Tentative Syllabus for Spring 2015 with 4 Books and a Critical Thinking Text

McMahon 1C Syllabus Spring 2015

Essay One: The Geography of Bliss

Support, refute, or complicate the notion that The Geography of Bliss evidences a strong connection between morality and happiness. Use Toulmin or Rogerian model. The essay should be 1,000 words with a Works Cited page of no fewer than three sources.

Essay Two: Man's Search for Meaning

Choice 1: Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Frankl Lite is a more compelling orientation than Full Potency Frankl. Use Toulmin or Rogerian model. The essay should be 1,000 words with a Works Cited page of no fewer than three sources.

Choice 2: Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Arthur C. Brooks' "Love People, Not Pleasure" complements Frankl's message of meaning.

Choice 3: Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Erich Fromm's analysis of freedom and escape complements Frankl's message of meaning.

For sixth and seventh lessons, consider Arthur C. Brooks' "Love People, Not Pleasure" and Fromm's excerpt from Escape from Freedom, which you posted on your Lasdun authoritarian post. 

Essay Three: The Culture Code

In a 1,000-word essay, typed and double-spaced, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that The Culture Code evidences that marketing and advertising are evil agencies preying on anthropology, sociology, human psychology, the unconscious, the reptilian, and neuroscience to manipulate people into becoming helpless consumers. Be sure to use Toulmin model of argumentation and have a Works Cited page with no fewer than three sources.

Essay Four (Final): The New Jim Crow

Support, refute, or complicate Michelle Alexander's thesis that the current justice and prison system are perpetuating the old Jim Crow into a new Jim Crow. Use Toulmin or Rogerian model. Because this is your Final, it is a bit longer than your previous typed papers. While they are four pages (1,000 words), this essay is five pages (closer to 1,200 words). Be sure to have a Works Cited page with no fewer than three sources.

Grading

Four in-class writing exams: 50 each

Three typed 1,000-word essays: 100 each

One Final 1,200-word essay 200

Annotated bibliography: 50

Attendance and Class Participation Deductions of 50 for more than 4 absences or more than 3 tardies; repeated use of smart phone in class or leaving class repeatedly to "take a call." More than 5 absences or more than 4 tardies is a loss of 100 points.

750 Total Points

Lessons for 23 Classes Updated on July 22, 2014 (one 1,300-word annotated bibliography for last essay)

1. January 20 Introduction to English 1C
2. January 22 Geography of Bliss, Chapter 1
3. January 27 Geography of Bliss Chapters 2 and 3
4. January 29 Geography of Bliss Chapter 4
5. Feb 3 Geography of Bliss Chapters 5 and 6
6. Feb 5 Geography of Bliss Chapter 7
7. Feb 10 Reading Exam 1 for 50 points
8. Feb 12 Typed Essay 1 Due 100 pts; Man's Search for Meaning Lesson 1
9. Feb 17 Man's Search for Meaning Lesson 2
10. Feb 19 Man's Search for Meaning Lesson 3
11. Feb 24 Man's Search for Meaning Lesson 4
12.  March 3 Man's Search for Meaning Lesson 5
13. March 5 Man's Search for Meaning Lesson 6
14. March 10 Man's Search for Meaning Lesson 7
15. March 12 Reading Exam 2
16. March 24 Typed Essay 2 Due 100 pts; The Culture Code Chapters 1 and 2
17. March 26 The Culture Code Chapters 3 and 4
18. March 31 The Culture Code Chapters 5 and 6
19. April 2 The Culture Code Chapters 7 and 8
20. April 7 The Culture Code Chapters 9 and 10
21. April 9 The Culture Code Chapter 11
22. April 14 The Culture Code Chapter 12
23. April 16 Reading Exam 3 
24. April 21  Typed Essay 3 Due 100 pts; New Jim Crow Lesson 1
25. April 23 New Jim Crow 2
26. April  28 NJC 3
27. April 30 NJC 4
28. May 5 NJC 5
29. May 7 NJC  6 Annotated Bibliography Due
30. May 12 In-Class Essay Exam 4
    
31. May 14 Final Research Paper Due 200
    

Four Typed Essay Assignments

The Top 10 Challenges I Face as a College Composition Instructor

One. I teach grammar lessons based on students’ essay grammar errors, but the students repeat the mistakes over and over so that I feel as though I am living out the Myth of Sisyphus.

