analysis.
This class is an active writing workshop. In order to improve your writing, you must write. During the semester you will be asked to do both formal and informal writing. The informal writing is crucial as it will help us develop your ideas and skills for a clearer and more convincing formal writing style. We will also be peer reviewing/editing.
Over the course of the semester, we will work together to develop our skills to compose a text that achieves a specific purpose and responds adeptly to an identifiable audience; we will learn effective strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading our text in order to produce a finished prose; we will use source material that is relevant and reliable, and that is integrated into our writing in accordance with the MLA style guide; and, we will compose writing that expresses your viewpoint supplemented by outside sources. The skills that you develop in this class will prepare you for the types of writing you will be required to complete throughout your college experience.
Required Texts:
Most of the readings for the course will be available online through Laulima. Rather than purchasing books and/or a course packet, you will be required to print out the readings from Laulima and bring them to class.
Writing is a lifelong process. This course is designed to introduce you to college-level writing and its relation to reading and critical thinking. We will look at how to develop writing strategies that will prepare you for writing in professional and academic contexts.
The goal of this course is for you to develop an effective presentation of ideas to an identifiable audience. We will work on questioning your assumptions, analyzing sources, and developing your own persuasive argument and voice. Throughout the course, we will practice critical thinking, close reading, and freewriting.
University English 100 “Student Learning Outcome” Mandate At the end of the first-year writing course, students can:
Compose a text to achieve a specific purpose and respond adeptly to an identifiable audience.
Provide evidence of effective strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading a text in order to produce finished prose.
Be able to compose an argument that makes use of source material that is relevant and credible and that is integrated in accordance with an appropriate style guide.
These SLOs are based on five hallmarks that were approved by the General Education Foundations Board on April 21, 2006, which in turn were based on earlier hallmarks for first-year writing courses across the UH System.
Course Texts:
SISTA TONGUE (Lisa Linn Kanae), available at Revolution Books.
The American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf once said, “Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” In this course, we will shed light on Whorf’s quote by examining how writing and storytelling construct the world around us, and how through writing we become part of this process. Specifically, we will focus on fairy tales, a genre often conceived of as socializing and helping to educate children (and, sometimes, adults as well). We will read classic fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault but also examine more recent adaptations to discuss how conceptions, audiences, and morals have changed over time. More generally, we will explore the politics, or ideologies, implicit in those tales to gain a better understanding of how stories and writing help to shape how we see the world. We will read Emma Donoghue’s KISSING THE WITCH: OLD TALES IN NEW SKINS and watch two fairy-tale films, EVER AFTER and FREEWAY.
You will write five formal papers over the course of the semester: a personal narrative, a fairy-tale revision, a film review, a compare-and-contrast essay, and a literary analysis. Because revision is an integral part of the writing process, drafts of the five formal papers will be reviewed in peer groups, and participation in these groups is essential.
Required Texts:
Diana Hacker’s A POCKET STYLE MANUAL, available at Revolution Books.
Emma Donoghue’s KISSING THE WITCH, available at Revolution Books.
A Course Reader, available at the Campus Copy Center.
The American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf once said, “Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” In this course, we will shed light on Whorf’s quote by examining how writing and storytelling construct the world around us, and how through writing we become part of this process. Specifically, we will focus on fairy tales, a genre often conceived of as socializing and helping to educate children (and, sometimes, adults as well). We will read classic fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault but also examine more recent adaptations to discuss how conceptions, audiences, and morals have changed over time. More generally, we will explore the politics, or ideologies, implicit in those tales to gain a better understanding of how stories and writing help to shape how we see the world. We will read Emma Donoghue’s KISSING THE WITCH: OLD TALES IN NEW SKINS and watch two fairy-tale films, EVER AFTER and FREEWAY.
You will write five formal papers over the course of the semester: a personal narrative, a fairy-tale revision, a film review, a compare-and-contrast essay, and a literary analysis. Because revision is an integral part of the writing process, drafts of the five formal papers will be reviewed in peer groups, and participation in these groups is essential.
Required Texts:
Diana Hacker’s A POCKET STYLE MANUAL, available at Revolution Books.
Emma Donoghue’s KISSING THE WITCH, available at Revolution Books.
A Course Reader, available at the Campus Copy Center.
