1. We live in a world together, with other people with whom we need to communicate;
2. Our language attempts to understand and describe the world we live in and the relationships we form in this world.  

• What are the different expectations and interpretations that different audiences might have of a text?
• How can a writer imagine an audience?
• What kinds of information about the "world" must we have in order to imagine diverse audiences and their probable reading/interpretative strategies?
• What are the risks of imagining audience (or: what kinds of stereotypes and assumptions do we carry about groups of people on which we might base our assumptions of audience?).
• How can we increase our awareness of different reading/interpretative groups (audiences) and their different knowledges and perceptions?

• An extensive writing log/journal that records the writing issues we define in class, your progress and process as a writer, your strengths and weaknesses and strategies for meeting the writing requirements of the class.
• Active participation in class discussion.  (This includes E-mail responses to the class list with ideas, thoughts, questions, emotions about the writing issues raised from our readings.)
• 3 short (2-3 pages) and one long (6-8 pages) formal writing assignments. These assignments will be determined partly by the context of class reading/thinking; in this sense, the class's responses to and evaluations of the readings are as important as the reading itself.  Our discussion is, in fact, an important "text" of the class!  These writings form an assignment sequence designed to help you progressively develop your writing voice, awareness of your own process as a writer, and your analytical and argumentative skills.
• A final exam that defines your progress as a writer.

• We will be doing a great deal of writing for this class.  Our informal writing, such as class E-mail, postings to the class Forum, and the Writing Workshop Wrap-ups, count as 20% of the course grade.
• The bulk of the course grade, 70%, will be determined by the formal writing assignments.  Thus, the grade breakdown is as follows:
• 20% -- Informal Writing (including discussion board postings, e-mail, quizzes, and workshops)
• 10% -- Final Exam
• 70% -- Formal Writing Assignments

• As you keep your writing log, pay attention to how your writing is changing, how you as a writer are evolving.
• Towards the middle of the semester, you should find that you are making fewer of the errors that you were making at the beginning of the term.
• Your final exam will be an essay evaluating your progress as a writer throughout the semester; this essay must cite specific writing issues on which you have worked, how you addressed them, and what kinds of issues you still have left to address.

Readings/Texts (Texts at the GSU bookstore)
Pocket Style Manual by Diana Hacker (Or: you may refer to Purdue University's Online Writing Lab
You will need a college level dictionary.  Online handbooks and dictionaries available at http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~lamy/tools.html

Attendance
I reserve the right to fail you if you miss more than five classes.  I expect you to email me or call to let me know when you will not be able to attend class and to make arrangements with me for completing your work for classes that you miss.  You have paid your money for this class; if you miss it, you waste your money.  If you miss a class, you must email or call a classmate to get notes for that class's work BEFORE you ask me for help with the work from any class you missed.

George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html -- WL #7 -- quiz questions

Stephen's Guide to Logical Fallacies http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/index.htm -- WL #8 -- quiz questions

Writing Log # 1: From the Regents' scoring site, http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwrtp/essaygrd.htm

1. define the Regents' holistic grading scale: what do you have to do to get a 4, a 3, a 2, or a 1?
2. Explain, if you took the Regents' today, what score you think you would get and why.
3. From the sample 2/1 essay on the Regents' grading site, explain what's wrong with the borderline essay.

This log is designed as practice for your actual Regents' writing situation. To begin your brainstorming and outlining process, take 5 - 10 minutes to THINK about the question you are are responding to:

1. Step 1: Define your gut response to question
2. Step 2: Brainstorm
3. Step 3: Categorize
4. Step 4: Order
5. Step 5: Write Thesis

1. Gut response: Yes
2. Brainstorm: responsibility, save money, social life, skills, prepares you for college, -- figure out what you want to do with your life, -- don't want to spend life in dead end, low paying job, get connections/ reference, can go on dates when you want/ become independent with own money
3. Categorize:
• social skills, connections/references,
• save money, responsibility
• independence, figure out what to do with life, prepares for college
4. Order: -- after seeing how your brainstorm points group into categories, think about how you are going to order your points -- what will you say first, second, and third?  At this point, you need to begin thinking about each category as making up a paragraph or part of a paragraph, and you need to begin thinking about the transitions between points that you will make.  You may also end up re-categorizing your points, moving certain points around and re-grouping them.  The transitions are important: these show the relationships you are making between points.  So that, for this prompt, I might re-order in this way:
• 1 --responsibility, skills, connnections/ references
• 2 -- save money, independence, social aspects
• 3 -- figure out what s/he wants to do/career/, take college more seriously/ don't want to work atMc' d's the rest of my life

5. Thesis:
• Reword the question to use key words for your thesis
• Map the points you'll make in the order in which you'll make them.
• Example: It is very beneficial for high school graduates to work full time for a year before entering college.  Working allows young people to learn responsibility, save money, and figure out what they want to do with their lives.

