批判性思维和分析式写作课示例

Expos 20 到底是如何组织的呢？

我们来看13个 Expos 20 课程的教学大纲。我将它们分为文学、政治、生活、心理、社会五类。它们的标题如下：

观察上面列出的课程标题就可以看出，这些”写作课“讨论的内容，其实不是”写作“，而是一个个具体的不同领域的话题。这些话题虽然五花八门，但有两个共同的特点。首先，它们非常有想象力，让人觉得很有意思，会想去探索。其次，它们初看上去，都”没什么用“。也就是说，和”职业技能“没什么关系。这正是通识教育的特点。可是，虽然从职业的角度上看，这些课没什么用，但从通识教育的角度看，它们就太有用了，因为它们通过这些话题，创造了一个让学生经受通识教育的机会，让学生可以围绕自己感兴趣的主题，在老师苏格拉底式的引导下、和优秀同伴的交流激荡中，完成认识自己、认识世界、学会思考、交流、判断、辨别、复杂思想、清楚表达的通识教育第一步。所以它们虽然叫”写作课“，但其实叫”通识教育“课，似乎更合适。

那么它们到底是怎样实现的通识教育过程呢？我们来看看这13门课大纲中的介绍，就能得到一些感觉。下面是我从这些课的大纲中摘出来的，我觉得反映了他们的培养过程和方法的相关内容，最后有我的简短总结。

文学

The Essay

Harvard University Summer School

Instructor: Paul Thur

Summer 2012

课本：

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Course Description

What is an Essay? We will return to this question again and again in this course, as we read essays that explore the richness and variety of this form. Our focus, however, will be on the kinds of essays that people read and write in the university.

You will read a number of challenging and provocative texts, written by anthropologists and literary critics, philosophers and art historians. Then you will write analytical essays in which you both frame the conversations in those essays and add your voices to them. We will focus on larger questions such as how essays present a lens through which to see the world, and how essayists speak (if not deliberately, then metaphorically) to each other. We will also work on smaller issues of stylistics, as we focus on technique and the ways writers use language.

Our ultimate goal is for you to improve your ability to express complex, original ideas in readable prose. In attaining this goal, you’ll learn what every professional writer knows- that the secret to writing is REVISING- and you will learn it the way every writer does the hard way. You will write drafts, which we will discuss in 20-minute individual conferences, and revise those drafts, sometimes extensively, before submitting the final version for a grade. You will also belong to a small writing group, which will change for each essay. This group will not only give you invaluable written and verbal feedback on your drafts, but will also help you develop and complicate your ideas, steer you in useful new directions, and generally provide some company during the often lonely process of writing. In addition to learning how to revise your prose, one of the most useful lessons Of this class Will be for you to learn how to benefit from and contribute to a writing group.

You will read texts actively and closely, formulate your own interpretations of them. make persuasive arguments about them, revise substantially and effectively, and work with a community of writers. In the end, you will be more self-conscious about what you mean when you say, “I am writing an essay,” as well as more conscious of how others practice their craft.

Unit I: Tradition and the Reading Self

June 25: Introduction, diagnostic essay, close reading exercise.

June 27: Read Richard Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire.” PDF

Exercise 1.1: Carefully read Rodriguez’s essay, noting the places that confuse, annoy, delight, or inspire you. In one typed page, discuss the different definitions of “reading that Rodriguez presents in his essay. Be careful to cite the places that you refer to properly (see pp. 374-79 in The Everydav Writer).

Assignment 1: Many university writing assignments ask students to consider a text through the lens or frame of another text. This is what you will do in essay 1, in which you use Adrienne Rich’s concept of “tradition” as a lens through which to interpret Rodriguez’s essay. Rich writes, “we need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us” (19). In a 4-5 page essay, decide whether Rodriguez has or has not broken the “hold of tradition” over him. In other words, has Rodriguez become his own authority, or is he still merely a “dummy mouthing the opinions of others” (529)? Your thesis will make a statement about Rodriguez’s relationship to authority. Your evidence will consist of closely-read moments in Rodriguez’s essay that illustrate this relationship. This essay is due at the beginning of class.

Unit 2: Reading Culture: The Politics of Interpretation

July 11: Read Jane Tompkins’ Indians’: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History.”

Exercise 2.1: What exactly is the “problem of history” for Tompkins? What does she learn from the various historical accounts she analyzes in her essay? Does her analysis of these accounts lead her to a solution? Use textual examples to support your answer. One page, typed.

July 16: Read John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing.”

Exercise 2.2: Berger defines “mystification” as the “process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident’ (146). According to Berger, what does Slive “explain away” in his (Slive’s) interpretation of the Hals paintings? How does Berger’s interpretation of the paintings differ from Slive’s? And if “history always constitutes the relation between a present and its past’ (144), might we say that mystification is unavoidable? Your response should be one typed page.

Many university writing assignments ask you to summarize an idea and then test its validity. In essay two, (5-6 pages) you will briefly summarize John Berger’s theory of “mystification” and then assess its validity as you examine 2 or 3 authors in Jane Tompkins’ “Indians.” What exactly might cause the historians Tompkins cites to “explain away what might otherwise be evident” to us? And what does this explaining away suggest about the worldview of each historian? Your motive might identify a problem in Berger’s idea. Your thesis will make a claim about the historical accounts. And your evidence will consist of closely-read passages in Tompkins’s essay that support your argument.

Unit 3: Authors and Authorities: Writing as Resistance and Discovery

Julv 25: Read Susan Griffin’s “Our Secret.”

Exercise 3.1: What does Griffin teach us about “stories” in her essay? Is there a common “strand” or “thread” that runs throughout the stories she tells about her family, friends, and historical figures? In what ways does Griffin’s method of understanding historical events differ from conventional/traditional histories written about WWII? Does her essay suggest that we need to revise our understanding of “history”? One page, typed.

July 30: Read Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature.”

Exercise 3.2: Like Griffin, Percy also relies on stories in his essay. Yet what does Percy want his readers to discover in these stories? What do tourists and students seem to have in common? And why is Percy so preoccupied with “experts”? What do these experts have to do with the different types of “loss” he talks about? Your response should be one typed page.

Assignment 3: For many of the authors we have read -especially Griffin, Rich, and Rodriguez- going over familiar ground leads to certain discoveries about their own lives and the lives of others. Now it’s your turn to make some of your own discoveries as you go over some familiar textual ground. Choose a well-known fictional text (literarv or visual) you have studied, a text that has generated an ample amount of criticism. Find out what critics or “experts” have to say about this text. Then, with the help of two of these critics and two authors from Ways of Reading, explore this well-trodden text in a 7-8 page essay. What claims can you now make about this text? Think of this assignment as an act of “entering an old text from a new critical direction” (Rich 18). It’s your opportunity to resist the “educational package” of “experts” and write about the discoveries you make as you scrutinize some familiar territory.

The Underworld

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Preceptor: Dr. Adam Scheffler

Harvard College

Spring 2019

Course Description

Hell is popular. In fact, it’s been doing much better than heaven. It’s practically a literary consensus that Dante’s best book is his Inferno not Purgatorio or Paradiso, and that Milton, a Christian believer, got so carried away in describing Satan and hell that he ended up being “of the Devil’s party without knowing it” (Blake). And the world today may be more secular than in past generations, but hell is doing just fine. Harvard presents its own interesting case: Currier House’s annual “Heaven and Hell” party has situated “Hell” in a room that can hold about 500 people whereas “Heaven” can fit only about 50. (This past year heaven was eliminated entirely.) But what are the components of hell – what archetypes or depictions of hell and the underworld helped to cement their importance in culture? And why is hell so alive in secular culture? Why do those people who don’t believe that hell is real want to keep imagining it again and again (in Supernatural, in South Park, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.)?

In our first unit, we will examine famous underworld themes and archetypes as we look at short excerpts from Gilgamesh, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Jonathan Edwards, the story of Persephone, and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. In our second unit, we’ll consider how these themes and archetypes are taken up by recent secular texts such as a Stephen King short story, the film Pan’s Labyrinth, and a New Yorker article by Harvard Professor Danielle Allen about her cousin’s experience in the American prison system. We’ll also read selections from Rachel Falconer’s book Hell in Contemporary Literature and apply Falconer’s ideas to these three primary texts. Finally, in our third unit, you will select and research a contemporary depiction of hell, and make an argument about how that hell works as a metaphor for a real-world issue or fear (such as the sleaziness of Hollywood, or bickering families, or mental illness, or the vastness of outer space). Throughout, we will try to better understand the curious attraction of hell, and why its 4,000-year-old story shows no sign of ending.

