English 102, Section 22, danika brown (http://www.u.arizona.edu/~danika)

University of Arizona

Course Overview

Required Texts and Materials:
Available at the University Bookstore:
Church, Lori, Barbara Heifferon, and Sarah Prineas, eds.  A Student's Guide to First-Year Composition. Edina, MN:  Burgess International, 1998.

Available at Antigone Bookstore on 4th Avenue:
Crump, Eric and Nick Carbone.  Writing Online:  A Student's Guide to the Internet and World Wide Web.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Kingsolver, Barbara.  Holding the Line:  Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983.  Cornell UP, 1996.

Nabhan, Gary.  Saguaro:  A View of Saguaro National Monument and the Tucson Basin.  Tucson, AZ:  Southwest Parks and Monuments Association, 1986.

Sonnichsen, Charles.  Tucson:  The Life and Times of an American City.  Norman:  U of Oklahoma P, 1987.

Available at most bookstores:
A good handbook on grammar, mechanics, and usage, e.g., Hacker Diana.  A Pocket Style
Manual.  Boston:  St. Martin's, 1993.
Several computer floppy disks (double-sided, double-density) for saving your work.
 


Course Description
In this course you will be taking advantage of a unique opportunity: to be among the first students in the history of the university to take English 102 in a computer-mediated environment. You will also be one of the first groups of students to use OldPuebloMOO, UA's first educational MOO. Since your role in this class is historic, it only makes sense that your work this semester would focus your attention on the process of making histories. We will use the following question to guide us throughout this semester: What makes a life, a community, a building, a neighborhood, or an event worth remembering?
 
To explore this question, you will be analyzing others' histories and writing about the importance of such analysis. You will be looking at the rhetorical and contextual background of texts and learning to read carefully within those contexts. Your own writing will involve critical engagements with the issues and texts you encounter. You will also produce your own histories and representations, analyzing the rhetorical and contextual elements of your own texts. Through these interactions of reading and writing, you will become more aware of the implications of historical representation, and more conscious of rhetorical choices in the writing of history.
 
All of your work this semester will be made "public" on the World Wide Web or on OldPuebloMOO. Your first assignment will involve a rhetorical analysis of a history of Tucson. This assignment will be written and then posted to a class website. In the process of writing and posting this assignment, you will learn HTML and online layout, in addition to how to analyze a history. Your second and third assignments will involve you in producing histories of Tucson. Your class and one other are linked to the Southwest Land Project, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and staff dedicated to getting important resources on this region onto the World Wide Web. The first project connected to the Southwest Land Project (your second assignment) is a website that you will create with fellow classmates on the history of this region. You and the classmates in your writing group will conduct original research on some aspect of UA or this region and create a website documenting what you have discovered. Your final project will involve your creating a space in OldPuebloMOO that teaches the public about your project.
 
As you are writing your Tucson histories, you will be working for the community. This course is designed to incorporate "service learning" into your academic experience. Service learning activities connect you to the broader community and provide you with another kind of educational experience. This component of the class will help you understand how your experiences at the university extend beyond the classroom, even the campus. You will learn that your "teachers" in life are not just the instructors of your courses, but also others whose life experiences and knowledges are different from your own. Your community work--in this case, the writing of histories for the community--is essential to your success in this course, and we will spend a significant amount of time discussing the implications of your work outside of the classroom.
 
Because all of your work this semester will involve intensive computer work, you will need to have access to a computer several times per week. You will also need to be able to log on to the World Wide Web through a browser (Netscape 4.0 would be ideal). If you do not have a computer at home, you will need to plan to use one of UA's many computer labs throughout the semester. If you do plan to do your work from home, make sure you have a slip connection (PPP) through a service provider like Dakota Communications.
 
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