Required Texts 
Course Description and Goals 
Requirements and Grading 

• Active Participation 
• Folder of Occasional Writing 
• Essays 
• Final Exam 
• Regular Attendance 
• Honor Code 
• Summary of Grading 
• Calendar of Assignments

• Dinesen, Isak.  Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard.  New York: Vintage, 1993. 
• Forbidden Planet.  Dir. Fred M. Wilcox.  Perf. Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielsen, and Robby the Robot.  DVD.  Warner, 1956. 
• Harvey, Michael. The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing.  Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003.
• Johnson, Samuel. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia.  Ed. D. J. Enright.  London: Penguin, 1985.
• Komunyakaa, Yusef. Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems.  Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1993.
• Shakespeare, William. The Tempest.  Ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan.  Arden Shakespeare.  London: Thomson, 2003. 
• Weston, Anthony. A Rulebook for Arguments.  3rd ed.  Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000.

English 101, the fall First-Year Experience, is a course in writing--in rhetoric, the "art of persuasion by means of stylistic or structural techniques" (as Michael Harvey defines it in Nuts and Bolts [46]).  This course will acquaint you with a number of works, classics of Western literature, whose explicit purpose is persuasion.  It will also introduce you to stories (or "tales") and lyric poems whose persuasive aim may be less explicit, but whose success at communicating ideas and experience depends no less on rhetorical strategies.  These works, all of which represent a "quest for knowledge" (the theme of the course), will thus allow us to examine the use of such rhetorical devices as allegory, allusion, analogy, dialogue, imagery, irony, metaphor and symbolism, narrative--the list is almost endless.  In-class discussions and out-of-class events will encourage you to wrestle with challenging ideas and so to develop your critical skills.  Those ideas will provide a context or basis for rhetorically rich, persuasive written assignments of an analytical nature.  Some of the assignments may require modest research; all of them will require formal (MLA) documentation.  Apply yourself conscientiously to the work of the course, and by the end of the semester you should be able 

• to analyze a text and to recognize how its rhetorical techniques convey a stance toward the subject matter; 
• to draw connections among our various texts and between them and other cultural elements; 
• to discover and develop arguments of your own; 
• to present those arguments in convincing written form; 
• to demonstrate mastery of basic grammar, mechanics, and usage; and 
• to document sources.

• Active participation (10%).  You will be participating actively in this course if you attend class regularly (missing only for official, College-sponsored activities or for emergencies) and meet deadlines, and if you demonstrate your engagement in the course by scoring consistently well on reading quizzes, contributing valuably to in-class discussions, and availing yourself in general of opportunities that enrich the course.

• A folder of occasional writing (40 %).  This folder (a manila file folder, which you must provide) will consist of occasional assignments, announced in class, and reviews (four reviews of at least 350 words apiece) of cultural events.  These must be different kinds of events: an on-campus art exhibit, a College-sponsored convocation, a Centenary Film Society film, a musical performance at Hurley School of Music, a play at Marjorie Lyons Playhouse, an on-campus varsity athletic event.  (Required events and those in which you participate do not count among those four.)  Model your reviews after brief ones appearing in the national press.  For an athletic event, write a journalistic account such as appears in the "sports" sections of newspapers.  (For announcements of events, see Centenary's Calendar of Events.)  Your occasional writing, like the more formal essays, should display those characteristics addressed in Nuts and Bolts.  I will be evaluating the folder four times during the semester.  It should consist of 10-12 typed pages by term's end.  Due dates appear on the Calendar of Assignments. 

• Three 750-1000-word essays (40%)--on topics to be announced.  Due dates appear on the Calendar of Assignments.  Submit these essays unfolded and either loose or stapled in the upper left-hand corner.  Late essays will be penalized by at least a letter grade.  You must submit all three essays in order to pass the course.  These are the features that I will be evaluating: 

• Thesis and introduction: Is the thesis contestable?  Is it substantial enough to merit at least 750 words of development?  Is the thesis, along with the introduction of which it is a part, specific to the essay at hand, or is it merely a generic one that could be pasted onto any other essay on the general subject? 
• Overall structure (macro-organization): Do the paragraphs have topic sentences that relate to the thesis?  Is the arrangement, the order, of the paragraphs sensible and effective?  How well do the paragraphs cohere one with another?  Are there transitions, signposts, that smooth the reader's journey from one topic to another? 
• Micro-organization: Do the individual paragraphs have unity, order, coherence? 
• Content: Is there ample evidence to elucidate or otherwise demonstrate the validity of the topic ideas?  What is the quality of that evidence?  To what degree does it display a depth or an originality of thought on the part of the author, or the thoroughness of his or her research?  Has the author employed appropriate rhetorical modes? 
• Style: Is the expression of the ideas clear?  Does the syntax flow?  Is the tone appropriate to the subject?  Are there errors in grammar, diction or usage, spelling, or mechanics that impede effective communication?  (Especially serious are "sentence level" errors: comma splices, sentence fragments, and fused sentences.) 

• Final exam (10%).  More about this later! 

• Regular attendance.  To be present, you must be on time to class; you must have the assigned text with you; and you must stay awake.  You also must exhibit decorum, which includes disabling cell phones beforehand.  The English Department does not distinguish between excused and unexcused absences.  You may miss no more than six classes and still receive the maximum score for active participation.  It is the department's policy that anyone missing more than nine classes for whatever reason will fail the course.  Classes include these events, which may figure in reading quizzes and other assignments: 

• The President's Convocation, 11 AM, Tuesday, August 22, Brown Chapel
• The Faces of Katrina (exhibit), August 25-October 20, artspace (710 Texas Street), 10 AM-6 PM.
• The Presentation of the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence to Yusef Komunyakaa, Tuesday evening, October 24, time and place TBA. 

• Honor Code.  Memorize the Honor Code.  You must write in longhand and sign the Honor Code on all work. 

• Active Participation (10%) 
• Folder of Occasional Writing (40%) 
• Three Essays (40%) 
• Final Exam (10%)