Syllabus Fr150
Fall 2006
Brian Thompson
What is a First Year Seminar?
This course is a First Year Seminar (FYS). First Year Seminars welcome new students (with
fewer than 30 credits) to UMass Boston with small-sized courses designed to prepare them for a
successful college experience. Students may choose from a variety of FYS courses, reflecting a
wide range of topics and disciplines. A major goal of First Year Seminars is to practice the
following habits of mind essential to university-level educational success: Careful reading; Clear
writing; Critical thinking; Information literacy and technology; Working in teams; Oral
presentation; Academic self-assessment.
All First Year Seminars meet 4 hours per week and carry 4 credits. A mentor, a library buddy
and a staff academic advisor are assigned to each seminar. Among other things, the mentor can
help you with computer accounts, e-mail, and with library research. The advisor will visit the
class once or twice during the semester, and can be contacted for help with choosing courses and
a major, with financial aid, and any problems with university life in general. The library buddy
will help with library and research resources.
If you entered UMB with 30 or more transferable credits, you should NOT be enrolled in this
course. If you do enroll, you will be retroactively withdrawn during the semester and will not
receive credit for it. In addition, if you have taken another G 100-level course in any department
at UMB, you cannot receive credit for this one.
Student Referral Program. If it appears to the teacher that you might not pass this First Year
Seminar, and I cannot figure out how to support your success in the course, I might inform Linda
HAMILTON, Director of the Student Referral Program (Campus Advising Center; 287-5500).
She or her staff would attempt to help you address the difficulties that are interfering with your
success in the class. If you do not want me to let the Student Referral Program know that you are
having difficulty, please let me know.
Assessment of these Courses. In addition to course evaluation forms that are routinely
administered at the end of each course at UMassBoston, an assessment committee will look at
randomly chosen student writing from First Year Seminars. Please save all your writing in this
course so that if you are randomly chosen you will have your work available. The purpose of this
is to improve the program and to improve particular courses, as necessary. You may remove
your name from your papers if you choose to submit them anonymously.
What is this course about?
This course will explore various facets of the dynamic between Self and Other as presented by
some major French writers of the 20th century. These writers represent a variety of backgrounds
and perspectives, ranging from extreme poverty to inherited wealth, from working-class North
Africa to upper-class Paris, from radical believer to radical agnostic to radical atheist. In each
case, they ask good questions: Who am I? Do I even know? What makes me who I am? Can I
change who I am? Where do I come from? Where am I going? How am I going to get there? Do
I have a real choice? Or am I programmed by heredity, society, or others? What is my
relationship with other selves? Do I have any obligations or responsibilities to them? Why? Am I
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free to do as I choose? Are there any limits to my freedom? Set by whom? Can I be myself, can I
become myself, without others? Does life have a meaning? Does my life have a meaning? What
makes a life, my life, meaningful? Or is it all just absurd, given the fact of death?
The novels and plays which form the major content of the course ask such questions in concrete
terms, through characters and situations with which each of us can relate at least vicariously,
which can lead each of us into a dialogue with author, character, classmate and, most
importantly, our own experience, with our own sense of who we are. It is an opportunity to think
about some major questions in a new and critical light, and to become more aware of our own
identity within a complex human community of other selves.
The course is also an occasion to become aware of some fine writers—representative of a
different culture, which can throw a contrastive and illuminating light onto our own—, to learn
how to read novels and plays with greater appreciation for the writer’s craft, to ferret out
meaning and significance from between the lines of the “story” being told, and thus deepen our
understanding of what makes such works worth reading and rereading.
How will I find out about campus resources and get help?
Each of the First Year Seminars will have an academic advisor and a peer mentor who will
provide assistance in orienting you to the campus. There will be specific in-class sessions
designed to introduce you to the support they can provide as well as one-on-one meetings with
each of them during the semester. In addition, you can make appointments with them for
individual help. There are also tutors available for specific help with reading and writing
assignments.
Marybeth MANEEN (marybeth.maneen@umb.edu) is the academic advisor for this course. She
can help you plan your program of study, guide you to specific campus resources, provide timemanagement guidance, and meet with you for academic counseling if you feel you need it. She
will also help you understand university requirements and register for future courses. She will
visit the class early in the semester and again before pre-registration the Spring 2003 courses and
is available also for individual consultations.
Frances SCHLESINGER (frances.schlesinger@umb.edu , x5943) is our library buddy. She
will do an early session to introduce the research resources available in and through the library as
well as on the Internet, and is available for help if you run into problems in finding or using
materials later in the course.
Peter KOVACH (lazyturtle_3@hotmail.com ) is our peer mentor, a fellow student who has
already been through a year at the university (and an earlier version of this course). His role is to
act as a guide, a role model, a technology assistant, a library resource person and a friend. He is
someone you can ask or talk to about any aspect of your work (especially things about which, for
whatever reason, you’d rather not ask the instructor). He will participate in class frequently, help
with group projects, help you to set up an email account if you don’t have one, provide library
and information technology assistance, share strategies for managing the demands of student life,
introduce you to student services, etc. He is NOT a reading/writing tutor (someone who will
work individually with you on a paper or reading assignment).