Writing Log #9:

1. Briefly (in 2 - 3 paragraphs) sum up the point of the conversation in the bar that Nordstrom relates in chapter 2. Help for this question: NGO = Non-governmental Organization (see http://docs.lib.duke.edu/igo/guides/ngo/); "rocks of opportunity" = diamond smuggling.
2. Discuss the following points from chapter 3:
   • What does Nordstrom mean when she says that "official" accounts of war erase the truth of war, make the reality of war invisible (provide at least 2 examples that she gives to illustrate this point).
   • What does Nordstrom say is the "real core people's experiences of violence"? (p. 28) -- explain her example.
   • Nordstrom says that most people who talk about war speak "from a position of privilege and passion," NOT KNOWLEDGE. (p. 30/31). Explain what she means by this.
   • Nordstrom tells us that, when she first began to speak the truth of what she saw, first-hand, in war zones, people were offended and did not want to hear her. How does she explain this?
   • List three things that Nordstrom says we are "not supposed to know" about war (p. 33).
   • Explain what Nordstrom means by denial (for both individuals and cultures) p. 37.

Writing Log #11-- From Chapter 5, "Violence":

1. Explain how Nordstrom argues that the dynamic of war has changed;
2. Nordstrom says that violence feels "like existential crisis, like hoeplessness, like the loss of the future." Explain this;
3. Explain what Nordstrom means when she says that "Violence reconfigures its victims and the social milieu that hosts them" (p 59).
4. Nordstrom says that modern war forces us to re-think concepts of "winner" and "loser" -- explain her point.
5. Explain Nordstrom's analysis of violence as killing culture and what that means for our humanit (p 60).
6. What does Nordstrom understand from her encounter with the man who was tortured?
7. What is the effect of torture on a human being, her family, culture, and a sense of future?
8. How, according to Nordstrom, do dirty war strategies hope violence will effect people? (hint: symbolic nature of violence -- see pp 61 - 63)
9. How, according to Nordstrom, do dirty war theorists mis-understand and mis-calculate the effects of violence? (hint: see p. 68 - 69)
10. Where, according to Nordstrom, must we begin in order to really *resolve* violence?

Writing Log #12

1. Why does Nordstrom think that the Sri Lankan military officer tells her about the military's human rights violations against the Tamil?
2. What is the classic definition of power that Nordstrom says most people accept? (p. 72) -- also see p. 75, first full paragraph
3. What is an "institution" of power?
4. What is a "manifestation" of power?
5. Nordstrom says that "the entire fabric of military leadership is rooted in the belief in top-down governing power structures" (80). Explain this and how, according to this idea, "power" works
6. Nordstrom also says that the idea of top-down governing power structures is a myth. To point out how this myth mis-understands power, Nordstrom discusses:
   1. the roles of power elites (presidents, elected officials)
   2. the roles of military commanders
   3. the roles of the ground soldiers

She goes on to say that "this young sodier who pulls the trigger -- who enacts violence -- makes a war a reality" (75), and that "if you take the bullet from the gun and the soldier from the front, the power elite loses their means of control and power becomes and empty exercise" (79).

Explain each of these roles and what Nordstrom means by "power elite" losing the Means of control.

7. To understand more clearly how power actually works, Nordstrom asks: Where does the power of war actually lie? "On the larger level, military commanders act according to national tactical and ideological paradigms, and according to the transnational politic-military and economic alliances supporting them. Battlegrounds are international, and notions of power are transported along manifold lines of alliance and aggresstion. National need, necessity, history, and mythology join with internationally forged deogmas in the creation of any given military's ideology for action: (75). Explain what Nordstrom is getting to here.

8. About how many child soldiers does the UN estimate are currently fighting?

9. Nordstrom argues that, on the ground, power is constantly "negotiated." As examples of this, she cites: "by interrelationships among soldiers, political officials, civilians, rogue troops, paramilitary, international associates, profiteers, family, friends, and personal foes. Military force, sadism, charity, greed, bribery, clan loyalties, family ties, friendships, sexual liaisons, business transactions, illegal trade, envy, love, anger, comassion, confusions -- therse are the forces that define the realites of war, the ebb and flow of cofict and surfvival, of barter and contro, of terror and negotiation, of peace, possibility, and power" (79).

Writing Log #13

1. Pick out the ten most important quotes from Shadows of War (these may come from any chapter you wish, though you may choose to heavily weight chapters 13, "Peace," and 17, "Epilogue," since we have done so many writing logs about the previous chapters).
2. Write down quote and page number.
3. Group these quotes into categories -- what are the major themes these quotes address?
4. For each category, write a paragraph explaining the point that all the quotes are making. (This is very similar to the exercise you did to work up the summary paper -- in this case, you are thinking about what matters to YOU, what you take away from the book.)
5. For each of your categories, Re-read the paragraph that summarizes your quotes. Remember, each of you could have chosen the exact same quotes but end up writing a different paragraph explaining what these quotes, taken together, mean. The way that you sythesize the quotes and explain what they mean tells you something about yourself-- this is your interpretation.

