Course Syllabus

English 354: Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Writing
Syllabus #1478
5 credits

 

Dr. Nancy Pagh
Senior Instructor, English Department
HU 259 | 360-650-2265
Email: Nancy.Pagh@wwu.edu

Full Course Syllabus:  English 354 syl 1478.doc

 

ENGLISH MAJOR/MINOR CREDITS:

WWU English majors/minors may apply up to 10 credits earned through distance learning to their major/minor course of study. Contact the English Department for guidelines.

DEPARTMENT INFORMATION:

• Department Information
• Department Mission, Goals, and Objectives
• Course Description

COURSE PRE-REQUISITE:

English 101

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Students in English 354 work to define and explore the literary genre of creative nonfiction, with a focus on the short personal essay.  Through examination of example texts and immersion in the process of imaginative writing, participants come to better understand and express themselves and their world.

The course opens by directing your attention to some of the definitions and possibilities of creative nonfiction as a particular type of life writing, and by reviewing (or, for some students, introducing them to) the basics of good writing in any form.  We move through several thematic assignments, reading published short essays and responding to prompts for generating rough drafts.   As the course continues, students begin to work with particular shapes and forms of expression and move toward selecting their best drafts to revise, edit, and polish.

The capstone project generated for the course is a revised portfolio of essays with an accompanying memo that explains the learning unique to the participant.

As is the case in any imaginative writing course, gaining the power to define the world, and to define yourself in it, is the essential benefit of creative expression.  Writer Gloria Anzaldua answered the question "Why write?" this way:

By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it.  I write because life

does not appease my appetites and hunger.  I write to record what others erase when I speak,

to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you.  To become more intimate with

myself and you.  To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy.

This is a course about inventing, shaping, and honing creative nonfiction; but more basically than that, this is a class—as Anzaldua stresses—about how language defines and changes our understanding of the world and who we are in the world.  All writing is drawn from our experience and our identity, and this is especially so within the genre of creative nonfiction.  Over and over and over, your topic in English 354 is language and self—even if you are writing an essay about your uncle Milton's love of pickled herring.  You don't have to be an angry rebel to write.  You do need to approach the world with an active mind, open to the belief that who we are (and what language can do) is always changing, growing, and in need of articulation to be fully understood.  You will leave the course a stronger writer, understanding parts of yourself previously silent and unworded.

TEXTBOOKS:

• Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola, Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction.  McGraw-Hill 2005.  ISBN# 978-0-07-144494-1.  (Note that this is the “trade edition” of the book, with a white and yellow cover.  The edition with the red cover is different—more expensive, and the page numbers will all be different than the syllabus indicates.)

• Judith Kitchen (editor), Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction.  W. W. Norton, 2005.  ISBN#0-393-32600-4.

The textbooks may be obtained online through a price comparison website such as www.AddAll.com or www.amazon.com .  Plan on purchasing your textbooks early and be sure you purchase the correct edition of the book for the course (the ISBN number can help you determine the correct edition).

BRIEF OVERVIEW:

	Assignment One:	Foundations
	Assignment Two:	Writing the Body / Writing the Family
	Assignment Three:	Writing the Physical / Writing the Spiritual
	Assignment Four:	Writing History / Writing the Arts
	Assignment Five:	The Lyric Essay
	Assignment Six:	The Object Essay / Pedagogy Exercise
	Assignment Seven:	Portfolio Draft
	Assignment Eight:	Revised Portfolio

 

SUGGESTED CALENDAR OF ASSIGNMENTS:

Some students wish to complete Self-paced courses within a single quarter.  To do so, be aware that you will need to submit an assignment every week of the term.  It is best to wait for my response to one assignment before submitting another.  I usually respond to student work within one week of receiving it from the Western Online office.  However, I am sometimes away or snowed under by midterms or finals, and sometimes students are in a hurry to complete the course.  Consequently, you may submit two assignments at one time. 

HOWEVER, YOU CANNOT BEGIN ASSIGNMENT EIGHT (YOUR PORTFOLIO REVISIONS) UNTIL RECEIVING AND CONSIDERING MY FEEDBACK ON ASSIGNMENT SEVEN.  Don’t even think about trying to complete the course in less than eight weeks from the submission of your first lesson—you cannot compress a full term’s work into so little time.  Please plan accordingly.

GRADING:

You will receive one grade for each assignment (eight total); each assignment grade reflects your work on every component of the assignment sequence.  Each assignment carries equal weight (a maximum 10 points) toward the course grade, as follows:

	A	10		C	7
	A-	9.5		C-	6.5
	B+	9		D+	6
	B	8.5		D	5.5
	B-	8		D-	5
	C+	7.5		F	< 5

 

All assignments are graded according to the following rubric:

“A” – Both the imaginative writing and the analytical writing in response to reading assignments demonstrate advanced understanding and practice.

• Uses original and insightful examples and details; observations note features that novice creative writers would rarely recognize; analytical commentary extends beyond the requirements in its depth and precision
• Writing demonstrates advanced understanding of concepts and techniques taught in the lesson; takes more risks and is more polished than required
• Responses are highly detailed and specific
• all terms/vocabulary are used correctly

“B” – Both the imaginative writing and the analytical writing in response to reading assignments demonstrate developing understanding and practice.

