For Students

Spring 2013 University Writing Seminars

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• See the Brandeis University Bulletin for undergraduate writing requirements
• Further information and frequently asked questions regarding the writing program, including composition, can be found here.

UWS 1b: From Page to Screen: Jane Austen in Literature and Film
MWR 9-9:50
Katherine Nadeau

Jane Austen has come to be a central figure in our society’s conception of romantic love, yet in many ways her place in the cultural imagination obscures her more complicated exploration of human relationships. In this course, we will interrogate our contemporary romantic version of Austen by analyzing a number of her texts through the lens of their representations in film. We will explore not only what happens when a novel is adapted as a film, but, more specifically, what happens to Austen in film. What are the differences between these two media? Do the adaptations faithfully represent or transform Austen’s texts? Do they provide a critical reading of her novels, or a misreading? What textual concerns do they emphasize and which minimize, if not erase altogether? Through this approach, we will come to see Austen within a contextual framework far different, though no less enjoyable, than that in which many of us first knew her. But more than just to get you thinking critically about Austen, this course is designed to help you gain the skills necessary to write a successful college level essay. Thus, we will focus our attention on three major writing assignments, the close reading essay, the lens essay, and the research essay, in each of which we will approach Austen as a novelist and in film from a distinct critical angle. 

UWS 2a 1 and 2: Absurdity in Fiction and Film
MWR 9-9:50, MWR 12-12:50
Kyle Wiggins

UWS 2b: How to Win Your Argument -- Musically! Rhetoric in Music
MWR 9-9:50
Joel Schwindt

We’ve all been moved by music. Sometimes it’s the music; sometimes it’s just the words. In those special cases, it’s the way the music tells the story. The ancient Greeks called the art of moving the mind and the soul “rhetoric,” a Classical art whose persuasive techniques and strategies are still in use in politics and law today. The incorporation of this verbal art into the musical arts is a practice that has blossomed throughout our history, and is still found in today’s music.

This course will begin with an introduction to the art of rhetoric, and how it has been used in music from the Euro-American tradition (music-reading ability is not required, though we will develop a basic vocabulary to discuss the art and mechanics of music). After our introduction to these subjects, we will learn to analyze rhetorical style in music, we will then consider whether such reductive readings are productive or meaningful. For the final research project, students will choose a topic that speaks to an original aspect of the intersection of the musical and persuasive arts.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of the most widely read pieces of English literature, yet few have read the plays that influenced it and, perhaps, even fewer have read the plays that followed in its footsteps. Both pulling from Thomas Kyd’s immensely popular The Spanish Tragedy and preceded by Shakespeare’s tragicomic gore-fest Titus Andronicus, Hamlet became the model for what was later dubbed the “revenge tragedy.” After rigorously scouring Hamlet to establish the conventions of this notoriously bloody genre of theater, we will read two lesser-known, though more graphic, revenge plays written shortly after Shakespeare’s magnum opus: John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling. Additionally, we will focus on the plays’ recurring concerns – such as ghosts, madness, and vigilante justice – and how they were depicted in the Renaissance at large. 

As we encounter melancholic Machiavellis, sex scandals in a mental hospital, and a whole lot o’ incest, this course will foster the development of incisive analysis and sophisticated academic writing. Structured assignments, class discussions, peer group workshops, and conferences will direct us as we explore different writing tasks. We will experiment with a variety of writing activities and assignments including close reading, lens, and a research-based essay. We also might occasionally yell things in unison. Fair warning.

UWS 5b: Mourning and Melancholia in the Works of J.D. Salinger
MWR 9-9:50
Orah Minder

J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye holds a fraught seat within American high school English curriculums. Not only is Catcher’s place in English curriculums still in question, but readers’ personal reactions to Holden, the protagonist, tend to be mixed. Some readers find him to be a whiny, unlikeable teenager; others read him as a young man in mourning over the loss of his younger brother. This course will seek to give students a broader sense of Salinger as concerned with the impacts of war on individuals and families and images of mourning within families. We will begin with a reading of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and A Perfect Day for Banana Fish. We will then read a number of Salinger’s short stories and Franny and Zooey. Finally, we will end with a reading of Catcher. Many students will have read Catcher in high school; for others, this will be a first reading of the novel. The goal of this course is to come to a fuller understanding of Salinger’s work through class discussion and individual essays. We will use Sigmund Freud’s theory of mourning as presented in his classic essay Mourning and Melancholia as a lens through which to view the Glass and Caulfield families.