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To get help on a specific reading or writing assignment (for example, if you are having trouble
organizing ideas for a paper), you should go to the Reading and Writing Center on the third floor
of McCormack, where a tutor will be assigned to you.
Phone & email: As soon as possible, I will provide all members of the class with a class list
including phone numbers and email addresses. This list is intended to facilitate cooperative
learning and group preparation of course work. (Any abuse of this list should be reported to me
immediately, and will be dealt with both by me and by appropriate university authorities.) If you
do not have an email account, it is important that you establish one immediately. Our peer
mentor will help you to do so. It is free through UMass, good for life, and will prove useful
throughout the course and otherwise. If you have internet access at home, I suggest you also set
up a web-based email account with Yahoo or Hotmail. It is free, and may be accessed from any
computer with a connection to the web. My own email address is brian.thompson@umb.edu but
I deal with it via Yahoo (umassparis98@yahoo.com ). My office phone is (617) 287-7569. On
campus, dial 7-7569.
Internet: THIS course web site includes pages where we can communicate with one another
about issues and questions raised in the course and share our thinking and writing. If you are not
up to speed on use of the Internet, make it an early goal to reach for. It will bear fruit throughout
your college career and beyond (plus, it’s a lot of fun!). My home page, which has lots of other
things, is http://www.faculty.umb.edu/brian_thompson/home.htm.
Course Objectives (skills):What are the goals of this course?
• Self- assessment: The first goal of the course is to become conscious of the strengths and
learning strategies you already have. At the beginning of the course you’ll explore how you read
and write through specific assignments which ask you to reflect upon your processes. You will
look at the specific capabilities which the university has identified as necessary for academic
success, as well as identifying your own learning goals. At various points during the semester,
you will evaluate your learning in relation to your goals and capabilities and at the end of the
semester you will look back at what you have accomplished by responding to a portfolio of your
work.
• Conscious and critical reading: As we proceed, you will add to your repertory of reading and
critical thinking strategies through directed pre-, during- and post-reading assignments. You will
try out new strategies and evaluate their helpfulness. In addition, we will explore a range of text
types that you may encounter at the university: narrative and autobiographical accounts, plays,
essays, critical studies; we will identify the organizational structures and styles of each of these
genres. By applying and reflecting on a range of reading strategies, you will develop awareness
of which strategies are most useful for which text types.
• Clear and effective writing: There will be a range of writing assignments including formal
journal entries, summaries, autobiographical essays, analytical essays, and a final research paper.
They will move from using one reading source to integrating multiple sources. We will explore
specific strategies for generating ideas, incorporating responses to texts, organizing and drafting
essays, revising, and editing papers. While many of the assignments will be ungraded, there will
be three graded papers.
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• Active listening and confident speaking: Through the course you will learn the oral skills of
doing active listening, interviews, oral reports, and project presentations. These skills will be
developed by moving from informal to more formal and from small to large group, starting with
informal one-on-one interviews, proceeding to small-group reports, more formal interviews, and
large-group presentations.
• Research and information-gathering: Students will become familiar with a variety of
information-gathering tools (through library and computer technology assignments), and will
assess both primary and secondary sources.
• Critical analysis: We will start the semester by posing the questions of self and other for
ourselves: our personal identity and what constitutes, modifies or threatens it, and our
relationship to other selves or to one or more communities. As we progress, we will explore
various facets of these issues, analyzing how these questions are worked out imaginatively and
critically in a range of texts by a variety of writers from differing backgrounds and holding very
different views.
• Teamwork: At various points during the semester students will work together to accomplish
specific tasks, offer peer evaluation of one another’s writing or speaking, and share resources.
• Technology: Students will be introduced to the computer lab, will set up email accounts, will
learn to do web-based research, and will become familiar with other technology resources on
campus such as data bases.
•Academic Self-Assessment: At the beginning of the semester, each student will complete a
self-assessment form addressing each of the capabilities listed above. Students will be asked to
evaluate their progress in each area at mid-semester and again at the end of the course. These
documents will become part of each student's course portfolio.
Requirements: What are the requirements for this course?
• Attendance: Because each person’s experience and perspective contributes to the knowledge
of the whole group, everyone’s participation is important. Note also that this is a 4-credit course.
Attendance at all four hours is required. Each student is allowed two absences during the
semester: please save these for emergencies, illness, baby-sitting or transportation crises. Further
absences will automatically lower the final grade. Students with more than four absences may be
required to withdraw from the course. You must also attend all library or computer lab sessions
as well as meetings with the class mentor or advisor.
• Homework: There will be LOTS of homework for this course. I will assign reading and/or
writing for virtually every class period. This means that is will be important to budget your time
carefully and allow for at least two hours or preparation for every hour of class time. Getting into
the habit of budgeting your time will serve you well as you proceed through the university;
leaving things to the last minute is a sure way of falling behind or doing inadequate work. You
must complete homework on time and do it in a thorough and thoughtful way.
