English 430, Advanced Writing Workshop
Charles Schuster, Professor of English
Monday/Wednesday 12:30-1:45 in Curtin 405
Welcome to English 430,002: “Advanced Writing Workshop.” I am glad you have
signed up for this course and look forward to working with you. The purpose of this course is to
help you improve as a writer through intensive writing, workshopping, and revision. We will
meet regularly, discuss how writers create readable essays, write a series of creative nonfictional
essays ourselves, and then review our work in collaborative in regular class discussions. First,
let’s try to figure out what “Advanced Writing Workshop” is. According to the UWM catalog, it
is: “A tutorial course in advanced exposition. Individual assignments and conferences.
Enrollment limited to 12 students.|Prereq: jr st; satisfaction of GER English Composition
competency req.”
OK, that’s great, but what exactly is “advanced exposition”? To write expositionally is to
compose work that explains, explores, describes, and informs. That’s a broad definition, one that
encompasses a genre many of us know as creative nonfiction. In this course you will be able to
develop writing that is meaningful to you as long as it is expositional, essayistic and nonfictional:
fiction, poetry, and drama are unacceptable. Those genres belong elsewhere.
During the semester, I will give specific writing assignments, but you will have a lot of
freedom about what to write. I hope you will pursue subjects about which you are passionate
and that are audience based. Since I am a rhetorician, I will emphasize the importance of finding
a purpose, developing a voice, reaching out to an audience, creating language and structures of
writing that satisfy the writer-reader relationship.
We will also do some reading. I am requiring only two textbooks for this course:
*The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition ISBN-10: 020530902X ISBN-13: 978-0205309023 and
*Stepping on My Brother’s Head, ISBN-10: 086709592X ISBN-13: 978-0867095920
One book focuses on the forms and structures of writing; the other showcases selected
college writing teachers who have written creative nonfiction that I hope you will enjoy but more
importantly will model and inspire and the kind of writing I hope you achieve. We will also
occasionally read other published writing in this course, but the primary reading and analyzing
we will do will be of your own writing in an effort to help you engage in that most essential
requirement for all good writing: revision. In a real sense, this entire course is designed around
revision and everything we do this semester has as its goal to help you become a better reviser of
your own work.
I want also to encourage you to come see me, at least once during the semester but
preferably more often. In fact, you should get in the habit of visiting all your instructors. Many
faculty keep very limited hours and complain that students seldom if ever come to visit. One
way to excel at UWM is to visit your instructors, talk to them about the course, and about your
performance.
Here is some other essential information:
Instructor:
Office:
Email:
Office Phone:
Office Hours:
Class Meetings:
Class Location:
Professor Charles Schuster
Curtin 578
cis@uwm.edu
229-7174
Tuesday and Wednesday, 2:00-4:00 (but, to be safe, please make an
appointment)
Monday/Wednesday 12:30-1:45
Curtin 405