There will be three required essays for this course: for the first essay, students will do a close reading of a short story, for the second essay, students will conduct a reading of a text through the lens provided by Freud in Mourning and Melancholia, for the third essay, students will write a research paper that analyzes a range of critical work written on one of the Salinger texts read in class. 

UWS 6b: Writing Mental Illness
MWR 9-9:50
Laura Hill

Mental illness occurs in all groups, yet a very particular type of mental illness narrative became common – we could even say popular – in the twentieth century: stories of mental illness in young women. Almost always dramatic and frequently romanticized, the experience of mental illness as recounted in these books deserves to be examined. In this class, we will explore novels and memoirs that articulate and narrate experiences of mental illness while we interrogate gendered aspects of those experiences and narratives. Texts we may look at include “The Yellow Wallpaper,” The Bell Jar, and Prozac Nation. We will use critical theory to discuss the ways that mental illness functions as a metaphor. By the end of the course, students will have written three essays: a close reading essay; a lens essay (one that uses one text to analyze another); and a research essay. As a University Writing Seminar, this class’s primary goal is to prepare students for college-level academic writing. Students will develop a critical vocabulary for thinking about the process of composition and revision as well as cultivate crucial research skills that will help them make the most of the information resources available at Brandeis.

UWS 8a: Crisis and the American Musical
MWR 9-9:50
Georgia Luikens

Since the advent of Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein’s 1957 musical West Side Story, the themes and plots of the American musical have diverged from traditional love stories to in depth analyses of the human condition.  This class will study three musicals, each of which explores a level of crisis:  Sunday in the Park with George depicts an individual in crisis, Rent a community, and West Side Story a society. Through a close study of production history, characterizations, lyrics, music, movement, plot and script, this class will investigate the portrayal of “crisis” in the modern American musical.  This will be further achieved through a combination of close readings of critical, academic, and other artistic responses to the works studied, as well as by listening to relevant soundtracks and viewing production videos.  Throughout this class, students will be required to develop thoughtful, well written responses in clear academic English.  Over the course of the semester, researching, writing, and editing skills essential to the Brandeis undergraduate curriculum will be covered.  Students do not need any prior drama or musical training; however, an interest in music and/or music theatre is strongly encouraged.

UWS 5a: Writings About School
MWR 12-12:50
Michaela Henry

In this course, we will read and critically examine educational scenes in literature. Education is commonly viewed as the key to liberation from oppression. But can we accept that claim without question? In a post-colonial era, legacies of colonial subjection are passed along through models of education that remain rooted in cultural values of the former colonizers, and as such, these models serve not to liberate colonized peoples, but to maintain their oppression. This course will explore literary narratives of schooling from formerly colonized locations (such as Jamaica, India, and Ireland) in order to explore the ways education is not merely the transfer of information but is a process through which particular kinds of persons (subjects) are created.  As this course is a University Writing Seminar, we will explore these questions through foundational practices of critical reading and academic writing.

UWS 7b 1 and 2: Technology and Futurity
MWR 12-12:50, MWR 1-1:50
Anna Jaysane-Darr

The steam engine. The radio. The computer. The iPod. We often regard technology as a progression of cumulative advancements that proceed into a future of automated wonderment, even while questioning these very advancements for moving us away from an authentic life. Is there another way of looking at technology? This course uses theoretical perspectives derived from the anthropological study of material culture and science and technology studies to examine the role of technology in society, and how it is bound up with ideas about the future and social progress. We will look at representations of technology in pop culture and novels, and read work by contemporary observers of technological innovation. In this course, we will “close read” a piece of technology, examine the film Blade Runner, and read some Donna Haraway, Karl Marx, and Douglas Rushkoff. Over the course of three units – close reading, lens analysis, and research – these investigations will be the fodder for our primary work on critical thinking and essay writing, including thesis, structure, analysis, and argumentation. 