Wrigint Log #14

1. I want you to self consciously reflect on your interpretation of your categories/quotes. For Writing log #14, do a free write that explains what in your own life and world you find reflected in these quotes. The qoutes you've chosen are from a study of what is invisible to most people about war, about the realities of war and peace that we do not fully recognized. For your final project, you need to move beyond Nordstrom's study, beyond her points, and think about what the ideas we have been discussing -- power and how it works, money and how it works, the global market and trans-national networks, cycles of violence -- mean to you, right here in Statesboro, Georiga. This freewrite needs to tell me how whatever those quotes mean to you has something to do with your life, your world, your experiences, the people you know.
2. This free-writing about what the ideas we have been discussing has to do with you is your Autobiographical Interface. We will use your autobiographical interface as the stepping stone to your final project.

Writing Log #15
Using your quotes, categories, and autobiographical interface, decide what specific ideas/themes you want to read and write about for your final project. We'll be doing an in-class research exercise to broaden your thinking about your theme and to develop a sketch of the web site you will make. The web site sketch needs to list the points you will discuss, a brief explanation of what you need to say about each, and the links you will make between points. See Final Project Description for models.

Writing Log # -- Quiz Questions: Fallacies

1. What is a fallacy of Distraction?
2. Name and define 4 fallacies of distraction.
3. What is an appeal to motive in place of support?
4. Name and define 5 appeals to motive in place of support.
5. Name and define 4 ways of changing the subject.
6. What are Inductive Fallacies?
7. Name and Define 5 inductive fallacies.
8. What are Causal fallacies?
9. Name and Define 5 causal fallacies.
10. Explain 3 ways that you can miss the point.
11. What are fallacies of ambiguity?
12. Name and define three fallacies of ambiguity.
13. What is a category error?
14. What is a Non Sequitur?
15. What are syllogistic errors?
16. What's the difference between a fallacy of explanation and a fallacy of definition?

• How can reading "Politics and the English Language" and understanding logical fallacies help you interpret your text for paper #3?

• CATEGORIZE: Re-read your notes from your film and categorize them.  To categorize, think about each of the points in your notes and how these points show a main topic or theme.  For example, do your points show us something about gender, about race, or about class?  Do you have notes about how men interact with each other, about how women interact with men, or about the kinds of stereotypes that the film uses?  If the film relies upon stereotypes, what are they?  To a certain extent, the categories you develop will depend upon how you interpreted the film and what you found important.  Compare your categories to the categories of others in your group.  Did you define different categories?  If so, why?
• FOCUS: Once you have categorized your points, decide which of the categories you have defined you actually want to write about.  This is a short-ish paper  -- 3 - 5 pages, typed, double spaced -- so you cannot write about each of the points or categories that you've noted.
• ASSESS:  Think about why you are most interested in the particular categories that you have defined.  E-mail me with the categories you have defined, explain the categories you are interested in writing about, and why.  At the end of your E-mail, after you have explained what you are interested in writing about and why, formulate a tentative THESIS that sums up your main points.
• TIPS FOR WRITING:
• Re-read the Film Review Assignment.
• Choose several scenes (3 - 5) that are most important to the points about which you are writing and watch these scenes again.  Be sure that you have careful, detailed notes for each relevant scene.E-MAIL PRE-WRITING/ FREE WRITING: I will review and respond to the E-mail explaining your categories and what you are interested in writing about.  We'll use our E-mail exchange to think through how you can develop your papers.  You should plan on getting your first E-mail to me by this Friday, and I'll respond to you by Saturday.  You should plan on answering my E-mail by our next class session

Writing Log #9

Writing Log #10

Final Exam Options:

• Written Exam:
• Reflect on what you have accomplished as a write this semester.
• Be specific and use supporting detail. What kinds of writing issues have you addressed? Do you see yourself writing any differently now than before? What kinds of writing issues do you still need to address?
• While I am grading this for the formal elements of "good writing"-- I want a well organized, thoughtful, and carefully edited piece of writing to reflect your progress as a writer-- I also consider this piece less formal and more conversational than your other writing assignments. Feel free to write as though you are in a focused, directed conversation with me.
• Final Exam Pre

You are invited to attend the upcoming CLEC lecture by Irish archaeologist, Dr. William O'Brien. Please also encourage any interested students to attend. Thanks very much, Barbara Hendry

Dr. William F. O'Brien (National University of Ireland at Galway)

"In Search of the Iverni: Archaeological Perspectives on the Origin of the Irish"

October 13th, 2004, 7:00 PM, Nessmith-Lane Assembly Hall, Continuing Education Building

Free and Open to the Public, Reception (light refreshments) following the lecture

This lecture/slide presentation will address the process by which the inhabitants of Ireland were Celticised in the period 500 BC to 500 AD. Dr. O’Brien will discuss his current excavations in southwest Ireland, with particular emphasis on the contributions of indigenous Bronze Age people there, in exploring how the Irish became Celts.

Dr. O’Brien is internationally recognized for his pioneering work on early mining and metallurgy in Europe, particularly as it relates to prehistoric settlement and society in Ireland. He has written three books (including Mount Gabriel: Bronze Age Mining in Ireland – 1994, Sacred Ground: Megalithic Tombs in Coastal South-west Ireland – 1999), many articles, and has presented his research in over ten countries.

Contact Barbara Hendry at 681-5362 or bhendry@georgiasouthern.edu for further information.