Course Design and Requirements

The assignment schedule for this course, detailed in a separate handout, is comprised of a single-text analysis, a two-text lens essay, and a multiple source research essay. In addition to these three formal papers, you will have short writing assignments or “responses” due before each formal paper. You will also be completing writing exercises or group activities during some class periods.

In Unit 1, we will consider brief canonical descriptions of hell and the underworld. In so doing, we will encounter various powerful interpretations and imaginings of what a dark, non-heavenly version of the afterlife might be like. You will write a paper that undertakes a careful close reading of one of these canonical descriptions of hell and makes an original argument about it.

In Unit 2, we will begin to consider the ways hell and the underworld live on in the contemporary secular imagination. We will read Stephen King’s story “That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French,” Danielle Allen’s article “American Inferno,” and parts of Rachel Falconer’s book Hell in Contemporary Literature; we will also watch the film Pan’s Labyrinth. You will write a lens essay in which you apply one of Falconer’s ideas to the story, article, or film in order to make an original argument about your chosen primary text. Your essay should uncover something new about that text that wouldn’t be apparent without the use of Falconer.

In Unit 3, you will research a contemporary incarnation of hell or the underworld. You’ll select a recent primary text that depicts hell (such as a film, TV show, story, novel, poem, play, or nonfiction essay). You’ll then make an argument about how that text uses the concept of hell, as well as famous hell themes and archetypes, to reckon with a fraught reality in the external world (such as mental illness, war, fear of technology, the trials of white collar office work, anxieties about cavernous underground spaces etc.). One of the challenges of this essay will be to work with multiple sources, creating a context for understanding your chosen hell text. Another challenge – and also a great opportunity – is that you will work more independently in this essay: choosing the text to research, selecting sources, and finding at least five sources of your own.

Required Texts/ Materials

War Poetry

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Harvard University Extension School

Fall 2015

Goals: This course aims to help you develop a variety of skills essential for academic success. Among them are the ability to read closely and write precisely, to analyze challenging texts, and to argue with discipline and clarity. Topic: We will sharpen these skills by exploring how poets have observed, justified, glorified, and condemned war since ancient times. We will each choose a poem to recite from memory and add to the syllabus for class discussion; we will explore some of the important scholarship on the poetry of war, and we will meet (and read) writers such as Fred Marchant1 and Jill McDonough2 , contemporary war poets.

Required Reading

Wizards And Wild Things: The Secret History Of Children’s Literature

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David Barber

COURSE OVERVIEW

Once upon a time, there was no such thing as children’s literature. When and if children learned to read, they read what grown-ups read. How then did writing for children as we now know it come of age? Why does the genre have such an enduring hold on our cultural imagination, even as it continues to provoke sharp debate over its greater purpose and value? Are classic children’s books like The Wizard of Oz, The Wind in the Willows, and The Cat in the Hat instructive or subversive, manipulative or liberating? In this course we’ll examine selections from three centuries of popular prose and verse written expressly for and about children as we investigate how this eclectic canon reflects evolving ideas about childhood, changing views about educating and enchanting young readers, and persistent disputes over what and how children should learn from books. In Unit 1 we’ll survey landmark works in English for children from the Puritan through the Victorian eras, including the New England Primer, Grimms’ Tales, and Alice in Wonderland, as we consider what these texts tell us about the origin and evolution of the genre. In Unit 2 we’ll examine works by touchstone authors for younger readers including Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Rudyard Kipling, E. B. White, C. S. Lewis, Maurice Sendak, and others, drawing on the critical perspectives of thinkers such as John Locke, Bruno Bettelheim, Alison Lurie, and Marina Warner to assess arguments about the essential function of imaginative literature from infancy through adolescence. In the final unit, students will conduct their own research to place a major children’s author of their choice in a relevant cultural and historical context.

As with all Expos courses, the center of this course is the writing you will do. The primary objective is to develop your ability to write clear and engaging analytical essays of the kind you will frequently be asked to produce in other courses and across all disciplines. With that goal in mind, the course is structured to give you the opportunity to work in a sustained and systematic way on improving your writing. By the end of the term you will have written three distinct and recognizable kinds of academic essays that correspond with each of our three units. While the focus of each unit will be on the writing skills, we will develop those skills through investigating the ideas and questions that emerge from the course readings.

UNIT OVERVIEW

Unit 1

What is children’s literature? How did changing philosophical and cultural ideas about childhood give rise to the prolific historical spectrum of books aimed at educating and entertaining young readers? For our first classes we’ll read selections from an eclectic array of works published in English for children that reflect the emergence and evolution of the genre, including extracts from the New England Primer, Mother Goose, the Brothers Grimm, Edward Lear, and Lewis Carroll, among others. Our main primary text for this unit will be Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). As we contemplate these case studies in all their variety and detail, we’ll pay close attention to the significant questions they raise about what author Alison Lurie calls the “sacred texts of childhood” – how they shape our inner lives, why they have such staying power, and what they really teach us.

The central writing assignment for this unit asks you to develop a close reading of a single text, the building block for much of the writing you’ll be doing in your other classes. Our focus will be on the steps and strategies that enable you to write an insightful and engaging essay based on a sound arguable thesis, as laid out in the Harvard Writing Program’s “The Elements of Academic Argument.”

Essay 1: Close reading essay (4-5 pp)

Unit 2

Down the rabbit-hole went Alice, and ever since the field of children’s literature has grown curiouser and curiouser. What does the modern history of the genre reveal about its larger cultural influence and artistic significance? In Unit 2 we’ll consider a number of critical and scholarly perspectives on the purpose and value of writing for children of all ages, ranging from Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment and Alison Lurie’s Don’t Tell the Grown-ups to essays on specific authors and issues by George Orwell, Ursula Le Guin, Harold Bloom, Marina Warner, and others. Primary texts for this unit will constellate mainly around classics from the proverbial “Golden Age” of children’s books, including readings from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, along with stories and verse by Robert Louis Stevenson, Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling, E. B. White, and others.

For this unit, your main writing assignment will be to develop an essay in which one text is considered in relation to another (sometimes called a “lens” essay or a “testing a theory” essay). We will focus largely on the basic elements of comparative analysis, including argumentative structure, organization of evidence, and counter-argument. We will again look at diagnostic and model examples of this mode of argument in action, with an emphasis on methods of analytical comparison that provide the foundation for lucid critical thinking.

Essay 2: Comparative analysis essay (6-7 pp)

Unit 3

Wonderland. Neverland. Oz. Narnia. Middle Earth. Dictionopolis. Hogwarts. Now more than ever, exploring the realm of children’s literature inescapably leads us to where the wild things are. In our third and final unit, we’ll consider the broad impact of its masterworks in fantasy and adventure, social realism and dystopian allegory, zany humor and iconoclastic satire on social history and popular culture, which continue to prompt extensive discourse and debate over what such books tell us about our times and ourselves. As the curators of a current exhibit at the New York Public Library called “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter” propose in the show catalogue, taking children’s literature seriously reveals that “books for young people have stories to tell us about ourselves, and are rarely as simple as they seem.”

The primary writing assignment for our culminating unit will be for you to produce a research essay based on an original question, making appropriate use of primary and secondary sources. Primary sources for generating your research proposal may include texts from course readings as well as literary texts from books and anthologies; secondary sources can range from works of criticism and theory to reference manuals and interviews. Our principal resource for much of this unit will be the Harvard Guide to Using Sources, which spells out the academic procedures and standards for proper attribution and citation of multiple sources. We will also be consulting the Widener Library staff for guidance on conducting efficient online searches and locating various kinds of academic research material.

Essay 3: Multiple-source research essay (8-10 pp)

Required Texts

Required Writing

The principal work requirement for the course is for you to complete an original and analytically sound essay for each of our three units. I will be giving you detailed instructions for these assignments early on in each unit. The Expos Program asks you to write and revise each essay in stages designed to provide you with the tools and skills for constructing proficient academic papers. You will therefore be writing your essays in the structured progression outlined here:

Response Papers: Before you compose an initial draft of each essay, you’ll complete one or more preliminary response papers that will frame your thesis topic and focus on the specific writing skills we’ll be covering in each unit. The response papers will generally run to about a page, and should aim at articulating the core idea your essay will address and the key components of your argument.

Drafts: You will submit a complete draft of each essay. On each draft you’ll receive my detailed comments, in writing and in conferences.

Draft Cover Letters: With each draft, you’ll attach a cover letter that will succinctly address specific questions and problems you feel you need to tackle when you revise your essay. I’ll post specific instructions about writing these draft cover letters in the weeks ahead, along with a few samples.

Revised Essays: You should expect to revise each of your drafts extensively before submitting a final version for a grade. I will provide written comments on your essay revisions.

