[Milton-L] Off topic of Milton but relevant to the larger discipline of English

[Jameela Lares]

Quoting Margaret Thickstun <mthickst at hamilton.edu>:

> There are frequently timely and well-written pieces in the New Yorker.
>
> Stay away from "readers": you want to communicate that this is adult and
> serious, not remedial and more high school.

Maggie struck a chord, as did Tom, so this reply will be a bit long.

I teach Honors Freshman Composition 1 or 2 most semesters (by choice).  Although
our course is divided into basics the first semester and a research paper the
second, and although it is also aimed to those scoring rather well on the ACT,
some of what works for me might work for a more general population.

I use Crowley and Hawhee's _Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students_ the
first semester, and Booth, Colomb & Williams's _The Craft of Research_ the
second.  I also require them to purchase a writing handbook, the kind with
dividers to skip to rules for commas, etc.  Although I always find it best to
have shared texts on which to model interpretation and focus writing
assignments, I use _The New Yorker_ as the "reader" so that rather than having
texts taken from their original context and bound in a typographically
homogenized anthology, the students can see up-to-date essays on a variety of
topics in their original form.  Mind you, I'm not suggesting that _The New
Yorker_ lacks a house style that imposes a certain amount of homogeneity to the
magazine, though a consistent house style is actually handy for teaching
disciplinary formats, if only by contrast.  I also have to do some explaining
about the difference between journalism and academic argument.  But the
students seem enthusiastic about the magazine.  (After all, how many textbooks
have such great cartoons?)  The best news is that I only need require the
students to subscribe to about ten weeks of the magazine, which at the
student/instructor rate of 61 cents an issue is a wonderfully cheap reader for
$6.10 or so.  The person in charge of that arrangement will even start the
student subscriptions immediately and invoice them individually.  There's a bit
of lag time before the issues start arriving, but I have them access the
magazine on line in the meantime.  Predictably, some students keep subscribing
to the magazine, which is probably what the business office is counting on.

Before I taught _The New Yorker_, I had good luck with Lee Jacobus's _World of
Ideas_, a collection of famous essays from a number of different disciplines.
The students felt as though they were getting "real stuff" and not just a
textbook.

I always urge my students to obtain, carry around, read, and even keep under
their pillow Joseph M. Williams's marvelous _Style:  Ten Lessons in Clarity and
Grace_.  I've assigned it once or twice, but find that I teach its principles in
class in any case, so for the last several years I've just been recommending it.
   If it matters, there are oodles of used copies out there; the sticker price
for a new one is rather high, though I'm happy that the author is surely
benefitting from the royalities.

I also agree with Tom's comment that "We should all be teaching writing, and
teaching students to read each other's writing critically and intelligently in
every course."  Absolutely.  All of our 400-level (=senior) courses are
explicitly "writing intensive," defined as requiring at least 5000 words of
revised prose per semester, and many of us load on the writing in any case. 
>From my work on departmental activity reviews, I would say that most of us
teach writing all the time that we also teach literature.

Cheers,

Jameela
-- 
Jameela Lares, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of English
The University of Southern Mississippi
118 College Drive, #5037
Hattiesburg, MS  39406-0001
601 266-6214 ofc
601 266-5757 fax