Taliesin
Writing Workshop I
Office
Hours
Thursday 10-12 pm (or by appointment)
Introduction
In 1757, Edmund Burke cast the sublime as “an
experience bordering on terror…of what [is] so enormous as to crush human
life.” While for Burke the sublime spoke
to a fundamental human experience in regards to man’s relationship with the
natural world, theorists, writers, and architects continue to debate the aesthetic
of the sublime, attempting to define what is, oftentimes by its very nature,
beyond definition. From Kant to Eisenman,
from Romanticism to feminism, this course will trace the term “sublime” within
a variety of critical mediums, exploring what this concept might offer
contemporary architecture in the face of staggering technological systems and
global capital networks. In addition to
reading, students will compose regular responses on a course blog and develop
and workshop critical essays that position themselves in relationship to the
authors we discuss in the course. All of
this work will culminate for students into a ten page critical essay outlining
their theory of the sublime and how they imagine that theory informing their
work as architects.
Goals
and Outcomes
By the end of the session,
students should be able to demonstrate the following:
Critical Ground
·
Identify major thinkers informing the concept
of the sublime and the discipline of architecture and urban studies.
·
Develop an
ability to close-read and analyze critical theory and literary texts.
·
Develop an
ability to engage effectively in the production of architectural critical
theory including class discussions (both face-to-face and electronic),
presentations, recursive writing, peer-review, and drafting.
·
Articulate in
writing how your architectural work is based on principles founded in:
historical examples; Frank Lloyd Wright’s work; philosophical and theoretical
propositions and ethical responsibilities.
Social and Cultural Context
·
Show how
architecture responds to and takes into account the psychology of the
individual in environments and social contexts, how these responses are
determined by different contexts of cultural values and practices, and how the
designer’s own psychological and cultural context plays a role in architectural
practice.
Personal Competence
·
Collaborate
effectively with peers in discussions, presentations, and writing workshops
·
Demonstrate
an ability to self-assess one’s writing and the writing of others.
·
Demonstrate
leadership skills in cooperative achievement of professional, community and
personal goals while developing and exercising imagination, problem-solving,
and expression that contributes to personal growth and capacity to design, live
and enjoy a creative life.
·
Show how
reflection on personal learning and achievement strengthens the individual’s
abilities in the context of other individuals striving for comparable
goals.
Course
Texts
Published
Texts:
Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.
Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.
In addition to the above texts, students will be
given a course pack of readings.
Please note that published texts you
will read are meant to be challenging: they do not present, or invite, simple
arguments to be either agreed with or dismissed as wrong. The difficulties you encounter in reading and
responding to the published texts will not disappear; in fact, you may well
find by the end of the term that reading and writing are more complicated for
you than they seemed at the beginning.
That is in part because the texts you will be reading are challenging to
all readers, novice or experienced. However, you should also discover
strategies for successfully tackling the difficulties the texts present, grow
more confident in your ability to handle them, and experience the learning that
comes from doing so.
Student Texts:
The writing
that you and your colleagues compose will also be fundamental texts of this
course. I foreground student writing to
provide yet another way to discuss how writers use writing to work through
their ideas and to make sense of their reading and experience. Therefore, you will spend as much time, and
as much care, reading and responding to your colleagues’ writing as you will to
the published essays and other course texts.
Technological Requirements
Students will need reliable access to a word
processor with internet capabilities. You
will also need access to a printer to print out your work and student
drafts. Much of the course work will occur
on our course blog at http://halversontaliesin.blogspot.com.
Course Evaluation
While student success in the
course is ultimately based on a pass/fail assessment, that determination will
be factored by a variety of components.
The course will be broken
down in the following way:
·
In-class participation
·
Blog Posts
·
In-class Discussion Questions (Group Collaboration)
·
In-class Architecture and Design Presentation
(Group Collaboration)
·
One Short Critical Essays (Midterm)
·
Poster Presentation with an Abstract
·
Final Critical Essay (10 pages)
In-Class
Participation
Class discussions are intended to
enact, in their own way, the processes of critical inquiry that you’ll also be
attempting to carry out in your writing and reading. This means that I cannot guarantee the
quality or outcome of discussions: those will depend on what each of you can
contribute, how well you can make the discussions “work” as collective attempts
to interpret and learn about particular writings and readings and about writing
and reading in general. Your
responsibility—both to yourself and to others in the class—will be to
participate as fully as you can in those attempts. During class meetings, you should therefore
always be prepared to speak meaningfully to the literature under discussion.
I will evaluate your performance in
the course partly according to how active a role you play, both in the general
class discussions and in any small group work.
Active participation involves not only asking questions and stating your
opinions but also explaining how and why you’ve arrived at these and exploring
how you want to revise them in light of what others have said. Thus, to participate actively, you’ll need to
listen carefully to what others have to say, to work individually and
collectively to make connections between different ideas that are expressed
(especially when they don’t initially seem to be connected), and to contribute
in ways that develop the line of thinking being generated by the class.
To help facilitate discussion,
students should bring their course texts and the assigned readings to class
every day.
Blog Posts
Over the course of the
session, students will compose THREE blog
posts on our course blog. You can choose
which three you would like to do over the course of the session, and I will
assess your three blog posts holistically at the end of the session.