Draft Workshops: In each unit we will hold a class workshop in which we work through two student drafts and offer the writers constructive criticism for improving their essays. I will e-mail you the essays I have chosen before each workshop, and you will be expected to come to class with written comments (in the form of a short letter) on each draft we workshop together. I’ll be handing our detailed guidelines on draft workshops later in the semester.

Conferences

I will be meeting individually with each of you a minimum of three times over the course of semester to discuss your drafts for each unit. The main objective of our conferences is to focus on your revision process as well as your overall progress as a writer. Conferences will generally be scheduled for 30 minutes in my office, Room 230 at One Bow Street. Because of our tight timetable, I will not be able to reschedule missed conferences, so make sure to be on time and well prepared.

Writing Center

At any stage of the writing process – while brainstorming ideas, reviewing drafts, or approaching revisions – you may find yourself wanting help with your essays above and beyond your conferences with me and our in- class peer workshops. The Writing Center (located on the garden level of the Barker Center, offers hour-long appointments with trained tutors, and is an invaluable resource. Visit the Writing Center’s website at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr to make an appointment. Tutors also hold drop-in hours on Sunday evenings in Winthrop House and Cabot House. You’ll find more information on their website.

政治

Authority 权威

Jane Unrue

Spring 2015

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In our daily lives, we negotiate our relation to the authority of government, history, religion, school, popular media, parents, and peers. But what is authority? How does an entity gain authority in the first place? What happens when authority is abused? What does it mean to challenge authority? And what does authority have to do with human rights? We will begin by reading Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and we will investigate that explosive and controversial novel’s complex and nuanced treatment of, and reaction to, authority. Next, we will engage with work by one or two authors who will visit our class; we will analyze this work and what it reveals about authority and, among other things, what happens when a writer challenges governmental and /or cultural authority. This ongoing inquiry into the nature of authority will shape our explorations in the third unit, when we will investigate and theorize answers to questions arising out of research into such topics as authority and education, authority and language and rhetorical strategy, authority and politics, authority and human rights, and authority and art.

Because this is a writing class that seeks to prepare you for other courses and situations in which you will need to communicate effectively, we will also explore the relation between authority and the acts of writing and speaking. What does it mean to write/speak with authority? How do we recognize authority? How do we know we’re doing all that we can to earn our audience’s attention and to get the results we want? We will spend much of our time working on how to build effective arguments—translating your claims (arrived at through close reading, research, analysis, deep consideration, and increased devotion to technique) into essays that will captivate, and illuminate your readers. Some of our writing goals will shift unit by unit, as you practice three distinct and important versions of the academic essay; other goals will remain central.

Regardless, we will take advantage of this precious opportunity to develop ideas, draft and revise, explore writing as a process, and have meaningful, productive talks. So that your journey follows as direct a route as possible, you will develop and write pre-draft assignments (called “sequential response papers” or “SRPs”) and essay drafts, which we will discuss in conference and for which you will at times receive comments from your peers. You will revise those essay drafts, and revised (final) essays will receive letters grades. In short, you will write and revise three essays this semester, each one to be preceded by sequential assignments; you will receive letter grades for the revised essays.

Required Texts

Writing

The three essays you will write and revise will build off of each other, and all of the essay assignments connect to assignments or aspects of assignments that you are likely to encounter at Harvard; these lessons in composition and argumentation are thus designed to be transportable across disciplines.

In Unit 1 you will use close reading to develop and argue for an original analysis-based interpretation of a text in light of a particular theme.

In Unit 2 you will compare different works in order to arrive at a unified analytical argument.

In Unit 3 you will use research to stake out a position and persuasive strategy to argue that position persuasively. Throughout the semester, types of writing will include sequential predraft response papers (SRPs), in-class exercises, written comments on your peers’ drafts (peer review), occasional blog entries, and a drafted and revised version of each of the three required essays.

Laugh Riots

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Spring, 2019

Course Overview

By some accounts, we are living in a golden age of political satire. To established veterans of political comedy like Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show have been added a crowded retinue of late night and internet satirists, each with their own humorous book, parody Twitter account, or comedy special. Clips of comedy shows or widely-shared memes have themselves become newsworthy items, often generating a familiar cycle of reproach, outrage, defense, and apology. Yet, other critics have declared satire dead, or perhaps merely impotent, a victim of the surreality and self-parody of the modern moment. The popular hashtag, #nottheonion, gets at this interpretive dilemma: how can you mock the news when it already seems laughably outrageous?

In this course, students will have the chance to consider the fate and viability of social and political satire in the modern world. What is its value to contemporary democratic discourse? Whose interests does it serve? What kind of work does it perform for us? Using a number of high-profile case studies of satiric controversy, we will have a chance to consider these questions in detail.

In addition, this is a course in expository writing dedicated to teaching you how to write effectively in the different courses that you will encounter while at Harvard. The course places a special emphasis on argument and analysis—elements that will allow you to cultivate greater power and persuasiveness in your writing. In general, the course is intended to help you develop originality in your prose, but always in ways that are explicitly supported through evidence. Our material also will help you to work with different forms of data and evidence so that you will be better able to apply your writing skills across diverse disciplines and assignments. Expos 20 will steer you away from common problems in academic writing, such as evasiveness, formula, and unnecessary abstraction. Instead, we will explore the ways in which our writing can become more direct, specific, and engaging.

Essay Topics

Unit 1 Essay: Evaluate/Critique an Argument

In Unit 1, students will be asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of satire. Are there moral lines that satirical works should not cross? Or should they be largely exempt from everyday moral norms? In other words, is “offensiveness” a bug or a feature of quality satire? To help concretize that discussion, students will read a range of opinion pieces debating these questions with regard to Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly, which published deliberately provocative cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad and was subsequently attacked by armed militants in January, 2015. In the Unit 1 essay, students will both provide an analytical overview of this debate as well as some kind of original intervention or contribution to it.

Unit 2 Essay: Using an Interpretive Lens

In Unit 2, we will read Paul Beatty’s award-winning novel, The Sellout (2015), a wild, over-thetop satire of race relations in America. To help us interpret this challenging text, we will also read several short “lens” pieces that attempt to shed light on the psychological functions of humor, such as its therapeutic or pedagogical capacities.

Unit 3 Essay: Multisource Research

For the final unit, students will be tasked with selecting a case study of humor (whether a film, television show, stand up comedy show) and developing a deeply contextualized interpretation of it, either assessing its historical or sociological significance.

How the Course Works

The main goal for the course is for you to produce an original and analytically sound essay for each of the three units. One of the most exciting things to learn in a writing course is that the learning process never stops; one doesn’t “arrive” at being a good writer, but rather continually becomes one.

Good writing is a recursive process; that is, it’s a matter of trying out your ideas, getting feedback, rethinking things, and trying again. In the end, it’s a non-linear task where progress usually happens in a series of unpredictable breakthroughs—some small, others big.

You need to help create the conditions for your own breakthroughs. Your writing will improve most when you possess clear ideas about what you want to accomplish in each assignment: what aspects of the writer’s craft matters to you, and how you want to grow and improve. This class asks you to be thoughtful and self-reflective about your writing process: to question and evaluate your own work in each assignment (for example, in your cover letters for each essay) and in the course as a whole.

While inspiration is the moment we all hope for in our writing, it comes most readily when that inspiration is earned—in other words, when you have dedicated sustained effort to reading, thinking, questioning, drafting, and revising.

To that end, in each unit we will perform several moves designed to assist you in practicing good writing techniques:

1.) Response papers: Before you compose an initial draft of each essay, you will complete one or more pre-draft exercises that focus on particular writing skills that are important for that essay.

2.) Drafts: You will submit a draft of each of the three essays. On each draft you will receive detailed comments from me (in writing and in conferences). Please note that drafts are not graded. One important reason for this is that drafts provide the opportunity to try out ideas and to develop—in an unfettered way—a specific line of inquiry. Sometimes these early ideas “work,” but usually the rough “working through” process creates a lot of necessary problems and questions that will help you write the revision.

3.) Draft Cover Letters: Every time you hand in a draft or revision, you will include a brief cover letter in which you provide guidance to your reader about the aspects of the essay that you are struggling with in addition to whatever other comments or questions you might have. I’ll give you more specific instructions about writing draft cover letters later in the semester.

4.) Draft Workshops: Immediately after the Unit 1 and Unit 2 drafts are due we will have an in-class draft workshop in which we work through two student papers and offer the writers constructive criticisms and suggestions for improvement. I will email you the essays I have chosen before each workshop. You will be expected to provide written comments (in the form of a letter) on each draft that we workshop together. I’ll hand out more guidelines on draft workshops later.

5.) Conferences: After I’ve carefully read your draft, we will meet for a brief 30-minute conference in which we will work together on strategies for revising the essay. You should prepare for the conferences (I’ll explain how) and plan on taking notes during our discussion.