UWS 16a 1 and 2: Stories of American Place
MWR 12-12:50, MWR 1-1:50
Nick Van Kley

Place still matters in American culture. Detroit is a national symbol for post-industrial blight and urban decay. The Alaskan bush inspires stories of independent spirit and individual ingenuity. New England stands in for the nation's colonial history and its high culture. We use stories of place to help define ourselves and the collectives to which we belong. This course examines a few narratives of place or region in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century United States. We will ask what counts as a region, identify techniques of representation that define a place; examine the ways regions are tied to race, class, and gender; and speculate about regional narratives’ capacity to empower or silence marginal cultures. Along the way, we will examine diverse media, including film, fiction, and poetry. 

This course is a University Writing Seminar. As such, its primary goal is to prepare students for college-level academic writing. Students will learn the standards of academic writing, practice those standards, and develop a critical vocabulary for thinking about the process of composition and revision. Furthermore, students will learn critical skills for doing academic research. Research is not a common-sense procedure, and one of our aims will be to learn a few techniques for making the most of the research tools available at Brandeis. To accomplish these goals, students will need to read, understand, and construct critical arguments about the course material and engage in independent research outside of class.

UWS 18a: Environmentalism in America
MWR 12-12:50
Sarah Sutton

In 1970, more than 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day, placing environmental issues like pollution, pesticide use, and oil spills on a national stage. More than thirty years later, today’s environmentalists advocate for the awareness of issues as broad ranging as global warming, environmental inequalities, and sustainable agriculture, to name a few. Have there been multiple environmental movements in America? What has changed since the 1960s, and what remains the same? This course examines the historical roots of modern environmentalism, asking how activists’ philosophies, goals and tactics have developed over the past several decades. In our writing assignments, we will examine the events, texts and images that inspired the first Earth Day, and analyze critical texts to explore how ideas about the human place in the natural world have shaped the course of the modern environmental movement. Course readings include works by Rachel Carson, John McPhee, Bill McKibben and other environmental activists. While considering the past, present and future of environmentalism, students will learn to engage critically with texts, craft complex arguments, and compose engaging, articulate and incisive essays.

UWS 9b: Female Spaces in the Eighteenth-Century British Novella
MWR 12-12:50
Sarabeth Grant 

The early eighteenth century in Britain was a time of great upheaval and change. In response to the turmoil generated by the civil war, experimental government, and religious strife of the previous century, the thinkers of this era grappled with notions of British selfhood and modernity. The anxieties of the age reveal themselves through the conflicting presentations of the female voice within the various writers and genres of the period. In this class, we will consider the representation and invocation of the female voice as explored in three novellas of the period: Eliza Haywood's Fantomina; or, Love in a Maze (1725), Jane Barker's Love Intrigues (1713), and Penelope Austin's The Strange Adventures of the Count de Vinevil and His Family (1721). Through our reading of these texts we will explore the appropriation of the female voice by three different historical female figures; investigate the role of cross-dressing and masquerade in defining a female self; identify the moments when voice is denied to a female character; and delve into the link between romance and identity formation in fiction by women. 

This course will use the literature of the early eighteenth century as a means of developing the skills necessary to successful academic writing. By participating in a series of writing exercises, workshops, and conferences, as well as producing three major essays over the course of the semester, we will not only become conversant in the major themes central to British modernity but also in the methodology of college writing. 

UWS 17b: Early Detective Fiction
MWR 12-12:50
Lisa Rourke

The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the development of a new type of fiction that elevated the detective to heroic status. Why did detective fiction emerge at this particular historical moment, and what contemporary developments fostered the birth of the new genre?  To explore these questions, this course will introduce students to the study of detective fiction as a literary genre through the lens of social history. While course readings will focus primarily on stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie, we will also analyze both twentieth century theoretical texts and primary documents from the nineteenth century to understand the discourse addressing the different medical and technological advances of the period.

This course will also foster the development of incisive analysis and sophisticated academic writing as a way to explore early detective fiction. Structured assignments, class discussions, peer group workshops, and conferences will direct us as we explore different writing tasks. We will experiment with a variety of writing activities and assignments including close reading, lens, and a research-based essay. Our goal will be to produce about 25 pages of strong academic writing in which we expand and develop our analytical and technical skills.