• Uses “safe” and relatively obvious examples and details; observations note features that novice creative writers would generally recognize; analytical commentary fully meets the requirements
• Writing demonstrates general or adequate understanding of concepts and techniques taught in the lesson
• Responses are general but adequate
• Terms/vocabulary are used in a cursory but correct manner

“C” – Both the imaginative writing and the analytical writing in response to reading assignments demonstrate emerging understanding and practice.

• Uses few examples or details; observations miss features that novice creative writers would usually recognize; analytical commentary is cursory or may focus on summary rather than ideas
• Writing demonstrates basic or superficial understanding of concepts and techniques taught in the lesson; takes fewer risks and is less polished than expected
• Responses are sketchy, general, incomplete
• Terms/vocabulary are avoided or used incorrectly

Your final course grade is based on total points on assignments one through eight, as follows:

	A	=	77-80		C	=	53-56
	A-	=	73-76		C-	=	49-52
	B+	=	69-72		D+	=	45-48
	B	=	65-68		D	=	41-44
	B-	=	61-64		D-	=	37-40
	C+	=	57-60		F	=	0-36

 

FORMATTING YOUR WORK:

Double space all your essays and responses to the reading assignments.  “Author memos”  may be single spaced.  Use 1.00” margins all around.   Paginate (number the pages) of each assignment.  Title each creative essay draft (or title it “Untitled”) and put the total word count in parenthesis following the title of each piece (on the same line with each title).  Within each assignment, arrange your work according to the “sequence” and use the sequence numbers to designate each step in your work.  After printing your work, check that all pages are accounted for and in order, and that there aren’t weird spaces or breaks.  Students have received low grades on assignments simply because they thought they had included all the pages, but some pages failed to print.

SUBMITTING ASSIGNMENTS

ALWAYS make a copy of your work BEFORE submitting it.  If lessons are lost, it is far easier to resubmit a copy than to rewrite an entire assignment.  All assignments must be completed in order to receive credit for the course.  Under no circumstances may you submit all, or even most, lessons at one time.  You may submit a maximum of two assignments together for English 354, and assignment eight cannot be submitted until receiving and considering feedback on assignment seven.  All work must be submitted to the Western Online office.

Please adhere to the following guideline when submitting lessons by email:

• Include ALL of the exercises within an assignment in your lesson submission.  Attach ONE Word document instead of several separate attachments. 
  Lessons submitted in other formats such as notepad or pdf's will be returned to be resubmitted as a Word document.

Time Considerations (a message from the Western Online office)  -  Organize your time so that you spread the work out over 10 to 12 weeks, just like a regular academic quarter.  All assignments must be completed in order to receive credit for the course.  Treat your Self-paced course as the serious learning experience that it is.  True learning takes time:  time for reading, time for processing new information, time for reflection.  When students get into trouble in a Self-paced course it is most often when they try to rush through a large part of the work at the end of the quarter or right before their own deadline.

Remember that grading takes time and our instructors have other classes and students, other obligations.  Therefore, your instructor may not be able to grade assignments instantly, to accommodate your deadline.  Allow time for mailing to and from the Western Online office and also back and forth between our office and your instructor.  If you have a deadline such as graduation, don’t turn in all your work in one batch at the end of the quarter or just a few days before your deadline.

Holidays, Intersessions, and Summer Session - When the University is closed for scheduled holidays and between quarters, delay in return of assignments and examinations must be expected.  In addition, some faculty members are off campus during the summer months and delays may be unavoidable.  The Western Online office will inform students of instructor absences, but it is important for students not to wait until close to a deadline to submit work.

HELP WITH THE COURSE:

Questions do arise and students should feel free to contact me.  The best way is via e-mail to Nancy.Pagh@wwu.edu .  If you do e-mail me, note in the subject that you have an ENGLISH 354 QUESTION.  I always respond to those e-mails first. 

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR:

Nancy Pagh was born and raised in Anacortes, Washington.   After college, she worked in the Publications Unit of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration in Seattle before traveling to New Hampshire for graduate school.  She earned Master’s degrees in literature and in creative writing then attended the University of British Columbia for a Ph.D.   Her first book, At Home Afloat, is a study of the language women use at sea.  Her first book of creative writing, No Sweeter Fat, won the Autumn House Press book award.  Her second collection, After, won the Floating Bridge Press chapbook award.  

Nancy’s work appears in When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poems by American Women, Prairie Schooner, The Fourth River, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, Crab Creek Review, The Bellingham Review, Pontoon, Rock Salt Plum, Oprah magazine, and other journals.  She has been a featured performer at the Skagit River Poetry Festival and the Gist Street Masters Series in Pittsburgh, and was the D. H. Lawrence Fellow at the Taos Summer Writer’s Conference. 

Nancy has taught at universities in Washington State and New York, and has led writing workshops with the Whidbey Island Writers Association conference and the Field’s End program on Bainbridge Island.  She lives in Bellingham and teaches in the English and Canadian-American Studies programs at WWU.  Courses she offers at Western include Introduction to Creative Writing, Introduction to Writing Poetry, Introduction to Writing Creative Nonfiction, advanced writing seminars, and a wide variety of literature courses.  Some of her favorite thematic courses include Food Literature, Literature of the Wild, and Victorian Women’s Travel Writing.