Shipwrecks, Outlaws, and Wonderlands: Reading and Writing the Adventure Story
I conceived this seminar as an appealing stepping stone into literature -- and into thinking and writing about literature. I find that students are often intimidated by the discipline, especially in their first year. A class on adventure novels is a bit of an oddity; but it has the advantage of pairing immensely popular novels such as Dumas' -- which are typically less discussed in academia and less intimidating to students -- and cornerstones of the Western canon such as Moby Dick or Robinson Crusoe. For me, the point of this class is to have students realize that literature thinks, and that academic writing consists in thinking with the texts; my ultimate goal is to foster their intellectual independence, whether they read popular fiction or well-regarded masterpieces.
This class has a creative writing component quite different from what I have done in the past. For instance, students in my "Fictions of Childhood" class wrote short children's stories, illustrated them, and learned to bind them into a book. The creative writing part of this class is quite different, because it is collaborative: the class is going to write a story collectively, and each chapter will be written by a different pair of students. We will then work on the book as a finished product (illustrating and binding it in Wellesley's Book Arts Lab). I am very excited by that project, and will without a doubt post images here of the finished product! The syllabus of this class is available here. In what follows, I describe how I use a google site, how I teach writing, and what my goals are in teaching writing. Course description: |
Images from our field trip to Mystic Seaport Museum, where we went on board 19th-century ships, learned to use navigation instruments, and saw how a steamship engine would work. All this is useful information when reading Moby Dick, Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, as well as Robinson Crusoe and The Count of Monte-Cristo.
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Using a Google site in a literature class
Our class has a Google site that I use to post weekly announcement and written assignments -- usually in the home page, reproduced below. Each page of the website is illustrated, which allows students to become familiar with prints and illustrations from the period, as they are browsing the site for practical information.
The four main sections of the class (Cast-away heroes, Outcasts, Adventures at Sea, and Wonderlands) are reproduced in the website; In each of this section, I post general questions for students to reflect upon before we start discussing the readings (see second screenshot below). Most importantly, I use the website to share documents -- images of illustrations and rare editions in particular. The last screenshots below give an idea of some of our work on the various editions of Robinson Crusoe: the class looked at prints from 18th and 19th-century editions, comparing them and discussing what each chose to represent. This was followed by a visit to special collections. In the Resources sections of our site, I shared folders with all of the images of the illustrations that we discussed during that visit, therefore constituting a mini-database that students can use if they decide to write a paper on the various illustrations of one of the novels. I also used the same technique to share all my photographs and films of our field trip to Mystic Seaport Museum.
Main page of our site: weekly announcements (field trip to Mystic Seaport Museum, visit to Special Collections, Book Arts Lab, conferences, etc...).
Front page of one of the four main parts of the course: general preliminary questions for students to reflect upon before reading.
Page dedicated to one of the novels: in this type of page, I post images relevant to the history of the book and its illustrations. I also upload my powerpoints if I have any, and sometimes a few pdfs of secondary readings or websites relevant to the study of the novel.
A few shots from our visit to Special Collections :
(thanks to our website, students were already familiar with the French 1720 of Robinson Crusoe and with Grandville's prints for the 1840 edition of the novel).
A few shots from our visit to Special Collections :
(thanks to our website, students were already familiar with the French 1720 of Robinson Crusoe and with Grandville's prints for the 1840 edition of the novel).
A few writing assignments
The following are four successive writing assignments. The first was completed in class and aimed at preparing students for their first longer paper written in pairs (the paper itself is described in prompt 2). The third prompt is a short response paper assignment that I designed in light of the qualities and problems that appeared in the class's first long papers. The third assignment is again a longer paper assignment. This time, students wrote it alone, but they had to have their work proof-read by another student from the class.
These prompts vary in length and format, but the general progression is that students have less constraints as the semester unfolds. Collaborative work in the long papers is complemented by short response paper assignments, which are completed individually.
First writing prompt (completed in class)
I designed this preliminary exercise to train students to formulate arguments. Their thesis had to be a discussion involving two viewpoints, and their outline was also restricted to a template. Students then all wrote their arguments/outlines on the board, and we commented on them together.
Second writing prompt: the first collaborative paper (in groups of 2).
Students had already written a short response paper on the second week of the semester; this paper (4 pages) was due on week 4. The concept map that I ask them to do in the prompt is a large schema linking all the themes that they encounter (see example on the right). It is an exercise that we start doing together in class on week 2 (groups draw their maps on the board and we comment on them together). Towards the end of the semester, I sometimes use these maps as the basis of our discussion instead of bringing my list of questions.