6.) Essay Revisions: You should expect to extensively revise each of your drafts before submitting it for a grade. Formatting and proper citations are also important. I will provide more limited comments on essay revisions.

As a writing course, the majority of your grade will be determined by your written coursework, although a significant portion will also reflect an assessment of your active contribution to our learning environment. Every class will involve some form of discussion, so naturally your participation matters. While I understand that not all students have the same degree of comfort talking in class, the expectation is that you will be an active contributor to our class discussions. In addition, this course asks you to (usually) prepare something before each class, including readings or other assignments. Failure to submit substantive response papers or homework will also affect your participation grade. Your essays will be graded on your ability to compose thoughtful and persuasive lines of argument in clear, readable prose. It is a minimum expectation that your essays will be free of grammatical, spelling, and formatting errors. Such mechanical perfection is not the goal of the course, but rather a basic expectation of it.

This writing class will be unlike many other classes in that it will not test your ability to reproduce a particular set of facts. Assessment in writing is not based on a model where there is a “right” answer. In an essay, you are creating knowledge, not reproducing it. You might think of your writing in this class not in terms of what you did right or wrong, but in terms of what you discovered and how you expressed the unfolding of your ideas.

No matter what grade your writing receives, you can always learn from it and from its accompanying feedback in terms of how to improve yourself as a writer. The following criteria and rubric translates those single-character grades into more useful terms. Translated as such, a grade can help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your own writing and help you focus on how to improve it in future work.

Primary evaluation criteria

Thesis and argument: Is there one main argument in the essay? Does it fulfill the assignment? Does it address some problem, issue, or controversy of consequence? Does it reflect independent thinking (rather than a rehash of class discussion)? Is the thesis interesting, complex? Is it argued throughout?

Structure: Is the argument clearly and logically organized? Is it easy to follow the main points? Does it develop and is it cohesive?

Evidence and analysis: Does the argument offer supporting evidence for each of its points? Is the evidence sufficient and appropriate? Is the analysis of the evidence insightful and convincing? Is the evidence properly attributed? Is the bibliographical information correct?

Sources: Are all the appropriate or assigned sources being used? Are they introduced in an understandable way? Is their purpose in the argument clear? Do they do more than merely affirm the writer’s viewpoint or merely present a “straw man” for the writer to knock down? Are responsible inferences drawn from them? Are they properly attributed?

Style: Is the style appropriate for its audience and subject matter? Is the writing concise, active, cohesive, and to the point? Are the sentences clear and grammatically correct? Are there spelling, proofreading, and formatting errors? Does the writer engage his or her readers respectfully?

Grading rubric

Please note that grades are based on the evidence of the work submitted, not on the effort or time spent on the work. Because every first-year student takes Expos 20, faculty use similar grading standards to ensure evenness and fairness in their evaluations of student work across all Expos sections.

A: Work that is ambitious and gives an impression of excellence in all the criteria listed. It grapples with interesting, complex ideas; it responds discerningly to counterarguments; it explores well-chosen evidence revealingly. The argument enhances (rather than underscores) the reader’s and writer’s knowledge; it does not simply repeat what has been taught or discussed in class. A general reader outside the class would be engaged and enriched, not confused, by reading it. Its beginning opens up, rather than flatly announces, its argument; its end brings closure to its ideas, rather than closing them off. The language is clean, grounded, and precise. A reader feels surprised, delighted, changed upon encountering it. Only its writer could have illuminated the material in this way, and the writer’s stake in the material is obvious.

B: Work that gives an impression of general superiority in all the criteria listed. Such work reaches high in its aims and achieves many of them. It has a solid thesis, but some supporting points require more analysis or are sometimes confusing or disconnected. The language is generally clear and precise but occasionally not. The evidence is relevant, but it may be too little; the context for the evidence may not be sufficiently explored, so that a reader has to make the connections that the writer should have made more clearly. Or: Work that reaches less high in its ambition than A work but thoroughly achieves its aims. Such work is solid, but the reasoning or argument is nonetheless rather routine.

C: Work that gives an impression of minimal competence in all the criteria listed. Such work has problems in one or more of the following areas: conception (it has at least one main idea, but that idea is usually unclear); structure (it is disorganized and confusing); evidence (it is weak or inappropriate; it is often presented without context or compelling analysis); style (it is often unclear, awkward, imprecise, or contradictory). Such work may repeat a main point rather than develop an argument or it may touch upon many points. Often its punctuation, grammar, spelling, paragraphs, and transitions are problematic. Or: work that is largely a summary, interpretive summary, or simply opinion rather than an argument.

D and F: Work that is below average and deficient in one or more of the criteria listed. Such work does not address the expectations of the assignment or comes very short of what it ought to be in grappling with serious ideas. Or: work that has serious problems with its thesis, structure, evidence, analysis, use of sources, or style.

Laptops and Phones in Class

Please leave computers and phones off and tucked away during our brief bi-weekly meetings. Our class time is low-tech and ‘old school’—pen and paper, discussion, handouts, faceto-face interaction (no screen gazing). Because I don’t allow computers (unless I ask you to bring them in for a specific purpose), please make sure to print out and bring the relevant materials to each class. And, get ready for lots of handouts—we will use them in almost every class. I definitely urge you to develop a method for keeping and organizing them in some way!

Who’s Got the Power?

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Fall 2016

“Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is ‘in power’ we actually refer to his being empowered but a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with (potestas in populo, without a group there is no power, disappears, ‘his power’ also vanishes.”

– Hannah Arendt, On Violence

I. Course Description

Our news feeds today present a panorama of struggles over power, from elections and peaceful protests to riots, revolutions, and civil wars. In each case, those who hold power cling to it at all costs, while those who feel oppressed or excluded fight to attain some power of their own. In most societies, power is concentrated in the hands of a select few, and even in the world’s democracies, many citizens continue to feel powerless—the playthings of some distant and shadowy elite, or of grand political and economic forces beyond their control. In this course, we will consider some of the fundamental questions regarding the nature of power: Does power always have to be “power-over,” with one group dominating the rest? Or is it possible for groups of people to generate “power-with,” empowering themselves to act in pursuit of shared goals? Is power ultimately synonymous with violence, or wealth, or political authority? Is it possible to exercise power over culture and ideas in addition to people and resources?

We will approach these questions through the methodological lenses of political science, sociology, anthropology, and history, while also considering examples drawn from documentaries and current events. In our first unit, we will establish working theories of power-over and power-with, and consider their application to both democratic and nondemocratic contexts. In the second unit, we will refine our concept of power-over, testing it against studies of power and resistance in Appalachian mining communities, Malaysian peasant villages, and American low-income urban schools. We’ll also take an in-depth look at a headline-making study that claimed to prove that America is more oligarchy than democracy.

In the final unit, we’ll revisit the concept of power-with by exploring the strategies that social movements like the Civil Rights Movement use to develop and exercise power, and conduct further research into contemporary movements like the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter.

II. Course Objective, Format, and Assignments

The objective of this course is not just to get you writing about power; it’s to get you writing with power. To that end, each unit of this course will introduce a new facet of the academic conversation on power, as well as to a new dimension of academic writing. Our goal is to prepare you put your own ideas, insights, and findings into writing – not only with respect to this particular conversation about power, but to any number of scholarly debates, intellectual controversies, and academic research programs. If the course succeeds, you will leave feeling more confident in your ability to take your ideas on the journey from a faint flicker of inspiration to a substantial piece of scholarship.

In order to achieve this goal, it will be necessary to decode the argumentative and rhetorical maneuvers that show up in so many forms of academic writing. This is because the way scholars write is integral to the way they think and do research. How do scholars come to working definitions of concepts like power amid controversy over just what the term does or should mean? Why do scholars accept some theories and reject others? What kinds of evidence can scholars appeal to in order to support their arguments, and how should they go about using it? What steps go into preparing and conducting research that will break new ground in a field?

Mastering the various steps of the academic writing process will, at the very least, help you in writing stronger papers during your time at Harvard, but it should also equip you to read more carefully, think more critically, research more rigorously, and argue more persuasively.

You will find a brief description of the assignments for each unit below.

  1. Theorizing Power: Power-Over and Power-With

During unit one, we will focus on unpacking and critically assessing complex arguments. We will explore the concept of power as it is formulated by the political philosopher Hannah Arendt in her essay On Violence and the sociologist Steven Lukes in his study Power: A Radical View. We will also test these theories against two documentaries about power: Bringing Down A Dictator, which concerns the Serbian resistance movement against Slobodan Milosevic, and Street Fight, which takes a behind-the-scenes look at a mayoral election in Newark, NJ.

