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September 21, 2003
Race
Race
Adam Banks
WRT 205—Spring 2004
Writing Race and Culture in Contemporary America
Forget all the rules and formulas you heard about writing. Good writing is passionate, thoughtful, ethical; clear about its purpose, willing to wrestle with all the complexities of context and the conventions you need to respond to. It is sensitive to audience, and aware of all the tools, tactics, and strategies you have at your disposal to achieve that particular purpose for that particular audience at that particular time. Analytical and expressive, selfish and selfless, arrogant and humble. It can come easily at times and take place at the point of utter struggle. You have to think deeply and feel deeply; let this course push you in both of those directions.
Course Overview:
While we will use race and culture as subject, this course is a writing course that will focus on analysis and argument. You will write frequently and in a wide range of situations-some formal, some informal. All of these opportunities will push both your critical thinking and rhetorical sensitivity, all while examining the ways race and culture still matter in contemporary America.
Course Texts:
Boyd, Herb. Race and Resistance: African Americans in the 21st Century. Cambridge: South End Press, 2003.
Morgan, Joan. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
McGruder, Aaron. A Right to Be Hostile. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003.
Curry, George. The Best of Emerge Magazine. New York: Ballantine, 2003.
Assignment #4 The Intellectual Mixtape:
Overview: Your job in this assignment is to become a kind of DJ, or DG-digital griot-and put together a mix CD (or for the technologically challenged and oldheads like myself, a mixtape) that works as a soundtrack for the ideas we've worked with in the course so far. Just like a good soundtrack to a movie would match the content, and at times, the style of its film, your mix CD should include songs that work with, speak to, challenge, or summarize the ideas and texts we've used so far. Like a sountrack, or any other CD, yours will also come with liner notes that introduce the music and explain the connections between the songs you choose and the texts and ideas we've read and discussed this semester.
Format: Your CD should have at least 10 songs on it (10-12 would be ideal, but in some cases more might be appropriate), should be labeled, and must have a title. You may make this CD a personal response to the readings as well, so you are free to choose any kind of song you want; genres, artists, traditions are up to you. Your "liner notes" should be around three pages (somewhere around 750 words). These notes may take a more personal approach, focusing on your responses to the texts and your growth, or they may be more analytical. That choice is up to you.
Evaluation: I will not grade the songs you select for this CD. What I will grade is the degree to which the CD as a whole reflects thoughtfulness and engagement with the texts we've read and the discussions we've had in class. Given the range of things we've read, I will look for a range in the songs you select. I will also look for the compilation to be coherent in some way-in other words, I will look to see how the collection of songs works as a whole. Are the songs connected? Is there some idea or set of ideas that brings them together? I will also look for creativity and thoughtfulness, both in the CD and the introduction you write. I also expect your liner notes to reflect the ideas about writing that we've introduced in the course.
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