UWS 10b: David Foster Wallace
MWR 1-1:50
Conley Wouters

Although celebrated as a stylistic innovator and singular, peerless author, the late David Foster Wallace saw himself as a traditional, even conservative, writer. In a 1993 interview, Wallace claimed that “[ours] is a generation that has an inheritance of absolutely nothing as far as meaningful moral values, and it’s our job to make them up, and we’re not doing it.” From The Broom of the System, his debut novel that began as his senior honors thesis, to The Pale King, his posthumous, unfinished novel set among the bureaucratic landscape of a Midwestern IRS examination center, Wallace used his fiction as a way to grapple with questions of morality, ontology, and a dangerous narcissism that continually threatens to annihilate the possibility of empathy. 

In this course, we’ll read Wallace’s short stories, essays, and excerpts from his novels. We’ll look at Infinite Jest and its critique of insidiously addictive consumerism, the early short fiction’s engagement with and simultaneous disavowal of its postmodern predecessors, and we’ll question whether “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” works as the literary manifesto it’s often held up to be. Additionally, we’ll read criticism and appraisals by both academic writers and Wallace contemporaries like Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, and Jonathan Franzen. Finally, we’ll explore how online communities read and reread Wallace, and the way listservs, blogs, and online reading groups might shape the reception of his work. This is a University Writing Seminar, so students will complete three major essay as well as frequent writing exercises to gain the skills necessary for academic writing.

Since at least the 19^th century, when Huck Finn announced his intention to “light out for the territory ahead of the rest,” the coming of age story has had a powerful hold on the American imagination.  In this course, we will study contemporary coming of age narratives, uncovering the genre’s fundamental tensions.  At the heart of nearly all coming of age stories is a paradox: when children cross the threshold from childhood to adulthood, they both gain and lose a sense of independence.  We will interrogate this contradiction through readings focused on issues of race, class, sexuality, and gender.  Does the “coming of age” narrative encourage acceptance of the status quo?  Or can authors use this classic American genre to contest and remake the identities assigned to marginalized citizens?  We will explore these questions and more as we practice the standards of academic writing, allowing students to develop the critical thinking and writing skills they need to succeed at Brandeis.  Authors under consideration include Junot Díaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Maxine Hong Kingston, ZZ Packer, Amy Tan, and Edward Jones.

Enlightenment readers seem to have had a funny idea of what constitutes comedy. A cursory sampling of the period’s most popular humor publications reveals hundreds of passages that seem to celebrate human misery. Typical of such narratives are characters such as the well-to-do young man who answers a blind beggar’s request for assistance by leading her into traffic, the son who advises suicide to his weary father as a cure for arthritis, and the avuncular theatre-goer happy not only to grope with impunity a nearby lady but also to mock her loudly for being too angry to articulate a coherent response. Modern-day readers cannot help but be struck by the glee with which such texts describe the misery of Britain’s weakest and most vulnerable—the poor, women, the elderly, the disabled—at the hands of able-bodied wits protected by rank. Indeed, much humor in the period seems only a cruel celebration of others’ suffering and a crass affirmation of injustice by those who benefit from it most. However, such writing also forces attention toward the less savory aspects of eighteenth-century life, rubbing our noses in the filth, inequity, gross injustice, death, violence, unpleasant sex, and poor sanitation that many readers would probably just as well ignore. One can make the claim that humor serves the function not simply of ignoring or dismissing another’s pain, but also of forcing us to consider its sources. Indeed, for every Enlightenment claim that laughter kills the human capacity for sympathy and community, there exists another that suggests that some educational value lies in humor’s supposed capacity either to make us learn a lesson from a bad example or to force us to consider the wretched state of our horrible society—and perhaps even to reflect upon our own role in making it that way. Satirists like Swift certainly claimed to use the possibility of laughter to wrench their culture into something better, although then as now they were sometimes met by skeptical voices suggesting that they produced only self-serving nihilism under the guise of irony. Our seminar shall carefully consider all possibilities.