Two. I have to be a full-time plagiarism sleuth and when I catch plagiarism I must document it on triplicate and embark upon a bureaucratic rigmarole that takes time away from helping the honest students.

Three. Students don’t read the assigned texts even when threatened with four reading exams a semester (the only solution would be to quiz them every day and use Scantrons)

Four. Students are surreptitiously on their smartphones and completely disengaged from the class activities.

Five. Students leave the classroom under the ostensible need to go to the bathroom when in reality they are “taking a call.”

Six. Students are sleeping in the classroom, a spectacle, complete with drool on the desk, that makes the other students laugh them out of their somnambulistic state. During this time, my lecture has been rendered irrelevant.

Seven. I find myself grading essays in which the students are repeating the same errors from the first paragraph to the very last and I’m wondering when can I just stop correcting mistakes and give the essay the F it deserves. I’m thinking two pages of corrections is sufficient, but then part of me is concerned the student won’t accept the F unless I justify it by marking every page.

Eight. I’ll often fall in love with a book and want to impart that passion to the class, but soon enough I’ll find that students remain recalcitrant in their literary ennui.

Nine. I’m trying to keep the students engaged during a two-hour class, but the students, often low in blood sugar, are chomping at the bit to get out of class early and feed themselves at Chipotle or some other tantalizing eatery.

Ten. Students with profound gaps in their literary acquisition and the ability to write basic sentences will come up to me with their F paper and ask me what they need to do in order to improve, and I don’t want to tell them the truth: They are three years away from being where they need to be in order to pass this class.

Tentative Syllabus for Spring 2015 with 4 Books

McMahon 1C Syllabus Spring 2015

Lessons for 23 Classes Updated on July 22, 2014 (one 1,300-word annotated bibliography for last essay)

1. January 20 Introduction to English 1C
2. January 22 Blood Will Out
3. January 27 Blood Will Out
4. January 29 Blood Will Out
5. Feb 3 Blood Will Out
6. Feb 5 In-Class Reading Exam for 50 Points.
7. Feb 10 Lasdun: "The Half Sister"
8. Feb 12 Lasdun: "The Natural Order"
9. Feb 17 Lasdun: "The Old Man"
10. Feb 19 Lasdun: "An Anxious Man" and "The Incalculable Life Gesture"
11. Feb 24 Lasdun: "Peter Kahn's Third Wife" and "It's Beginning to Hurt"
12. Feb 26 Research Paper Number One for 100 points is due; Cheever: "Just Tell Me Who It Was"
13. March 3 Cheever: "The Enormous Radio"
14. March 5 Cheever: "Torch Song"
15. March 10 Cheever: "Clancy in the Tower of Babel"
16. March 12 Cheever: "Pot of Gold"
17. March 24 Cheever: "Five-Forty Eight" and "The Cure"
18. March 26 In-Class Reading Exam for 50 Points
19. March 31 Cheever: "The Swimmer"
20. April 2 Cheever: "Housebreaker of Shady Hill"
21. April 7 Cheever: "Sorrows of Gin"
22. April 9 Cheever: "The Country Husband"
23. April 14 Cheever: "Goodbye, My Brother"; extra credit: "Jewels of the Cabots"
24. April 16 Research Paper Number Two for 100 Points Is Due (start next unit from New Jim Crow
25. April 21 New Jim Crow
26. April 23 New Jim Crow
27. April  28 NJC
28. April 30 NJC
29. May 5 NJC
30. May 7 NJC Annotated Bibliography Due
31. May 12 In-Class Essay Exam 50
    
32. May 14 Final Research Paper Due 200
    

 

Blood Will Out; It's Beginning to Hurt; Cheever Stories; The New Jim Crow

Blood Will Out:

Assignment:

NYT reviewer Nina Burleigh reviews Walter Kirn's Blood Will Out (possible book for 1C?) and observes that Kirn saw himself as a "collaborator" who allowed the "trickster incubus" to possess him.