Your assignment for unit one is to write a 4-6 page critical analysis of one of the two theories of power, and to incorporate evidence from one of the documentaries into your analysis. Your performance on this assignment will determine 20% of your final grade.

  1. Studying Power: Domination, Agency, and Resistance

In unit two, we will consider in greater detail how a theory or concept can be tested against evidence, and how diverse bodies of evidence can be synthesized in order to support an argument. Our readings will be drawn from three ethnographic studies: John Gaventa’s Power and Powerlessness, James Scott’s Weapons of the Weak, and Clarissa Hayward’s DeFacing Power. Each study considers the dynamics of power and resistance in a new context. Your assignment for unit two is to write a 6-8 page comparative analysis of any two of these three studies, considering their choice of cases, their observations, and their conclusions. Your performance on this assignment will determine 30% of your final grade.

  1. Researching Power: Social Movements and ‘People Power’

Finally, in unit three, we will work towards an original research paper in which you will join in the academic conversation on power in the context of social movements. We will consider some best practices for conducting and incorporating research into an argumentative paper, including strategies for identifying, synthesizing, and building off of academic research. We will get our orientation toward the field of social movement research from Suzanne Staggenborg’s Social Movements and Sydney Tarrow’s Power In Movement, and talk about how you can build off of the work they discuss to assess a new case, using the American Civil Rights Movement as an in-class example.

Your assignment for unit three is to write a 8-10 page research paper which incorporates substantial scholarly research into an original argument about power in the context of a contemporary social movement. Suggested topics include the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter; however, I am open to alternative topics, especially from students interested in writing about a topic from outside the American context. Your performance on this assignment will determine 40% of your final grade.

Work: Culture, Power, and Control

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Instructor: Rachel Meyer

Course Overview

This course explores the structure and experience of work in the contemporary political economy with an eye toward both its liberating and oppressive potential.

We will take up enduring sociological questions with respect to power, control, autonomy, surveillance and self-determination on the job. How do different forms of work affect our life circumstances, personalities, and connections to each other? In the first unit we will examine corporate culture and how it affects the experience of professional work. Does a strong corporate culture enhance professional autonomy or management’s power? Does it facilitate or undermine community?

In unit two we explore the crucial issue of workers’ control over their own labor and the concept of alienation. We examine accounts of deskilling, the separation of mental and manual labor, and the consequences of these processes for workers’ experience on the job. To what extent does alienation occur in offices versus factories versus service counters?

For the final unit we will critically engage in a debate about the development of “flexible” labor and the ways in which workers’ connections to employers, occupations, and locations have become more fluid and transitory. We will explore what flexibility means in a variety of contexts and ask: does flexibility lead to liberation or loss of identity? Does it bring self-fulfillment or insecurity? What does flexibility mean for tech workers in Silicon Valley and bankers on Wall Street? Our texts consist of case studies and ethnographic accounts representing a variety of workplaces along with readings from prominent social theorists who in different ways seek to elucidate the conditions of work under modern capitalism.

An equally important goal of the course is to develop your ability to write clear, engaging, and coherent analytical essays of the sort you will be asked to produce frequently at Harvard. With this in mind the class is structured to give you the opportunity to work in a sustained and systematic way on improving your writing. During the semester you will write three essays. Each tackles a different aspect of work in the modern world and is designed to highlight particular writing skills.

The thematic units and their associated writing assignments are described below.

UNIT 1: PROFESSIONALS AND CORPORATE CULTURE

Assignment: Critical Review (5-6 pages)

Writing Focus: Asking analytical questions; evaluating arguments; constructing theses and arguments; using evidence; introductions.

In the first unit we will explore what it means to have a “strong” corporate culture and how it affects professionals’ experience on the job. We will examine how corporate culture relates to community, autonomy, surveillance, and motivation at work. Does it enhance power and control for professionals or for management? We will incorporate classic texts on the topic including C. Wright Mills’ White Collar and Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s Men and Women of the Corporation. For the paper students will do a close reading of Engineering Culture, Gideon Kunda’s study of a high-tech corporation, and explore the various ways in which corporate culture affects the experience of professional work.

UNIT 2: ALIENATION AND CONTROL

Assignment: Test a Theory (6-7 pages)

Writing Focus: Counterargument; analysis of evidence; thesis; structure.

In unit two we will examine Marx’s concept of alienation and his ideas about the creative potential for work and its role in human fulfillment and wellbeing. We will read Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital which explores of the conditions of work under modern capitalism which examines routinization, deskilling, control on the job, and the dynamics of conflict and consent in the workplace. For the paper students will treat either David Halle’s America’s Working Man, an ethnography of chemical workers in New Jersey, or Robin Leidner’s Fast Food, Fast Talk, which includes an ethnographic account of working at McDonalds, and use one of these texts to critically assess the theory of alienation as found in Marx and Braverman.

UNIT 3: FLEXIBLE LABOR

Assignment: Research Essay (7-9 pages)

Writing Focus: Research; case study; handling multiple sources and different kinds of evidence; comparing arguments.

Unit three explores the ways in which workers’ connections to employers, occupations, and locations have become more fluid and transitory. We will critically engage in the debate about the social and personal consequences of such “flexible” labor. How do cases of various jobs, occupations, workplaces, industries, companies, organizations, technologies and employment practices bear on our understanding of the flexibility of work? Students will read a variety of perspectives on the topic and will then devise their own research project. Student papers will revolve around case studies with the goal of using primary data to make a meaningful scholarly intervention.

How the Course Works

The main goal for the course is for you to produce an original, compelling, and analytically sound essay for each of the three units of the course. Such essays are not written on the fly; they take time, continual re-working, and critical reflection. The writing requirements outlined below are designed to provide you with the techniques for constructing good essays.

Class time will be split between grappling with the course readings and in-class work directed at improving some aspect of your writing. You should come to class with the relevant readings completed and ready to participate actively in discussion. Readings will be available on the course website.

Writing and Revising

Before you compose an initial draft of each essay, you’ll complete one or more assignments that focus on particular writing skills that are important for the relevant essay type.

You will submit a draft of each of the three essays. On each draft you’ll receive detailed comments from the instructor (in writing and in conferences).

Every time you hand in a draft, you’ll include a cover letter in which you provide guidance to your reader about the aspects of the essay you are struggling with in addition to whatever other comments or questions you might have. You will receive more specific instructions about writing cover letters.

Immediately after each draft is due we’ll have an in-class draft workshop in which we work through two student papers (chosen by the instructor) and offer the writers constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement. You will be expected to provide written comments, in the form of a letter, on each draft that we workshop together. You will receive more guidelines on draft workshops.

After I’ve carefully read your draft, we’ll meet for a 20-minute conference in which we’ll work together on strategies for revising the essay. You should plan on taking notes during the conference.

You should expect to extensively revise each of your drafts before submitting it for a grade. I will provide written comments on essay revisions.

Language, Identity, and Power

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Fall 2021

Instructor: Dr. Jessie Schwab

COURSE OVERVIEW AND GOALS

While a variety of animal species can communicate, humans are unique in their use of language. Language enables us to talk about the future and the past, express complicated thoughts, and develop new technologies. But to what extent does the language we use also make us who we are? How do our social and cultural backgrounds inform our use of language, and how does our use of language influence our social relationships? In this course, we will explore the intersections of language, identity, and power from an interdisciplinary perspective.

In our first unit, we will consider two different theoretical claims regarding gender differences in communicative interactions, and we will test these theories by analyzing elements of conversations shown in reality television. In our second unit, we will collect our own data (in the form of conversation recordings or interviews) to further examine the complex interactions between language, identity, and power dynamics. Here you will form an argument regarding the extent to which elements of our daily language use help to reinforce or subvert existing power structures or markers of identity. In our final unit, you will work to communicate your research-based argument to a wider audience by planning and producing a 10-minute podcast, in which you will distill your research findings and weave in additional evidence.

Throughout the course, you will also be encouraged to reflect on your own experiences with language, including the ways in which your native language/s, accent/s, and communication style/s influence your identity and relationships.

As we consider these topic-based questions, you’ll also be honing your ability to form strong arguments and write clear, engaging, and coherent analytical essays. In Expos 20, our ultimate goal is to help you develop the skills and confidence necessary to critically engage with sources and successfully communicate your ideas (both in this course and throughout your time at Harvard).

The following three points will form the foundation for our work this semester:

Also keep in mind that one doesn’t “arrive” at being a good writer, but rather continually works to become one. This seminar asks you to be thoughtful and self-reflective about the writing process: to question and evaluate your own work in each assignment and in the course as a whole. Part of assessing that progress will be developing your sense of what you already do well. In addition, the course will challenge you to figure out how you want to grow as a writer, both this semester and beyond.