This course sets out to explore the nature of humor in British popular culture in the eighteenth century, both its engagement with hot-button (then and now) social issues like poverty, injustice, and civil rights, and its capacity to either encourage or discourage sympathetic concern from its readers. Enthusiastic students should expect ample opportunity to engage and sharpen their analytic habits of mind through careful consideration of work from artists like William Hogarth, Mary Wortley Montagu, Jonathan Swift, and Eliza Haywood, plus philosophy from the likes of Adam Smith and Thomas Hobbes. Consideration of the question of what’s funny in the Enlightenment—and of why anybody might have thought so—demands careful consideration and a variety of scholarly engagements that run from extended textual analysis to rigorous engagement with more abstracted conceptions of literary enjoyment and sympathy. The course culminates in the opportunity to produce original research that furthers our understanding of some of the questions raised in the course. Students will leave the course with experience in applying essential strategies for framing and working through analytic questions in writing, amply prepared to begin with confidence their scholastic careers at Brandeis.

UWS 24a: Mapping Manhood: Representations of Masculinity Since Hollywood's Classic Days
MW 5-6:20
David Pass

In her essay on feminist film theory “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey argues that classic Hollywood’s male-bodied characters have long occupied the position of the “lookers,” while the women have been vested with what she names “to-be-looked-at-ness.”  This course aims to find out what happens when the male gaze is inverted––where women (and other-gendered persons) become lookers and male bodies become those which are objectified.  As a class, we will explore “the crisis of masculinity” so often discussed in recent studies on manhood through a close reading of traditional and non-traditional representations of men and the male body in films since classic Hollywood.  We will pay close attention to male relationships to feminism, the domestic, queerness and the struggle with rugged individualism in the post-modern age as we analyze such films as Hitchcock’s Rear Window, The Matrix, Basic Instinct and Fight Club.  Our work with gender and film will be focused on the process of composing concise and compelling essays at the college level as well as fostering critical thinking and effective argumentation.

UWS 6a: Mapping and Writing Renaissance London
MW 5-6:20

Today we take for granted the concept of a city as a staging ground for street interactions with strangers, a laboratory of ideas and economics, and an organically evolving matrix of buildings, but this notion began in the Renaissance during a period of prolific literary activity. In this course we will read an assortment of 17th century plays and stories dealing with the seedier side of urban life—con-artists, kidnapping, plagues, and prostitution—against the developing map of London. The focus of our readings will be to ask, how were authors such as Shakespeare, Middleton, and Nashe evoking their newfound sense of place in fictions intended for popular consumption? As we explore the assigned texts, rigorous weekly writing assignments will connect our critical dialogue to practical matters of paper-writing, paying special attention to structural aspects of analytical essay formats and the logic of argumentation.

UWS 23a: Death and Disfigurement in Shakespeare's Richard III
MW 5-6:20

Death, disfigurement, and ghosts. Family conflict, powerful curses, political power struggles, murder, and war. All of these themes feature prominently in Shakespeare’s history play, Richard III. In this class, we will do a focused examination of Richard III in order to evaluate the way in which Shakespeare represents a historical narrative as both disturbingly violent yet infused with comedy. This course will explore what happens when history is re-presented in a new context, particularly as a form of entertainment.  We will question what it means to shift a historical narrative into a new setting, and what is gained or lost by such a re-presentation. We will use various readings from historical, literary, and film criticism in order to examine how history is represented within Shakespeare’s play and how history is retold in our own modern context in various film productions of Richard III. 

Most importantly, in this course students will be introduced to the art of the college essay. A range of writing activities will teach students to read critically, craft complex arguments, evaluate and engage with scholarly sources, and articulate their ideas in graceful prose. We will engage in a series of targeted writing exercises, workshops, and conferences, and produce three major essays over the course of the semester in order to explore the representations of history in the text and productions of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

UWS 22a: We Are the Champions: The Impact of Glam Rock on Culture
TR 5-6:20

When we think about artists such as Lady Gaga, Prince, Rihanna, or Marilyn Manson, we think of glamour, theatricality, sexual ambiguity, and lots of make-up. All of these artists and many others have their roots in glam rock. Emerging out of the European art rock and the English psychedelic scenes, glam rock pushed the limits of rock and roll both musically and socially. Glam rock challenged the conventional ideology of rock and roll and brought numerous issues to the limelight such as gender, homosexuality, and theatricality in rock music. This course will explore the history behind the conception of glam rock and its impact on pop music by looking at various artists from David Bowie to Queen. This course is designed to develop critical thinking skills through discussions, listening, and writing. Through the course of the semester you will learn how to develop clear cohesive arguments and learn key writing skills.  

