Alexander Ruch
aruch1@tulane.edu
Office: 202 Norman Mayer
Office Hours: Mon 2-4, T 4:45-5:45, Th 3:304:30, and by appointment
English 1010
Tulane University, Spring 2013
Sec 31: T Th 12:30-1:45, Gibson 400D
Sec 34: T Th 2:00-3:15, Gibson 400D
Sec 38: T Th 6:00-7:15, Gibson 308
English 1010: Writing
Course Description
English 1010 is designed to help you write clearly and organize complex arguments that engage in a
scholarly way with expert knowledge. Toward that end, you will learn to conduct independent
bibliographic research and to incorporate that material appropriately into the sort of clear, complex,
coherent arguments that characterize academic discourse. Specifically, you’ll learn that:
 To write clearly means that you must take a piece of writing through multiple drafts in
order to eliminate any grammatical errors or stylistic flaws that might undermine the
author/audience relationship;
 To write with meaningful complexity, you must learn to practice a variety of invention
strategies (e.g., the five classical appeals, freewriting, reading and analysis, and library
research) and to revise continuously the materials generated by these methods;
 To make coherent arguments without sacrificing complexity, your practice of revision
must be guided by certain principles of style and arrangement, and you must grow adept in
the genre of argument itself through work with models and templates established by
standard persuasive rhetorics;
 To create effective arguments, you must cultivate strategies for positioning texts against
each other to familiarize yourself with the arguments of others before developing your own
claims, and grow adept at using warrants, evidence, counter-claims, and other rhetorical
tropes to craft your own arguments. You will learn strategies for active, critical reading,
strategies for deciphering why a text might be arranged a certain way and what that
arrangement might mean;
 To conduct effective research means utilizing the library, evaluating sources, and
incorporating the work of others into your texts using the proper conventions of citation
endorsed by the Modern Language Association (MLA). You will also learn strategies and
conventions for summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting others’ work to support and
develop original claims.
To develop the skills mentioned above, English 1010 balances seminar-style discussions with heavy
student participation; brief lectures; hands-on productive work in writing workshops and guided
“lab” exercises; and regular one-on-one conferencing with your professor.
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Section Description: Telling Stories
Telling, hearing, reading, writing, and responding to stories are fundamental human activities, as
basic to our existence as eating or sleeping. We hear stories whenever we turn on the news, tell
stories whenever we have job interviews, go on dates, or compose academic papers. In this course,
we will explore different ways of understanding this need to tell stories, focused through attention to
one of the oldest oral and literary genres: the fairy tale. To do this, we will examine a variety of fairy
tales, from the Grimms’ collections of oral peasant stories to animated Disney films and recent fairy
tale films for adults. Along the way, we will engage with different approaches to fairy tales, from
cultural history to literary analysis, developmental psychology, and feminist criticism, to examine
how these different lenses elucidate different aspects of and problems pertaining to these tales.
In this course, we won’t just passively read what others have written about fairy tales, but engage
with that writing to develop our own thoughts about what it means to read and tell stories. By
writing generously about, with, and sometimes against others to enter into a larger conversation
(what Joseph Harris calls “rewriting”), we will hone our skills at making academic arguments that
speak to others. We will become more experienced at identifying different kinds of arguments, and
in different ways of drawing those arguments into our own to create more engaging and persuasive
writing. We will conduct academic research, and learn about the reasons behind the conventions we
use to make our claims both compelling and responsible to a larger academic community. We will
examine the traits that make prose clear, concise, cohesive, and coherent, and learn practical ways to
revise prose with those traits in mind. We will also think about the ways that academics tell stories as
ways to advance their own ideas, and try some of these narrative strategies out in our own writing.
Outcomes and Policies
Outcomes: Students will learn how to write clearly and how to develop complex, coherent arguments
that engage with expert knowledge through independent scholarly research and correct citation of
sources.
Attendance: Students in English 1010 develop skills that will serve them for their rest of their
academic and professional lives. What’s more, no matter how well a student writes, he or she can
and should always cultivate these skills yet further. To do this, students must come to class,
participate in class activities, and sustain positive, productive membership in the classroom
community of student-writers. Thus, attendance, as well as punctual arrival and participation are
absolutely essential; moreover, cell phones must be silenced, and text-messaging and emailing are
strictly forbidden, for these disruptions, as with tardiness, can be counted as absences.