OVERVIEW OF ASSIGNMENTS

Unit 1: Gender Differences in the Use of Language

For our first unit, we will read two theoretical perspectives regarding gender differences in communication. First, Pamela Fishman (1983) argues that women tend to put more “work” into conversational interactions than men, which reinforces gendered power dynamics. Second, Maltz and Borker (1982) argue that communication between American men and women is essentially “cross-cultural” miscommunication (given sociocultural differences in the rules men and women are taught for engaging in and interpreting conversational strategies). You will evaluate the adequacy of one of these accounts by testing the theory using linguistic evidence from the reality television show Married at First Sight. You will, in short, be assessing the extent to which gender differences are in fact found in conversation, and if so, to what extent the nature of those differences supports, contradicts, or otherwise complicates your chosen theoretical perspective.

Unit 2: Interrogating Language, Identity, and Power

Our second unit will first push us to consider additional perspectives, including the intersection of language use with race, culture, and gender identity. You’ll then design your own research project, in which you will analyze primary evidence to create an original argument regarding the extent to which elements of language help reveal, reinforce, or subvert existing power structures, shape relationships, or create identity. You will be asked to conduct outside research, in addition to collecting some of your own raw data. This raw data may come from recording an interaction amongst family/friends/peers (with permission), conducting interviews, or searching the internet.

Sample of selected required reading (subject to change):

Unit 3: Capstone assignment

In a final capstone assignment, you will work to communicate your research-based argument to a wider audience in the form of a 10-minute podcast, using a narrative framework to draw listeners in, while distilling research findings and weaving in interviews as evidence. We will first listen to and carefully analyze example podcasts related to the course, including episodes of Code Switch and Hidden Brain. We will then discuss what makes an effective podcast, as well as how we can translate our arguments to this new medium without sacrificing logic or evidence. We will also spend time discussing the editing process and you’ll be given access to a repository of podcast-making resources. Finally, you will be provided with the opportunity to share your work with your classmates and to distribute it more widely if you would like to. REQUIRED TEXTS AND MATERIALS

All assigned reading material and podcasts will be linked through Canvas or freely available online. For Unit 1, you will need to obtain a copy of a television episode: Married at First Sight, season 9, episode 4 (“Stranger Love in Paradise”). You can currently purchase the episode on Amazon or iTunes for $2-3, and it is also streaming on Hulu and Lifetime. If you can’t get access to a free copy and paying for it will be difficult, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, and I’ll help you figure out a way to get access.

生活

Food!

Donna Mumme

Spring 2014

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COURSE OVERVIEW

What’s for dinner? A seemingly simple question, but one that raises many more. What should we eat? What do we eat? Why do we eat it? These questions and the psychology behind what we eat are the focus of this course. Some argue that the modern industrial food system is utterly broken – it is polluting the environment, contributing to climate change, brutalizing animals, making millions too fat, and leaving millions of others undernourished. They urge a rethinking of what we eat for dinner – eat organic, eat local, eat less meat, eat more real food. Others argue that there is no broken system; nothing needs to be fixed. From their point of view, the modern food system represents a technological marvel that has enabled more humans than ever before to eat well and to live longer. While the most affluent consumers might distract themselves with concerns about the provenance of their broccoli, the real concern is how to feed the seven billion plus citizens of the world. Throughout this course, we will use scientific evidence to weigh in on this debate and others and to inform our thinking about food and eating.

Above and beyond being a course about the psychology of food choice, this course is an introduction to academic writing. It is guided by the Expos philosophy “that writing and thinking are inseparably related and that good thinking requires good writing” (Harvard Writing Program website). Thinking is a process, and writing is a process. The course is designed to engage you in these processes throughout the semester. You will work on organizing, composing, and revising your ideas as you craft your arguments into essays.

The course is structured around three units:

Unit 1: We will begin with an analysis of the “local food movement” argument put forth by journalist and activist Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and criticized most recently by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu in their book, The Locavore’s Dilemma. For your first essay, you will compare these arguments in light of research on the economics, environmental impact, and psychology of our food choices to consider whether this debate reveals something fundamental about what drives our decisions about what to eat.

Unit 2: We will next turn to questions about eating and health. Although hunger remains a serious problem throughout the world, for many living in the United States eating too much is the more pressing concern. For your second assignment, you will consider at a recent food-related policy decision aimed at addressing the problem of obesity: former NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on large-sized sodas. Despite being struck down, debate over the ban’s potential benefits and limitations continues. You will use psychology research on eating, decision-making, habits, and behavior change as a “lens” through which to view this policy and to evaluate its soundness.

Unit 3: In the final unit of the course, you will have an opportunity to investigate daily food choices from the perspective of a Harvard student. In the third essay, you will use your and your classmates’ experiences as well as your own search of the literature to evaluate why you eat what you eat and how one might go about changing a food-related behavior. In this multisource research paper you will have the opportunity to explore further the topics we have already covered and to gather additional information on other influences, such as culture, parents, peers, advertising, physical cues, and innate preferences, in order to develop a better understanding of what drives your own or your fellow students’ food choices.

Ecological Crisis: Witnessing and Planning in the Age of Climate Change

Spring 2018

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Preceptor: Spencer Strub

Course Description

In winter 2018, Boston and coastal Massachusetts experienced two “hundred-year floods” in quick succession. Coming hard on the heels of costlier disasters elsewhere, the impassable roads in the Seaport and icebergs in the streets of Scituate were widely understood as a sign of things to come. The changing shape of the New England coastline raises tough questions: how should governments and peoples prepare for, and adapt to, a changing climate? How do we stave off the worst-case scenarios, and how should we mete out responsibility for the damage that’s already been done? How might our society––our politics, our culture, our sense of justice and our narratives of ourselves–– transform as climate change continues to unfold? And how can we mobilize people and governments to fight climate change?

While such questions are usually left to activists, engineers, and urban planners, this course will ask you to begin to answer these questions using the tools of the humanities. We’ll begin in unit 1 by exploring the way we talk about the world-to-come today, focusing on the writer Elizabeth Rush’s portraits of coastal communities confronting sea level rise and the loss it entails. In the second unit, we turn to questions of ethics and politics. We’ll weigh Aldo Leopold’s foundational “Land Ethic” – which calls for a society that respects an “ecological conscience” – against more recent work on the role that race and class play in exposure to environmental risks and the role of collective action in remedying them. In doing so, we’ll develop richer, more sensitive accounts of the interaction between nature and society. In our third unit, we’ll learn to speak to audiences outside the university. Working alongside local community organizations, we will develop fact-based educational materials addressing the sources of climate change and potential solutions.

Engaged Scholarship Requirements and Capstone Project

This course is part of the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship. That means you’ll be asked to attend events outside of normal class meeting times, including a self-directed observation of a meeting of the Cambridge Community Development Department, 350 Cambridge, Green Cambridge, or another community organization or municipal department.

These outside activities are part of the course content and are not optional. See the accessibility note below, however, if you’re concerned about being able to participate.

It also means that you’ll complete a collaborative capstone project with your fellow students. The end product will be shared with our community partners in 350 Cambridge. That means you’ll get to experiment with communicating to the public about climate change. It also means that you’ll do even more research or writing than is standard in Expos classes. About the Writing

This course will teach you to pose analytical questions, develop complex arguments supported by evidence, and build research skills that will be applicable in your college writing and in your future career. The goal is continual development throughout the course and beyond. No matter how “good” a writer you are at the start, the aim is to end better: to write more clearly, persuasively, and confidently about complex and difficult topics. Keep these points in mind throughout the semester:

  1. Writing is a process. In this class, you will take notes on your reading; write, revise, and discuss response papers; write drafts of essays; workshop those drafts; and revise them fully. This continued process of writing and revision is the main way your writing will grow stronger.

  2. Writing is thinking. This class is designed to help you put your thoughts on the page. Writing response papers involves a relatively open-ended exploration of ideas. Writing and revising papers will involve testing those ideas against evidence, honing your thinking both on the page and in your head. Most important: write about what interests you and believe what you claim!

  3. Writing is a conversation. When you write, you enter a conversation with your sources, your readers, and other writers. That means you need to learn to express yourself clearly and effectively, and give credit to others where it’s due, but it also means that your writing will evolve in response to feedback from me and from your classmates.

Required Texts

The following book should be available at the Coop:

Synopsis of Units and Assignments

Essay 1 – Close Reading Rising

In our first unit, we focus on Elizabeth Rush’s Rising, a book that sketches portraits of American coastal communities from New England to California, in each case mixing a frank account of vulnerability and inevitable loss with an optimistic vision of “an opportunity for transformation.”

Rising mixes journalism, argument, and memoir. In Essay 1, you will argue for your own interpretation of Rush’s book, grounding your claims in an analysis of her choice of evidence and detail, her mixture of modes, and her literary style. Your argument will explain something to your reader that isn’t immediately obvious from reading the text, and they should come away with a new understanding of it having read your paper.