Aloha and welcome to English 100. The theme of this course is Hawai‘i: Writing Place, Writing Culture. Throughout the semester, we will examine how the ‘āina (land, location, environment, place) shapes cultural development and practices in Hawai‘i, such as mālama ‘āina (caring for and cherishing the land). Mālama ‘āina is a key theme in Hawaiian culture (and this course). One way to put this into practice is to minimize our impact on the environment, including reducing our use of paper. Therefore, all course materials will be stored on the class website on Laulima, and the majority of your writing will be posted there as well. The purpose of this course is to sharpen your writing and language skills, and prepare you for the rigors of college-level academic writing. We will discuss different purposes for writing, study various writing situations, and practice multiple writing strategies. This course includes a Writing Mentor who will work closely with you throughout the semester to help you excel in your writing.
You will do a variety of writing in this course, including formal essays (five) and frequent writing exercises. Your formal essay topics will cover personal origins, literature, community and global issues. Your written work will be gathered together into a final e-portfolio project at the end of the semester, which you will share with the class in an oral presentation. There is no mid-term or final exam for this course. Readings will be disseminated electronically. I encourage student feedback on topics of interest in regards to Hawai‘i. A complete list of readings are included on the class syllabus and Laulima. They will include essays, stories, poetry, testimonies, and other kinds of writing about Hawai‘i by a variety of Native Hawaiian, local, and other writers from the past and present. Access to reference materials in electronic form (such as a dictionary (www.dictionary.com), thesaurus (www.thesaurus.com), Ulukau, the Hawaiian Electronic Library (www.ulukau.org), and the Hawaiian online dictionary (www.wehewehe.org) is also required.
This course is described in the catalogue as an “introduction to the rhetorical, conceptual and stylistic demands of writing at the university level [including] composing processes, search strategies, and writing from sources.” Because this class is part of the Selected Studies Program, it’s structured so that you take the initiative in your own learning, assess your writing strengths and weaknesses, and make decisions concerning your own projects.
You’ll be reading essays on issues of immediate importance in Hawai‘i: homelessness, the military, the prison system, law enforcement, the cultural arts, energy policies, Hawaiian culture, public education, transportation, the university, and more. Class discussion of essays in THE VALUE OF HAWAI‘I: KNOWING THE PAST, SHAPING THE FUTURE will add to your knowledge of current conditions in our state, and help you to write your own strongly-positioned essays.
To accomplish this, you’ll need a commitment
to engage actively in discussions with instructor and peers
to critique each other’s writing
to make site visits to explore historical, political, and cultural resources on O‘ahu
to want to learn about university-level scholarship.
Required Texts
UH Bookstore
THE VALUE OF HAWAI‘I: KNOWING THE PAST, SHAPING THE FUTURE. Eds. Craig Howes and Jon Osorio. Honolulu: UH Press, 2010
THE MLA HANDBOOK FOR WRITERS OF RESEARCH PAPERS. 7TH ED. NY: Modern Language Association of America, 2009.
Required Writing
Portfolio of self-assessments
A series of short essays based on workshop sessions, which increasingly incorporate primary- and secondary-source material
A final project based on argument and research. You choose the subject and the thesis. Your essay will be included in our own essay collection, KNOWING THE PAST, SHAPING THE FUTURE: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ENGLISH 100A/FALL 2010 CLASS MEMBERS.
This section of English 100A will focus on place. We will read essays and poems about the geology, history, culture, art, and politics of places, concentrating our efforts on the places where we live, namely O`ahu. Students will write a series of essays (photographic, personal, narrative, analytical, documentary, research-oriented), and will post to our class blog each week.
Readings will include:
Kaia Sand's REMEMBER TO WAVE (about the secret histories of Portland, Oregon)
Jill Yamasawa's AFTERMATH, (about McKinley High School)
Kahuaomanoa Press's ROUTES, (literature of TheBus)
Gizelle Gajelonia's THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT THEBUS
as well as selected essays found on-line and in a course reader.
Course requirements will include writing approximately one essay or revision each week, posting to the class blog, and participating fervently in our discussions. There will be a strict attendance policy. Independent and group field trips on student time will include a ride on TheBus, a long walk, and a trip to a museum. Electronics are permitted in class only for the purposes of research.