When a student absence results from serious illness, injury or a critical personal problem, that
student must notify the instructor and arrange to complete any missed work in a timely fashion.
Students are allowed, over the course of the semester, to miss the equivalent of one week of class
without penalty. Thereafter, students will lose one-third of their final grade for every unexcused
absence from class. Once a student has accumulated the equivalent of three weeks of unexcused
absences, he or she has automatically failed the class.
In order to enforce the attendance policy, the instructor will document the dates of every student’s
unexcused absences and file an “Absence Report Form” for any of their students who accumulate
four unexcused absences. These forms are sent to the student and the student’s dean (the instructor
retains the third copy). If the student’s attendance problem results in his or her failing the course,
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the instructor should file a second “Absence Report Form” recommending that the student be
withdrawn from the course with an F.
Along with full bsence, tardiness is a serious issue in a seminar-style course. It disrupts the class, and
is rude to me and to your fellow students. I ask that you arrive on time as a courtesy to all involved,
but also enforce punctuality with a formal policy. You will be marked absent if you are more than 5
minutes late to a class meeting. These kinds of absence are included in the count described above,
and can very quickly drag your grade down.
Assignment Protocol and Late Policy: Unless otherwise noted on the class schedule, all assignments are
due electronically on Blackboard prior to the first course meeting of that week (so, for example, an
assignment for a Tu/Th class must be uploaded to Blackboard prior to the Tuesday class meeting).
Late papers will be docked one letter grade per calendar day (not class meeting); late short
assignments will not be accepted without medical documentation.
Academic Dishonesty: This link will take you to the Newcomb-Tulane Code of Academic Conduct:
http://college.tulane.edu/code.htm. All students must take responsibility for studying this code and
adhering to it. We will devote some time in class to it. Our purpose, in these discussions, will be not
only to teach you how to avoid plagiarism and how to cite sources, but to initiate you into the
contemporary discussion of intellectual property and the nuanced dynamics between individuality,
authorship, and what’s sometimes called intertextuality, so that you can make informed and
thoughtful choices about your writing for the rest of your university career and later in life.
The Grade of “Incomplete”: If a student has a legitimate excuse for being unable to complete all of the
work for a course, the instructor can give that student an “I” (Incomplete) on the final grade sheet.
If the student does not complete the work and the instructor does not change the grade, however,
that grade will revert to an F. The deadline for addressing incompletes varies each semester but is
usually about one month after the final exam period. Before a student is given an “I,” the instructor
will confirm with the student – in writing – exactly what the student needs to finish and retain a
dated copy of this correspondence in the event that the student misses the deadline and then
expresses confusion about the new grade of “F.”
Students with Special Needs: Students who need special help with the course, such as note-taking, free
tutoring, additional time and/or a distraction-reduced environment for tests and final exams, may
contact the Goldman Office of Disability Services (ODS), located in the Center for Educational
Resources & Counseling (ERC). It is the responsibility of the student to register a disability with
ODS, to make a specific request for accommodations, and to submit all required documentation.
On a case-by-case basis, ODS staff determines disability status, accommodation needs supported by
the documentation, and accommodations reasonable for the University to provide. University
faculty and staff, in collaboration with ODS, are then responsible for providing the approved
accommodations. ODS is located in the ERC on the 1st floor of the Science and Engineering Lab
Complex, Building (#14). Please visit the ODS website for more detailed information, including
registration forms and disability documentation guidelines:
http://tulane.edu/studentaffairs/erc/services/disabilityserviceshome.cfm.