The goal of this essay is to make a clear, persuasive, and interesting argument in a short space. You need not feel responsible for the entirety of the book: choose a manageable body of evidence, which may be as short as a paragraph or as long as a full essay.

Reading: Rush, Rising (2018)

Deadlines: Sun., Feb. 10: Response paper 1.1. A “snag” and two analytical questions. Tues., Feb. 19: Response paper 1.2. A draft introduction. Sun., Feb. 24: First draft (4-5 pages) due. Week of March 4: Revisions due on a rolling basis.

Essay 2 – Comparative Analysis: Ecological Ethics and Social Transformation

The second unit turns from the present moment to the past. We’ll read a set of texts belonging to a range of genres – ethics, sociology, political polemic – that present different ways of understanding the ways that people and their environment interact. In class, we’ll try to sort out each writer’s thesis, how each makes their respective argument, and what kind of sources they draw upon.

In your second essay, your task will be to articulate your own thesis by putting two of these works into conversation. As with the first essay, your goal will be to produce an argument with clear stakes that will persuade a reader by means of your analysis of textual evidence. But in this case, you will be comparing and evaluating two different approaches to nature and society.

You might choose to defend one thesis against another, contrasting thesis; you might use one work to critique another; or you might develop your own thesis that mediates between two viewpoints.

Your goal is to reveal something that we wouldn’t have understood by looking at one text alone.

You want to show your readers the conflict or problem that lies between two texts, and explain to us not only that these works are different, but how they are different and why it matters.

Readings:

Deadlines: Fri., March 15: Response paper 2.1. Comparative analysis of two arguments. Mon., March 25: Response paper 2.2. Introduction and a very rough draft. Weds., March 27: First draft (6-8 pages) due. April 4-10: Revisions due on a rolling basis.

Essay 3 – Research

After the second unit’s reconstruction of a history of environmental thought from the mid-twentieth century to the very recent past, our third unit returns to the present day. Specifically, we’ll begin to address a set of increasingly urgent questions. First, what steps do we need to take to mitigate climate change, and what plans should we make to adapt to its effects? Second, how do we make the case for those plans? Third, how can we improve the current public discourse about climate change?

In the third unit, you’ll carry out two major tasks. First, you’ll work with your peers on researching and writing a short public-oriented educational article on climate change and public policy. As with a research paper, the goal is to inform and persuade your readers; unlike in the research paper, you might think about how maps, images, infographics, and bullet points can communicate effectively in lieu of long unwieldy sentences like this one. Regardless, take this capstone seriously: our community partners are going to use it! (We’ll have some time in class to work on it.)

In your research paper, you will arrange and intervene in a scholarly conversation – across scholarly sources, historical documents, and potentially in-person observation – on a topic of your choice related to climate change. (It can be, but doesn’t have to be, related to the topic of your capstone project.) In the process, you’ll learn to conduct research independently and synthesize multiple sources into a single argument.

Readings:

Deadlines: Rolling deadline: Response paper 3.1. Report from a meeting observation. Fri., April 12: Submit capstone topic proposal. Weds., April 17: Response paper 3.2. Annotated bibliography, guiding question, and prospective outline. Fri., April 19: Submit capstone article draft. Weds., April 24: Response paper 3.3. “Messy draft,” to be shared in peer review sessions. Sun., April 28: First draft (8-10 pages) due. Weds., May 1: Submit final capstone paper. May 6 on: Revisions due on a rolling basis.

心理

The Psychology Of Success And Failure

大纲 PDF

Spring 2020

Preceptor: Dr. Julia Hayden Galindo

COURSE OVERVIEW:

The Writing and the Reading

Who gets ahead in America? Why do some succeed while others fail? Given knowledge of someone’s background or personal characteristics, can we predict if she will become successful? How do we account for the influence of various complex factors, including personality, family, and community? In this course, we will examine questions of success, failure, achievement, and identity viewed through the lens of current theories in psychology. We will begin by examining individual-level, person-centered theories of success with readings on grit, range, and multipotentiality. Next, we will read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of

Success alongside a longitudinal, ethnographic study of 12 American children. As part of our broader inquiry into the environmental factors that impact success, we will explore how race, class, and familial wealth and resources affect children’s lived experiences of childhood and, later, their chances of successfully getting into college. In the final unit of the course, students will answer the question, “What does it take to be successful at Harvard?” Students will select their own pop-science book on a self-help topic like willpower, motivation, happiness, or creativity, research the relevant academic literature, and create a literature review with an accompanying short presentation to disseminate their findings. Throughout the course, we will use psychological theory to motivate questions and answers about human behavior in a society where the demand for success can be tantalizingly high and the fear of failure devastatingly relentless.

Expos 20 is a place for you to build your understanding of academic writing. As you proceed through your undergraduate years, writing will be a central part of your work. Becoming a scholar means learning to think in a discipline and participating in the discourse of that discipline. In this course, you will learn the elements of a scholarly argument that form the basis of an analytic essay while writing in the discipline of psychology. You will write three essays, each of which will focus on a different set of writing skills.

Some of our writing goals will change unit by unit, as you take on the distinct challenges of several important versions of the academic essay. Other goals will remain our focus throughout Please note that the contents of this syllabus are subject to change at the discretion of your Preceptor 2 the whole of the course: developing your sense of what you do well and challenging yourself to grow as a writer; expanding your repertoire and practice of revision techniques; and increasing the complexity and originality of your analysis as well as the effectiveness and elegance of your prose. One of the most exciting things to learn in a writing course is that the learning process never stops; one doesn’t “arrive” at being a good writer, but rather continually becomes one.

Writing isn’t about talent. It’s about devotion, it’s about practice. – Naomi Shihab Nye

Course Goals

Please note that this course includes an emphasis on developing your public speaking skills. With these goals in mind, we begin with these important premises:

Unit 1: “What makes people successful? Individual-level, person-centered explanations of success.” We’ll begin the term by considering what constitutes success and how to best become successful ourselves. In the unit 1 essay, students will choose a domain (e.g., academics, a particular sport or instrument, or a skill like cooking or speaking a language) and define what it looks like to be successful in that domain. We will then read excerpts from Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance and David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Students will be asked to create a case for how to be successful in their chosen domain by marshaling evidence from and evaluating both authors’ theories. In addition to using evidence and analysis effectively, unit 1 will focus on crafting an argumentative thesis. In class and through homework assignments, we will discuss the goals of an argumentative essay, how to craft questions that matter, and how to use readings and other scholarly materials to enter an academic conversation while at the same time saying something new.

Unit 2: “What makes people successful?” Environmental-level, context-driven explanations of success.” In Unit 2, we complicate individual-focused explanations of success by adding environmental-level factors to our study. To begin, we’ll read parts of Annette Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods, a longitudinal study of how parenting practices differ across class lines. To analyze Lareau’s case studies, we’ll bring in sections from popular science writer Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. We’ll use these two sources to discuss how to write a ‘lens essay,’ a popular university-level writing assignment. A special focus of unit 2 will be on crafting compelling essay introductions and conclusions. We’ll also work on developing complex arguments that deepen over the course of the essay and we’ll take an indepth look at paragraph structure.

Unit 3: “How to be Successful at Harvard.” The course culminates with an individualized, indepth study of what it takes to be a successful student at Harvard. In the third and final unit of the course, you will have more choice than ever before, as you select a construct from psychology (like willpower, happiness, or motivation), choose a related book, and decide how to best disseminate what you’ve learned. After reading your selected book, you’ll learn how to search the academic literature to find related research. For the final paper in the course, you will write a literature review that synthesizes what is currently known about your topic and offers “best practice” recommendations for how to succeed at Harvard. The goal of unit 3 is to learn how to manage a multi-source research paper and proposal.

Texts to Purchase

Book of your choice for unit 3 paper. Students may choose a book on this list or secure the approval of the instructor to use another title

社会

Social Worlds of Friendship at Harvard

大纲 PDF

Spring 2018

Overview

Emerson wrote that “I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, the solidest thing we know.” Most of us are convinced about the importance of friendship, but oddly enough friendship is a neglected area of study, especially in the social sciences. Do we really understand how friendships are formed and how they shape our lives? For example, social science research has traditionally suggested that we tend to seek out friends who are similar to ourselves. But is this always true? What factors inspire people to venture outside of their comfort zones through friendship? And what seems to be happening specifically at Harvard?

