WRA 125 – Writing: American Racial and Ethnic Experiences

Monday and Wednesday: 12:40-2:30

Holden Hall C135
Michigan State University
Fall 2010

Instructor: Dr. Christie L. Daniels

Office: 251 Bessey Hall
Phone: 355-2400 (messages only)
Email: cdaniels@msu.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 9:00 – 10:00 and 1:30 - 2:30
Additionally by appointment.
Course Description:
As part of the general education requirement, First-Year Writing contributes to the Michigan
State University mission by focusing on inquiry-based teaching and learning that encourages
students to begin to understand themselves as:

• contributing members of MSU’s community of scholars

• committed to asking important questions and to seeking rich responses to those
questions
• developing skills, knowledge, and attitudes that improve the quality of life for self and
others through scholarly, social, and professional activities.
In pursuit of these goals, Tier I Writing and Preparation for College Writing courses engage
students in writing and reflection activities that make overt the ways that invention,
arrangement, revision, style and delivery literacy activities:

• can be engaged across inquiry situations (scholarly, social, and professional)

• require the development of knowledge about the importance of contextual factors that
affect the application of these methods of inquiry
Our shared learning outcomes support inquiry-based learning that transfers across writing
situations in relation to three major issues: writing, reading, and researching.
Our Course Section:
Our section of WRA 125 will focus on the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that successfully
enhance writing, reading, and researching in higher education in America. Some course
materials have been pre-selected to support this goal and focus us on the shared learning
outcomes for the Firs-Year Writing Program at MSU. We will be looking at issues and
concepts dealing with race and ethnicity in the United States to think about what we know
about literacy, how we know what we know, and how we can engage and enhance our
literacies through deep explorations of what things mean. I look forward to working with you
this semester. We all have some shared and some different literacy experiences, strengths
and weaknesses; please remember to be respectful of the other members of this class as we
support one another this semester. Specific learning objectives for each assignment appear
on individual assignments sheet.

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Required Texts:
Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute
Books. 2007. (3 edition)
rd

Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Researcher. New York: Pearson/Longman. 2009.

Craig, Collin, Nancy C. DeJoy and Steven T. Lessner. Reading and Writing Literacies.
Pearson-Longman, 2010.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Penguin.1996
Maimon, Elaine. The Brief McGraw-Hill Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2009.
Please note: The Ballenger text is in a new edition that include the 2009 MLA updates.
This is the version I have ordered for class. If you choose to get an older version, you will
need to be responsible for using the latest versions of MLA style when you use sources.
Also, be aware that if you get the older versions of these books the bookstores will not buy
them back at the end of the semester.

Policies and Procedures:

Attendance:
All courses in the Tier I Writing Program are interactive and require high levels of student
participation. Attendance at all class sessions is expected. You may miss one week of class
(i.e. two classes) without affecting your grade. You should reserve these absences to address
the observance of religious holidays not acknowledged by the University calendar, family
events, serious illness, etc. If you miss more than one week of class, your final grade for the
course will be lowered .3 for each additional individual absence.
Coming to class late (more than 5 minutes after we begin) 3 times will equal one absence.
Sleeping in class or engaging in activities not related to class will also be counted as absences.

Late Assignments:
Late assignments will be lowered one full letter grade for each day past the due date (the first
reduction occurs at the start of the class in which the assignment is due).

Completion of Assignments:
The First-Year Writing Program requires that students produce a significant amount of
writing to fulfill their requirement. You must complete all major assignments to fulfill this
requirement and receive a passing grade in First-Year Writing courses.

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Academic Honesty
Michigan State University has adopted the following statement about academic policy:
GENERAL STUDENT REGULATIONS
1.00 PROTECTION OF SCHOLARSHIP AND GRADES
The principles of truth and honesty are fundamental to the educational process and
the academic integrity of the University; therefore, no student shall:
• 1.01 claim or submit the academic work of another as one’s own.
• 1.02 procure, provide, accept or use any materials containing questions or
answers to any examination or assignment without proper authorization.
• 1.03 complete or attempt to complete any assignment or examination for
another individual without proper authorization.
• 1.04 allow any examination or assignment to be completed for oneself, in part
or in total, by another without proper authorization.
• 1.05 alter, tamper with, appropriate, destroy or otherwise interfere with the
research, resources, or other academic work of another person.
• 1.06 fabricate or falsify data or results.
Procedures for responding to cases of academic honesty and possible
repercussions are outlined in Spartan Life: Student Handbook and Resource Guide.
They can also be found on the web at:
http://www.msu.edu/unit/ombud/honestylinks.html. Note: the new procedures
require that instances of academic dishonesty be reported through the registrar’s
office and forwarded to the Dean of the College in which the student’s major
resides.
Major Assignments:
There are five major projects in this course: four essays and one alternative form of
presentation. The schedule at the end of this syllabus outlines the due dates for these
major projects. Grade distribution occurs as follows:

Lived Literacies Paper: 10%

Cultural Literacy Paper: 15%
Disciplinary Literacy Paper: 20%
Multimedia Remix Project: 20%
Multimodal Final Project: 25%
Peer critique responses, participation and informal writing assignments: 10%
University Resources for Writers: The Writing Center, the Library, The Learning Resource
Center, and the English Language Center all offer support services for First-Year Writing
students. You should consult these centers’ web sites for information about their specific
resources.