UWS 8b: You Are Now My Enemy...
TR 5-6:20
Tina Sherman

The Hebrew Bible contains many accounts of frenemies and nemeses, but these are not just stories of battles won and lost.  The Bible has trash-talk.  The Bible has spin.  It has intrigue and deception.  In this course, we will use modern critical methods of biblical studies to examine a variety of texts about enemies, and we'll discuss such questions as:  Who is the enemy?  How is the enemy portrayed?  How is the enemy treated (both by the characters within the account and by the author of the account)?  When you read between the lines of a particular text, what can you learn about the politics and perceptions that shaped the author's thinking?

The course will begin with a study of the complexity of enemy and frenemy relationships in the Bible through a close reading of a specific biblical text such as Judges 16, in which Samson is betrayed into the hands of his Philistine enemies by his lover, Delilah.  For the lens essay, we will study propagandistic depictions of the enemy, looking at the ways in which ridicule, caricature, and demonization are used by biblical authors in prophetic texts.  Finally, the research paper will allow you to explore a "biblical enemies" topic of your choice.  The primary goal of a University Writing Seminar is to prepare students for college-level academic writing.  Students will learn to engage critically with texts, organize and develop their thoughts, and integrate outside sources to enhance their arguments.  Peer reviews, individual conferences, class discussion, and revisions will help students refine the style, grammatical form, organization, and overall quality of their analytical writing.

It has been referred to as the "Jazz Age," the "Ballyhoo Years," and the "Roaring Twenties." The 1920s so arrested the post-war American imagination that many were compelled to characterize and describe the riotous sprit of the era. But this age of "excess" was also an age of "art," as F. Scott Fitzgerald later remembered it. Indeed, writers, painters, and now suddenly filmmakers sought to reflect and affect that "excess" through their art, and often, they accomplished both.

For this course, we will look at this kinetic decade through literature, specifically, the American short story. The short story during the 1920s represents a fascinating intersection of production (the increased output of a relatively new literary form) and consumption (the rise of mass-circulation magazines). We will read stories by Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and Katherine Anne Porter, and debate what exactly they reveal about the decade. In addition, we will supplement our readings of fiction with non-fiction articles, and also consider that which is not our focus but that is crucial to our overall understanding of the Jazz Age (e.g. the political landscape, the Harlem Renaissance, etc.).  Some major questions that will drive our discussions and assignments include: How did literary critics such as Edmund Wilson turn their attention to short stories instead of novels and poetry?  What is the relationship between these short fictions and the growth of literacy in 1920s America?  And finally, how did depictions of the youth in these stories capture and influence the growing rift between an older and younger generation post-World War I?

More importantly, we will respond to all our readings by writing about them. As this is a University Writing Seminar (UWS), the ability to display your critical and analytical skills not only in reading but also in writing is paramount in this course, and will contribute to your future success here at Brandeis.

UWS 16b: Is Paris Still Burning?  The Formation of Gay and Queer Identities in 20th-Century Literature and Media
TR 5-6:20
James Hood

French philosopher Michel Foucault famously remarked that “The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.”  This course assumes that ‘homosexuality’ as a category is both culturally and historically constructed; in other words, the “Born This Way” banner being fed to mainstream audiences may not be a workable concept in our examination of gay and queer identities.  As such, we will investigate shifting notions of the queer subject in 20^th century literature and media.  Because of time/space limitations in UWS, I should note that the class will limit its study of ‘queerness’ to understandings of male-bodied gay subjects, though trans identities and drag performance will be considered. 

Students should note that this will be a theory-heavy course:  theorists may include Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, Lee Edelman, and Leo Bersani.  Additional texts may include writings by E.M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood, Neil Bartlett, as well as films such as “Some Like It Hot,” “Paris Is Burning,” and the television series “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

Finally, students should understand that this is first and foremost a required freshman writing course and will, as such, be organized as a writing intensive seminar.  Because of the seminar format, ALL students must participate in class discussions.