This course explores friendships on our campus, with an emphasis on understanding how social differences influence friend-making and community building. Our goal will be to have a better, more complex understanding of how various kinds of social boundaries and identities are reproduced or challenged through the experience of friendship. The theory of social capital will help us to better understand the delicate interplay between “bridging” and “bonding” processes, and how meanings of identity and belonging play out differently across unique contexts of the College. Our discussions will be wide-ranging, but we will be increasingly research-focused as the course unfolds. Students will gather qualitative data on campus and will engage with visual media as well.

In Unit 1, we will explore the sociology and philosophy of friendship, beginning with Emerson’s renowned essay on “Friendship” (1841), an essay at least partly shaped by his experiences at Harvard. In Unit 2, students will begin to develop individual projects and complete a research proposal. The third unit of the course will be devoted to the research process, where students will work in small research “pods” organized by topic. This Expos course emphasizes speaking and presenting as well as writing. Overall, the course is heavily collaborative, modeling that which it studies – namely, a spirit of engagement, dialogue, and community.

A Multimodal Approach to Writing and Communicating

As with all Expos courses, this class is designed to help you work effectively in the many different courses that you will encounter while at Harvard, especially those that require written essays. Expos places a special emphasis on argument and analysis – elements that will allow you to cultivate greater power and persuasiveness in your writing and communicating. In general, the course is intended to help you develop originality in your prose and voice, but always in ways that are explicitly supported through evidence. Our material also will help you to work with different forms of data and evidence so that you will be better able to apply your writing skills across diverse disciplines and assignments. Through our activities and assignments, Expos 20 hopes to steer you away from common problems in academic writing, such as evasiveness, formula, and unnecessary. Alternatively, we will explore the ways in which our words – whether written or spoken – can become more direct, precise, and embodied.

But what does it mean to be more “embodied?” Last spring, I piloted several course innovations that emphasized two things: expanding the research dimension of the course (having two units devoted to a research project instead of one), and including more speaking assignments, mostly based on an interview format. This semester we will build on the most successful elements of these innovations, and we’ll be adding new activities that not only emphasize speaking but also object-analysis and visual presentation as well (see table below). Thus, this more multimodal approach goes beyond writing in isolation; it includes other important forms of scholarly and professional communication. At the same time, we will likely discover how working with objects, speaking, and presenting all circle back into effective writing.

Oral Visual Textual

Unit 1: 4-6-page written essay

reading aloud; reporting on objects @ Houghton Library Emerson materials and object analysis (Houghton Library)

Unit 2: 6-8-page written proposal

interviewing skills; topic shaping; presentation proposal with visual element

Unit 3: 12+ page research paper

research results (elevator pitch); capstone poster installation “visual sociology” element; capstone poster design

However, there are many interconnections between writing, speaking, and presenting, and we will be exploring these configurations together. I tend to think that when we bring together different modes of creating and communicating knowledge, we develop more ownership of our ideas; that is, we feel more vitally connected to the writing/communicating process. But you will have to tell me.

“The Friendship Project” – a Campus-based Multimedia Archive

The changes in the course began last year largely because of a new collaboration with the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. That is, our class became one of several course projects supported by the Learning Lab within the Bok Center. The partnership this semester will place our work directly within a larger dialogue about how we can create a more diverse, open, and vibrant campus culture. In short, the Bok partnership is going to allow your writing and speaking to have real audiences and actual effects. And, we’ll be making something together, as a class.

Let me clarify. The Friendship at Harvard Oral History Project (which is now simply call “The Friendship Project”) began in 2016 as part of this course. It’s essentially a video-based archive of mostly student testimonials about friendship and diversity/inclusion on campus. This archive is in its infancy, but it is starting to have more of a campus presence. As part of the Friendship Project, you will be contributing to video projects that will have on-campus visibility. I’ll be telling you more about all of this as we go, so I hope that you will share in my excitement about our course being closely connected to the larger Harvard community!

The salience of the Friendship Project should already tell you that I need you to be an active contributor in the class. This course isn’t for “passengers.” From start to finish, it’s going to be a collaborative enterprise. I will be explaining each dimension of our work with the Learning Lab at the start of the semester, and as we approach each scheduled activity you’ll get a lot more details. I don’t want anything to surprise you, and I would never want you to feel pressured to participate in something that feels too uncomfortable. So, I will have opt-out provisions in place for our video assignments, but I still have an expectation that you will do your best and motivate yourself to take part in what should be a very fun and creative process. We are extremely lucky to have this opportunity with the Bok, so I hope you’ll throw yourself into it, support each other, and enjoy it. I promise that you will learn something not only about friendship, but also about yourself.

You will get to know the relevant staff at the Learning Lab who will be helping with our course. One of these people, Kayla Evans, is a junior who took the course two years ago. She is a Learning Lab Undergraduate Fellows, and her main responsibility at the Bok will be to help with our class. (Remember how I just told you that we are extremely lucky?) She is eager to meet you and to contribute to our collective venture.

What You Will Write

Here is a brief overview of our written assignments:

Unit 1 Essay: Close Reading: Emerson’s Essay, “Friendship” (1841)

In Unit 1 we will explore arguably the first “modern” American statement about friendship – Emerson’s piece, “Friendship.” We will specifically address how the essay still speaks to us, even though the language of friendship was quite different in Emerson’s time. Emerson will open an array of issues about the variable and contradictory character of modern friendship, and we will apply some of his ideas to issues of friendmaking at Harvard. To assist us, we will explore some of Emerson’s original materials and manuscripts in the Houghton Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. For Unit 1, you will closely analyze Emerson’s ideas and discuss what still resonates in his essay at Harvard 175 years later.

Unit 2 Essay: A Written Proposal and Oral Presentation for Research on Friendship and Social Differences at Harvard

The second unit of the course will begin with the connection between friendship and “social capital,” that is, all of the benefits that come with having extensive and high quality social networks as we go through life.

First, we will discuss Robert Putnam’s approach to social capital in Bowling Alone, and then link that discussion to various sociological studies of friendship and social differences. Here, you will begin to conduct your own library research and embark on research proposal that you will shape in an original way. Your proposal will include a literature review about a topic of your choosing. As opposed to being a bland, detached review of relevant sources, this literature review will begin to shape a conceptual argument about the state of the research surrounding a problem that matters to you. We will also discuss interview strategies and methods appropriate for campus-based research. We will then form topic-based research “pods” for the remainder of the course. A presentation will accompany this proposal (details forthcoming).

A Few of Our Sources for Unit 2:

Unit 3 Essay: Research Paper: Friendship and Social Differences at Harvard

The third component of the course is a continuation of the second unit; that is, you will continue to locate outside sources and refine your research topic, but you will quickly begin to conduct your own first-hand research on campus. You’ll be working closely in the pods, but you will carry out your own individual projects. Your research will tell us something important about one context of friendship at Harvard. To begin the process of conceptualizing a topic, we will regularly bounce back between three themes: (1) friendship differences at Harvard based on gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, class, or some other sociological category; (2) the friendship experiences of certain groups or populations (e.g., first-generation students, Asian-American students, international students, recruited athletes, etc.); (3) unique locations and contexts of friendship processes and student life (e.g., residential life, student organizations, dining halls, teams, extracurriculars, and so on).

A Few Additional Sources for Unit 3:

Capstone Project: A Class Poster Installation (during exam week).

After the completion of the research papers, and an oral reporting of research results at the Bok, we will be sharing our research projects during a public poster installation.* The details of the assignment are in process, but it will be an exciting event where we will invite campus community members to come hear about all the research carried out this semester. You will create a poster that summarizes your project and findings, and you’ll develop a strategy for informally presenting your main ideas to interested observers. The event will be creative and fun.

小结

上面13门课的课程大纲显示，这些课有四个特点。

首先，每门课都准备得十分充分，内容非常专业。

其次，课程所采取的形式多样。大部分课程是从文本阅读开始，文本写作结束的，但也有课程不限于文本阅读，而是和线下活动相结合，比如和当地的环保组织、博物馆合作开展活动，最后的作品，也跳出了单纯的文字媒介，引入了语音和多媒体等各种媒介。所以，它们在表达形式上，是非常灵活的。

然后，虽然课程内容和形式多样，但最后要完成的练习都一样。它们都包括三个写作练习：一个是针对单一研究对象的分析报告，一个是扩展或比较多个研究对象的比较式分析论文，这两篇论文还不需要去图书馆。最后一篇，就得去图书馆了，需要查阅十篇以上的文献，进行综合研究，提出自己的创见，完成一篇真正意义上的研究论文。

最后，课程采取的教学形式都完全符合 Expos 20 统一的课程要求，即：草稿、修改、会议、工作坊（Workshop）。

所以，哈佛就是通过对练习和教学过程的把控，控制住丰富多彩的 Expos 课程的培养效果和质量的一致性，实现了既满足学生个性化的需要，又实现了通识教育的核心教育目标，让我不得不服。


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