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 Course Schedule
Week 1
Wednesday, Sept. 1 course introduction, intro to RAIDS, intro to rhetorical appeals,
introduce lived literacies assignment.

Week 2
Wednesday, Sept. 8 continue work with lived literacies assignment.
Reading assignment due: Du Bois (p. 1-35), Craig (p. 22-28)
Rough draft of Lived Literacies assignment due Friday, Sept 10 on ANGEL

Week 3
Monday, Sept. 13 finish work with lived literacies assignment
Reading assignment due: Du Bois (p. 36-73), Craig (p. 37-51).
Wednesday, Sept. 15 introduce cultural literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Du Bois (p. 74-110), Ballenger (ch 1)
Lived Literacies assignment due Friday, Sept 17 on ANGEL

Week 4
Monday, Sept. 20 continue work with cultural literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Du Bois (p. 111-153), Craig (p. 54-56)
Wednesday, Sept 22 continue work with cultural literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Du Bois (p. 154-185), Ballenger (ch 2)

Week 5
Monday, Sept. 27 continue work with cultural literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Du Bois (p. 186-end), Craig (p. 69-74)
Wednesday, Sept. 29 continue work with cultural literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Anzaldua (intro & ch 1)
Rough draft of Cultural Literacy assignment due in class Wednesday, Sept. 29

Week 6
Monday, Oct. 4 finish work with cultural literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Anzaldua (ch 2-3), Frederick Douglass
“Learning to Read and Write” (handout)
Wednesday, Oct. 6 introduce disciplinary literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Anzaldua (ch 4-5)
Cultural Literacy assignment due Friday, Oct. 8 on ANGEL

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Week 7
Monday, Oct. 11 continue work with disciplinary literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Anzaldua (ch 6-7),
Wednesday, Oct. 13 continue work with disciplinary literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Craig (p. 78-85), Ballenger (ch 3)

Week 8
Monday, Oct. 18 continue work with disciplinary literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Craig (p. 86-89), Ballenger (ch 4)
Wednesday, Oct 20 continue work with disciplinary literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: James Baldwin “The Discovery of
What it Means to be an American” (handout), Richard Rodriguez
“Brown: The Last Discovery of America” (handout)
Rough Draft of Disciplinary Literacy assignment due in class, Wednesday, Oct. 20

Week 9
Monday, Oct. 25 continue work with disciplinary literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Ballenger (ch 5)
Wednesday, Oct. 27 finish work with disciplinary literacy assignment
Reading assignment due: Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller “White
on Black on Gray” (handout)
Disciplinary Literacy assignment due Friday, Oct. 29 on ANGEL

Week 10
Monday, Nov. 1 introduce multimedia remix project, intro to visual rhetoric
Reading assignment due: Craig (p. 92-96)
Wednesday, Nov. 3 proposal workshop for multimedia remix project
Reading assignment due: Victor Villanueva, Excerpt from
“Bootstraps” (handout)
Proposals for Multimedia Remix project due Friday, Nov. 5 on ANGEL

Week 11
Monday, Nov. 8 technology workshop for multimedia remix project
Reading assignment due: Craig (p. 97-101)
Wednesday, Nov. 10 intersections of race/ethnicity and literacy with popular culture

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Week 12
Monday, Nov. 15 finish work with multimedia remix project
Wednesday, Nov. 17 introduce multimodal final project
Reading assignment due: K. Anthony Appiah “The Multicultural
Mistake” (handout), Leslie Marmon Silko “Yellow Woman and a
Beauty of the Spirit” (handout)
Multimedia Remix project due Wednesday, Nov. 17 on CD/DVD

Week 13
Monday, Nov. 22 proposal workshop for multimodal final project
Reading assignment due: Craig (p. 116-119)
Wednesday, Nov. 24 workshop day for multimodal final project
Proposals for Multimodal Final Project due Wednesday, Nov. 24 on ANGEL

Week 14 Individual Conferences for Multimodal Final Project

(missing your individual conference constitutes two (2) absences for the week)

Week 15
Monday, Dec. 6 workshop day for multimodal final project
Reading assignment due: Craig (p. 120-125)
Wednesday, Dec. 8 continue work on multimodal final project

Week 16
Multimodal Final Project due Friday, Dec. 16th by on CD/DVD
Final Exam Period: Dec. 16th from 12:45 – 2:45

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