On this blog, students
will see a post comprised of a few questions about a particular reading. Students should post their responses to the
reading by clicking on “Post a Comment.”
Make sure to write your name so you can receive credit!
Blogs are to be completed
and posted by 9:00 am before class. I
ask that you complete your blog post before
class to help prepare you for class discussion and to help inspire you to
try out new ideas and new perspectives.
You may respond to my questions, to a post by another student, or go off
on your own tangent if you feel so inspired.
I understand that your blog posts will be a little rough and that the
ideas may be somewhat unformulated. That
is perfectly all right for writing in this particular genre. I do, however, ask that you attend to a few
basic guidelines in order to receive full credit for your posts:
·
While blog
posts by their very nature are not always composed of fully-formed ideas, I do
expect you to expand upon, explain, and support your ideas to the best of your
ability with textual evidence and close reading. To that end, students must include at least ONE QUOTE from either the literary text we are reading, another
student’s post or comment in class, a comment or post from the instructor, a
piece of secondary literature such as excerpts from critical theory, or an excerpt
from sort of historical or cultural text.
Make sure to document your quotation(s) by supplying the page number. Not only does it ensure that you are citing
your sources, but it also helps us to reference the particular text you’re
analyzing.
·
While there
is no “official” page limit or word count, I do expect your posts to be around 250-500
words. If you are struggling to meet
this requirement, you should see me during office hours or email me for ideas
on how to expand upon your writing.
·
As stated
previously, I do understand that these blog posts are, by their very nature, a
little informal. However, I do expect you to do your best to explain your ideas
clearly and articulately with textual support and evidence. Use prose that will
add to the credibility of your position and make sure that you proofread your
work for careless spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.
In-Class Discussion Questions (Group Collaboration)
Twice during the semester, in groups of no less than
two and no more than four, students will collaboratively develop THREE critical
questions based on the critical or literary texts we are discussing that
day. A critical question, loosely
defined, should be an open question
that initiates discussion and inquiry.
Furthermore, these questions should be grounded within the texts by
quoting authors directly and should be able to be answered from a variety of
perspectives. These questions can also
engage the ideas of students posted on the blog.
In addition to providing these questions, students
will also be discussion leaders. To be
good discussion leaders is to listen carefully, ask follow-up questions, seek
clarification, push students to articulate their position and then challenge
those positions, require textual evidence for a student’s analysis, and bring
us to specific passages in the text that might illuminate or further complicate
that analysis. It is not to be an expert on the text, to
antagonize, or to remain silent. You
will be assessed as a group and individually on your questions and the way in
which you work to provide a critical and productive discussion for the
class.
In-Class Architecture and Design Presentation
At one point during the semester, in groups of three
to four, students will give a 10-15 minute presentation on a specific example
of architecture, design, or urban planning that relates to the text we are
reading that day. These presentations
are intended to provide context, expand the dimensions of our discussion, and
complicate our understandings of the texts we are reading. While
I will leave the scope and focus of the presentation up to the group of
students, successful presentations will address the following guidelines:
·
A brief but
comprehensive overview of the architecture, design, or urban plan
·
A description
of important people, ideas, philosophies, cultural signification, and
historical consequences surrounding the subject
·
A synthesis
and discussion of the architectural criticism surrounding the work (in other
words, what do critics say about this work?)
·
A visual aid
of some sort
·
A discussion
of how this piece of architecture, design, or urban plan relates to the text we
are discussing that day
·
At least two
discussion questions that draw relationships between the architecture and the
text(s) we are reading.
One Short Critical Essay (3-5 pages)
In the midterm, students
will compose, workshop, and revise one short critical essay. This critical essay is designed to help you
work through some of the complex readings we will be examining in the course
and to aid you in developing your own architectural theories and critiques. We will utilize class time to workshop these
essays, discuss their merits, critically assess their ideas, and provide
suggestions for feedback.
Poster Presentation
At the end of the
session, students will create and present a poster presentation for our student
writing symposium. This poster presentation
should reflect the ideas and arguments in your extended final paper, and will
serve as a way to receive feedback from your peers, professors, and community
members.
Final Critical Essay
At the end of the
session, students will turn in a final ten-page critical essay that engages
with the criticism, theories and ideas we explored during the class. Students can draw from and develop their
midterm essay or start a new essay for this final assignment. Either way, students will discuss, workshop,
and revise this essay in class. I will
provide you with a more in-depth assignment sheet toward the end of the
session.
Policies
Attendance
Because the class discussions
contribute directly to your ability to respond effectively to the assignments,
it is crucial that you attend all class meetings. You
are only allowed TWO absences in this course without penalty. Students who miss more than twice will
automatically fail the course. There are no “excused” absences in this course,
so save your absences for real emergencies.
Essay formatting
Unless otherwise indicated, essays
must be computer printed (or typed) double spaced, and stapled. Before turning in an essay, you should
proofread it to correct any mistakes you have made in spelling, punctuation,
and sentence structure. All essays should use Chicago style for style and
documentation.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism means presenting the
words or ideas of others without giving credit.
You should know the principles of plagiarism and the correct rules for
citing sources. If you do not, it is
your responsibility to seek assistance.
Students suspected of plagiarism could face disciplinary measures such
as failure of the course or expulsion from the university.
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