Defend, refute, or modify the assertion that both Blood Will Out and F.Scott Fitgerald's "Winter Dreams" are innocent victims of that "trickster incubus," the American Dream. Be sure to have a counterargument-rebuttal section. Here's another PDF of "Winter Dreams."

Themes We Will Cover in Lecture

One. Ambition, Faustian Bargain, envy (Moldova); the need to strike a pose; Pascal and the need to make others think you're something on the outside when you're nothing on the inside. The psychology of a cipher. Walter Kirn's parallels to Clark. And their differences, including Kirn's appreciation for self-deprecating irony.

Two. Symbiosis, enabling, willed ignorance, collaborating; Kirn's deeper motivations including egotism

Three. Archetype of the Trickster and society's collaboration

Four. The psychology of a sociopath who uses words to gain advantage over others. The Sociopath Next Door.

Five. Lawyers are tricksters spinning the truth. The world of BS according to Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit. It's ironic that the impostor is tried in a court in which trickery is rewarded. An lecture on BS could take an entire class

Six. Determinism, free will, Sam Harris' book about the subject

Seven. Kirn's parallels with Dexter Green (see essay options) and the pursuit of a chimera. The students will compare the two characters.

John Cheever Stories

Choose Only One Option

Option One:

In your first paragraph, your introduction, write an extended definition of the chimera and its connection to the Dionysian force in humankind. Then contrast that with metacognition and its connection to Apollonian force in human consciousness. This paragraph must show a clear understanding of extended definition.

In your second paragraph, your thesis paragraph, write a thesis that supports, defends, or complicates the assertion that in John Cheever's short stories the characters’ demise is the result of a juggernaut-like chimera obliterating their powers of metacognition. Follow your thesis with supporting paragraphs, including two paragraphs that show counterargument and rebuttal as modeled after the Toulmin argument. You must refer to no fewer than three of the assigned stories from Lasdun’s collection.

Your conclusion should be a restatement of your thesis in more powerful rhetorical form. You should end your paper with an MLA Works Cited page with a minimum of three credible sources. A week before your research paper is due, you will need to turn in an annotated bibliography with 5 sources (even though you don’t have to use all 5 sources, just 3).

Some Arguments Against the Above Thesis

The chimera is not necessarily a destructive agent. It can bring purpose to our lives.

We need Dionysian outlets to restore and rejuvenate our tired psyches.

By placing too much emphasize on chimeras, we paint people as victims rather than holding them morally responsible for their actions.

Option Two

Defend, refute, or complicate the notion that Cheever's short stories show that sacrifice of private desires for public duty results in a sort of psychosis that leads to unhappiness and self-destruction. Use the Toulmin model to structure your argument.

Put in other words:

One camp of readers argues that Cheever’s short stories affirm the notion that the sacrifice of private desires for public duty results in a sort of psychosis that leads to unhappiness and self-destruction. However, another camp of readers argues that Cheever’s stories evidence the opposite phenomenon, that the sacrifice of private desires for public duty is essential for achieving a balance that protects us from falling into the abyss of our own madness. Which camp do you belong to? Defend your position in an argumentative essay that adopts the Toulmin model complete with a counterargument-rebuttal section. If you want to complicate the matter and develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the paradox of the opposition described above, you can do so as long as you can execute your thesis with the Toulmin model.   

The Geography of Bliss

Support, refute, or complicate the notion that The Geography of Bliss evidences a strong connection between morality and happiness. Use Toulmin model.

The New Jim Crow

Support, refute, or complicate Michelle Alexander's thesis that the current justice and prison system are perpetuating the old Jim Crow into a new Jim Crow. Use Toulmin model.