Grade Breakdown

Short Weekly Writing Assignments: 20% (5 x 4% each)
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



Paper 1: Analysis 20%
Paper 2: Argument 20%
Paper 3: Research 20%
Paper 4: Major Revision 20%
Grading Standards and Expectations
The course writing assignments fall into two broad categories: short, low-stakes assignments that are
designed to give you practice performing different “moves” involved in academic writing, and
longer papers that ask you to synthesize the moves (and often the actual substance of the shorter
assignments) into more complex yet coherent wholes. The short writing assignments are either
acceptable or not, and thus receive either full or no credit. The longer papers will receive letter
grades according to the following grading standards:
The A Paper ... is characterized by the freshness, ambition, maturity, coherence, and
complexity of its content. Its claims are stated clearly and effectively, supported well, with
relevant nuances interpreted and delineated in ways that go beyond the obvious. It manifests
a distinctive voice that explicitly engages a meaningful rhetorical context and, in turn, an
actual audience. It situates itself thoroughly among assigned readings, perhaps even key,
related texts in public discourse. It effectively balances the specific and the general, the
compelling detail and the larger point, personal experiences and direct observations of the
outer world. It grows out of large-scale revisions (both in terms of content and structure). It
not only fulfills the assignment, but inventively uses the assignment as an occasion to excel.
Its only errors, if any, are purely typographical and quite rare. Finally, it manifests a certain
stylistic flair – the bon mot, the well-turned phrase, the significant metaphor – that helps to
make it, for the reader, memorable.
The B Paper ... is characterized by content that is a relatively familiar, less daring, less
integrated or a little simpler than one might hope. Its claims could use more support or more
exploration, or could perhaps be stated more directly. Its voice could be more distinct and it
could situate itself more engagingly in the rhetorical context and go farther to reach its
audience. It could do more with the assigned readings, create a better balance between
specific and general, detail and idea, personal anecdote and larger point. It fulfills the
assignment, but in a way slightly perfunctory. It makes very few errors and shows no
systematic misunderstanding of the fundamentals of grammar, but its overall structure might
appear somewhat uneven. Finally, it could benefit from more large-scale revision and from
more careful attention to its style at the sentence-by-sentence level.
The C Paper ... is characterized by overmuch dependence on the self-evident, is dotted with
cliché, and is inadequately informative. Its essential point is uninteresting or only hazily set
forth or developed aimlessly. It has no particular voice, nor any significant sense of context
or audience, nor any real engagement with other texts. In terms of the dynamics between
detail and idea, it seems to lose the forest-for-the-trees or vice versa. It fulfills the assignment
but does so in a way wholly perfunctory. It has grammatical errors that significantly disrupt
the reading experience. It has not been sufficiently revised.
The D Paper ... is characterized by minimal thought and effort, which shows through the
absence of a meaningful, central idea or the lack of any controlled development of that idea.
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It fails to fulfill some key aspect of the assignment. It makes no meaningful use of other
texts nor ever situates itself in any sort of context. It needlessly offends its audience. Its
sentences and paragraphs are both built around rigidly repeated formula and soon become
predictable. It is riddled with error. It has apparently never been revised.
The F Paper ... is characterized by plagiarism or lateness or a total misunderstanding of the
assignment or is simply incomprehensible owing to a plethora of error or desperately poor
organization. It has not only not been revised – it really hasn’t been begun.
For a more detalied breakdown of how these grades are computed, please see the sample generalized
rubric at the end of this syllabus.
Course Texts
Readings are available in PDF on Blackboard.