• Class participation: Many professors across the university expect students to participate
actively in their classes. One of the goals of this course is to help you to develop the confidence
and skills to do this appropriately. Participation is a delicate balance: on the one hand, I do not
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want to force you to participate when you’re not comfortable doing so; on the other hand, I hope
you will become increasingly confident in speaking. Equally, it is important to know when to
STOP talking and to refrain from dominating discussions. Over-participating is no better than
under-participating! Learning to listen is an art that we will cultivate. Thus, as the semester
progresses, I will evaluate you on the basis of how actively you pay attention, how often you
take risks in speaking (even when you’re not fully confident), whether you make an effort to
contribute to others’ understanding by sharing perspectives, experiences and opinions, and
whether you demonstrate respect for other students through active listening and monitoring your
own contributions. I will also evaluate your oral presentations in class.
• Reading assignments: Much of the course will focus on discussions of the readings—not only
what we initially understand them to say, but also what they mean at a deeper level, and how
they relate to our own life experiences and vision of the world. Thus, it is critical that you come
to class prepared to discuss them (including what was difficult or what you did not understand —
your questions and discomforts). I will give you specific suggestions about HOW to read each
text assigned; in this way you will develop a repertory of strategies for approaching reading. You
will also assess the effectiveness of these reading strategies in your journal—and of course your
responses to the texts (see below).
• Journals: You will be asked to do journal responses for each of the assigned readings. The
journal assignments will focus on both content and process. Content assignments will ask you to
respond in specific ways to the ideas in the readings, often by relating them to your own ideas
and experiences. Process assignments will ask you to describe and assess HOW you did an
assignment. In addition, I will ask you to include various other types of writing in your journal
(self-assessments, interview reports, etc.). Since assignments build on one another and in-class
work depends on them, you must complete them on a daily basis; I will collect them regularly.
IMPORTANT: Format for journals: Every entry must have your name and the date in the upper
right corner. You should use full-size 8 1/2” x 11” notebook or typing paper. I will NOT accept
paper torn out of a spiral notebook; it is not presentable for university-level work. Entries may be
neatly hand-written by pen or, preferably, written on the computer. Learning to use a word
processor will prove to be a major advantage for your entire university career and beyond.
Journal entries focus on your ideas and responses; form, here, including grammar and spelling, is
less important than in formal papers. Please keep all journal entries and ALL written work for
the course in a three-ring binder or other folder. They will constitute a major part of your
portfolio for your final grade.
• Papers: There will be two short graded papers (2-3 pages) and one longer final paper (5-6
pages). The final paper may build on parts of earlier papers. Each of the papers will be revised
for both form and substance. Final drafts should be carefully edited for grammar, spelling,
format, etc. All drafts of these papers should be produced on a computer, using a 12 point font
like Times or Helvetica and 1” margins. Revised papers should be accompanied by the original
draft, and both should be kept as important elements of the final portfolio. Grades will be based
both on the quality of the final versions and on the care with which first drafts have been revised
and improved.
• Portfolio: An important goal of the course is to help you identify your strengths, learning
strategies and progress, as well as areas where continued effort is needed. You should therefore
keep ALL of your work, dated and in chronological order, in a binder or folder (your ‘portfolio’)
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which you and I will review part way through the semester and again at the end of the course. Do
not throw away any of your work, since your collected work will be the basis for your selfassessment, at mid-semester and again at the end of the course. The grade for the portfolio will
be based on its completeness, the effort you put into your work along the way, your progress
during the semester, as well as the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of your self-assessment.
What texts are required? Where can I get them? The following texts are required reading.
You may purchase The Immoralist at the UMB bookstore (or elsewhere). The other texts can be
purchased at a discount via Internet, for example at Bigwords.com. They may also be found in
decent bookstores like Harvard Bookstore or Wordsworth’s, or in libraries.
André GIDE, The Immoralist (Vintage paperback)
Jean-Paul SARTRE, "No Exit" and "The Flies" (in No Exit and Three Other Plays, Vintage)
Albert CAMUS, The Fall (Vintage paperback)
Marguerite DURAS, The Ravishing of Lol Stein (Vintage paperback)
Toby FULWILER: Pocket Reference for Writers (Prentice Hall) or a similar handbook
It is important that you obtain the same editions of the books we are reading to facilitate class
discussion and close reading. The Gide text is in the Campus Bookstore. We will discuss group
purchase of the remaining books early in the course.
Assessment: How will grades be determined? Final grades will be based on:
• Attendance (more than 2 absences lowers the grade)
• Class participation and oral presentations
• Preparation of reading assignments
• Journals and other day-to-day homework
• Papers
• Final portfolio and self-assessments
Academic Support:
Information about tutoring and other services available to students and faculty through the
Office of Academic Support Programs can be found at the Internet address
http://www.academicsupport.umb.edu/ . You can contact the Office of Academic Support
Programs at 617-287-6550
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