Third Writing Prompt: Short Response Paper.
For this paper, I wanted students to work more efficiently with the quotes that they pick to illustrate their arguments. One of the problems I encountered was that the paper was due as we were reading Dumas' Count of Monte-Cristo, which is not an ideal text for close-readings assignments. This is what I came up with:
For this paper, I wanted students to work more efficiently with the quotes that they pick to illustrate their arguments. One of the problems I encountered was that the paper was due as we were reading Dumas' Count of Monte-Cristo, which is not an ideal text for close-readings assignments. This is what I came up with:
Fourth Writing Prompt: paper assignment completed individually and proofread by a peer.
This paper leaves student more freedom in how they chose to complete their preliminary work. This time, they work individually. I grade both their paper and their remarks on their partner's paper. The goal of such an assignment is to improve the clarity of their writing: by reading each others' work, students realize that a clear outline is indeed a necessary component of writing! At this point of the semester, students have assimilated well what an argument is; formulating it in a clear and coherent way is what this paper prompts them to do.
This paper leaves student more freedom in how they chose to complete their preliminary work. This time, they work individually. I grade both their paper and their remarks on their partner's paper. The goal of such an assignment is to improve the clarity of their writing: by reading each others' work, students realize that a clear outline is indeed a necessary component of writing! At this point of the semester, students have assimilated well what an argument is; formulating it in a clear and coherent way is what this paper prompts them to do.
How and why do I teach writing?
I believe that writing is an essential component of critical thinking. My first aim in teaching academic writing is to give students the tools to elaborate an argument and formulate it in a coherent way. I do so by giving them very specific writing prompts at the beginning of the semester. For example, the students in this first-Year Seminar had to pick a concept and write a first short response paper on week 2 by using a template that I can sum up as follow: “Although concept (x) is often thought of as (y), the novel Robinson Crusoe complicates this definition in passage (z)” – students then had to elaborate their argument with the paragraph that they had chosen to comment upon. I found that such a prompt had the advantage of making students discuss two points of view in their papers. The expectations about their writing were also clear from the beginning, and student assimilated very well the idea that an academic paper is a discussion involving different viewpoints. In the second half of the semester, I typically work on refining the students’ critical thinking skills through writing prompts that focus on the use of examples and quotes in an academic paper. By prompting students to comment upon specific aspects of their quotes, I seek to make them focus on the argumentative aspect of their writing. Even though at this point they may articulate a well-conceptualized argument in their introductions, the body of students’ papers can sometimes be quite descriptive; a writing prompt insisting on the use of quotes allows students to make their paper more argumentative, which prompts them to refine their main argument after having written the first draft of the paper. I track these progresses by asking students to staple their various drafts to the final version of their paper – the prompts guide them through various stages of writing and re-writing of their text.
A second aim in teaching academic writing is to improve the students’ writing skills. I realize that these skills develop as their critical thinking takes shape; however, I find it useful to give students specific directions regarding that matter. One of the things that students can struggle with is the clarity of their syntax. We often do group work when I hand back the class’s papers: I pick and copy a selection of sentences that we collectively re-write. The goal of that assignment is to clarify the syntax, avoid the passive voice or overly general statements – this will vary depending on the group. We sometimes also workshop specific aspects of academic writing: in the second week of this First-year Seminar, for instance, we discussed the titles of the students’ short papers. Together, we also look at titles of academic papers on J-Stor. Students then made a list of various possible formats – and they realized that there are often two parts in the titles of academic papers. While I do not prompt them to follow any of those formats, I have found that their titles became a lot more accurate and specific after this small workshop, which took about 20 minutes of our time together.
I often notice that students can be intimidated by literature – reading Moby Dick is indeed no easy task. I have also found that students at the beginning of the semester expect more lecture time from me. I lecture very rarely, because I think that the goal of a writing class is to bridge the perceived gap between students and the novels. Students can feel that they lack expertise and would need more background, context, and explanations before they could approach a work of art. While I do think that such information is relevant, my goal is to have students understand that their critical skills can be put at use in discussing any work of literature. Even identifying what one cannot understand is an essential part of critical thinking – and it is often my starting point if we read Foucault or Derrida! I do provide historical background via our class’s website and via short lectures that I try to make as interactive as possible. I do the later by showing paintings and caricatures of the various political figures of the period, stopping to ask students questions about those images. It is a difficult balance to find, but I find it crucial that students feel intellectually independent; I hope that my classes bring them closer to literature, and that they gain reading and writing skills that will later allow them to approach texts and concepts on their own.