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Class Schedule
Date
Day
Read
In-class
Turn in
Intro / SA1
SA1:
Writing
about Story
15-Jan
Tues
17-Jan
Thurs
Strabo, "The Egyptian Cinderella" (1), Grimms,
"Cinderella" (5); Miller, "A Tone Licked Clean" (6)
Discuss "Cinderella"
/ Summary
22-Jan
Tues
Bettelheim, "The Struggle for Meaning" (17), Rowe,
"Feminism and Fairy Tales" (21)
Discuss Bettelheim
& Rowe
24-Jan
Thurs
Yeats, "The Stolen Child" (1)
29-Jan
Tues
P1 Tales (Perrault, "Donkey Skin" [7]; Straparola, "The
Pig Prince" [6])
Close Reading
Exercise
Discuss P1: Analysis
Paper
31-Jan
Thurs
Grimms, "Hansel and Gretel" (6); Bettelheim, "Hansel
and Gretel" (8)
5-Feb
Tues
7-Feb
Thurs
12-Feb
Tues
MARDI GRAS
NO CLASS
14-Feb
Thurs
Zipes, "Breaking the Disney Spell" (22)
19-Feb
Tues
Craven, "Beauty and the Belles" (18)
Begin Argument
Unit / Logos,
Ethos, Pathos
Discuss Readings
21-Feb
Thurs
Play through ir/rational Redux at
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/598731
26-Feb
Tues
28-Feb
Thurs
5-Mar
Tues
Fallacies
7-Mar
Thurs
12-Mar
Tues
14-Mar
Thurs
Style: Flow and
Emphasis
Screening (Pan's
Labyrinth--time and
location TBA)
Research Question
19-Mar
Tues
Analysis and Critical
Lens: Ways of
Appraoching
Analysis
Style: Clarity and
Conciseness
Class Cancelled for
Individual Meetings
View Pan's Labyrinth
SA3: Close
Reading of
a Paragraph
from P1
tale
P1 Draft
SA4: Short
Analysis of
Reading
Toulmin Model
Main Claims
Richardson, "High Heels: Are They Worth It?" (10)
SA2:
Summary of
Bettelheim
or Rowe
P1
Argument Structure
/ Revisit Toulmin
CLUE Library
Session
P2 Draft
7
Date
Day
Read
In Class
Turn In
MLA: Citation
details / Recursive
research balance
sheet
SA5:
Research
Question
and 3
Secondary
Sources
21-Mar
Thurs
26-Mar
Tues
SPRING BREAK
NO CLASS
28-Mar
Thurs
SPRING BREAK
NO CLASS
2-Apr
Tues
4-Apr
Thurs
9-Apr
Tues
11-Apr
Thurs
16-Apr
Tues
18-Apr
Thurs
23-Apr
Tues
25-Apr
Thurs
30-Apr
Tues
From Research to
Argument
Class Cancelled for
Individual Meetings
Style: Balance
Peers' Drafts
Peers' Drafts
P4 due on designated final date/time
Peer Review P3
Drafts
Discuss
Revision/P4
Workshop
Proposals
Style: Figurative
Language and Voice
P2
Draft of P3
Proposal
for P4
Class Cancelled for
Individual Meetings
P4 Draft
Peer
Review/Wrapping
Up
P3
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Sample Generalized Grading Rubric
Each paper will have it’s own rubric and points will be determined accordingly. Here is an example
of what a typical rubric might look like:
Points
20
10
Category
Assignment
20
Main Claim
10
10
10
10
10
20
20
10
10
Argument
5
5
Significant
Comprehensive
Complex
5
Compelling
Within paragraphs
10
Paragraph to paragraph
2
Clarity and conciseness
2
Flow
2
2
Emphasis
Balance
2
Figurative language and
voice
Style
Formatting
2
4
Grammar
10
100
Contestable
Interpretive
Specific
Based in fact
Coherent
Organization
10
Total
Description
Assignment-specific grade is sum of breakdown
Assignment-specific
objectives
5
4
10
Breakdown
Document
Citations
Work Cited
All correct
Main claim grade is the lowest of breakdown grades
could reasonably be argued against
goes beyond recognized facts to present original insight
defines key terms and criteria in sufficient detail
interpretations arise from factual basis from which
evidence is drawn
relevance of claim to reader is either obvious or
explained
Argument grade is sum of breakdown
provides sufficient evidence and analysis of that evidence
goes beyond commonplaces and entertains objections
and complications
maintains focus on main claim, and explains how subclaims relate to the whole
demands interest and effectively links evidence and
reasoning
Organization grade is sum of breakdown
individual paragraphs develop logically to present
coherent points
movement among topics develops logically and clearly
Style grade is sum of breakdown, and is weighted toward
current style objectives
says what needs to be said economically, avoiding empty
verbiage
sentences and paragraphs connect ideas by moving from
familiar to new material
sentences effecitvely direct attention to important points
sentences direct readers' attention to important
comparisons or contrasts
sentences engage readers’ imagination
Formatting grade is sum of breakdown
margins, headers, footers, etc. are appropriate for the
style used
in-text citations and work cited are both clear and
accurate
list of references is properly formatted and complete
Grammar grade is 10 for full correctness, and reductions
for specific issues will be noted in breakdown