The Craft of Critical Writing
How to Write a Book
This is a writing seminar for advanced graduate students. Preference will be given to students in their third and fourth years. Maximum enrollment: 14. Please review enrollment instructions.
Where do great ideas come from? What constitutes a great argument? How do you determine the best organization of an article or book? This seminar will try to answer these questions by exploring how some of the most prominent scholars in the Humanities think of the work of writing. We will focus on representative articles and books by four major scholars: Stanley Fish, Annabel Patterson, Susan Stewart, and Martin Jay. In the first two weeks of every three-week segment of the course, we will analyze one major text by each author; in the final week, we will meet with the author to discuss his or her strategies of writing. Each student in the seminar will also have an individual writing project, which may be either *the drafting of a new article or the revision of an already completed seminar paper for publication. *
Required Texts:
Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin (recent anniversary edition);
Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation;
Susan Stewart, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses;
Martin Jay, Songs of Experience
Recommended:
Wayne Booth, et al. ed., The Craft of Research
Enrollment Instructions: students interested in taking this seminar must submit a one-half to one page (maximum) application. This should include your reasons for wanting to take the course and a brief description of the research project you plan to work on in the seminar. This should be left in my box in Comparative Literature by Monday, August 28. No e-mail submissions please. A list of accepted students, along with a short waiting list, will be posted on my office door, 4317 Dwinelle, by noon on Wednesday, August 30. PLEASE NOTE: one meeting of the seminar is scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 21, right before Thanksgiving. Attendance at this meeting is a requirement for passing the course. No exceptions. If you are unable to meet this requirement, please do not sign up for the course.