instructor: Jentery Sayers 
~ classroom: smi 309 
& ougl 101 ~ TTh: 9:30-11:20
Welcome to English 121, Composition: Social Issues!
Course Theme: "Service-Learning, Sonic Culture, and Media Activism"
This course begins in 1906, when Reginald A. Fessenden conducted the first two-way transatlantic radio transmission. From there, we will eavesdrop on a few theoretical conversations about voices and speaking for others, toward a playlist of music, mixes, and mash-ups, and into contemporary film, iPod practices and user-generated media. However, no matter where and when we land in this class, we will attend to acoustics. Our assumption here will be that current approaches to art and culture tend to privilege visual paradigms. While we will not be in the business of discrediting such approaches, our primary aim will be to develop what Michelle Comstock and Mary E. Hocks refer to as “sonic literacy,” which is the "the ability to identify, define, situate, construct, manipulate, and communicate our personal and cultural soundscapes." Since English 121 is a composition course, we will think through sound to explore questions such as:
- How might musical terminology inform the flow and layering of written argumentation?
- How do compositions resonate with their audience?
- How do we listen critically?
- How does auditory filtering intersect with rhetorical awareness?
- And how does voice—in all of its valences—influence writing?
Yet these questions cannot be separated from the socio-cultural and political implications of thinking through sound. Consequently, another set of questions arises:
- How is voice naturalized and mapped onto gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality?
- Who is silenced and when?
- Through what positions do people speak?
- How do we responsibly speak for others?
- How do the voice-overs of popular media shape the information we receive?
- And how might we actively feed back into our communities ?
True, in a class with so many questions about sonic culture, we risk getting moody. After all, sound affects us at multiple levels. Nevertheless, through consistent collaboration in and outside of the classroom, we will engage the course material through ways that will not only be creative and productive, but should also give us a sense of compositional balance by the quarter’s end.
How does service-learning function in the course?
In English 121, the above bulleted questions, be they rhetorical, socio-cultural, or political, will not be unpacked in the abstract. Instead, community-based service-learning will allow you to write about, with, and for local Boys and Girls Clubs. Perhaps more importantly, experiences at the Boys and Girls Clubs will be the focus of writing and conversation in the class. Service-learning offers you the concrete opportunities to enrich your critical listening skills, repeatedly examine your own assumptions, and analyze the resonations of your own choices in specific situations. It also provides you with the chance to produce, circulate, and respond to texts that emerge from both practice and theory and to consider the actual implications of your studies in the public sphere. This course will thus stress how public work can be integrated with academic discovery and how academic contexts can support and enrich volunteering at Boys and Girls Clubs. My hope, then, is that sonic literacy will lead to community literacy as well.
How does composition function in the course?
English 121 is not a grammar or literature course. It is about writing as a process through which you engage and interact with the world. You already have writing skills. In English 121, you will develop them and even learn a few more. Designed to prepare you for making, examining, and refining arguments at the university level, English 121 makes your writing matter in various contexts and gives you confidence as a writer.
English 121 is not geared specifically toward the English major. Rather, English 121 helps you establish a voice in academic discourse. Together, we will investigate the subtle differences between disciplines; why genre, audience, and context are integral to writing; and, perhaps most importantly, how you can transfer the writing skills and habits you learn in English 121 to the major that you ultimately choose or have already chosen.
We will explore a variety of media – from popular culture to theory, fiction to film, social spaces to everyday objects, blogs to music – through exciting, diverse, and creative ways. Yet you will not be asked to “master” the course material. Instead, you will be asked to write and revise often , at least three pages per week. Through your writing you will be actively involved in a quarter-long inquiry that might include some nervousness and frustration, but also some really good questions, some convincing and sophisticated analyses, and some fun times.
"Writing" in this class will not consist of academic papers only. You will be genre-switching - from composing for the web to drafting letters to your peers, from writing sustained, academic arguments to conducting group presentations. Plus, you will be using a variety of technologies and platforms to compose. These technologies and platforms include blogging , podcasting, and software such as PowerPoint and Google Docs.
By the end of the quarter, you should be able to:
- Demonstrate an awareness of the strategies that writers use in different writing contexts.
- Read, analyze, and synthesize complex texts and incorporate multiple kinds of evidence purposefully in order to generate and support writing.
- Produce complex, analytic, persuasive arguments that matter in academic contexts.
- Develop flexible strategies for revising, editing, and proofreading writing.
The four bullets above are otherwise known as the “course outcomes ,” and we will be referring to them throughout the quarter. No worries, though. You are not expected to immediately understand or perfect them. Again, English 121 is a process, and at the same time, it is a course about why writing as a process is important.
uw english | jentery at u.washington.edu
