• 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?

What I Expect From You:

• An extensive reading notebook that records the reading/writing issues we define in class, your progress and process as a reader/writer, your strengths and weaknesses and strategies for meeting the writing requirements of the class. Reading notebooks will recieve a letter grade when they are submitted; they cannot be revised and I will not accept them late. As informal writing assignments, I am grading these for ideas, thinking, engagement with the text, not for punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc. Your grade depends upon the depth and quality of your thinking.
• Active participation in class discussion. 
• 2 short (2-3 pages) and one long (7-10 pages) formal papers. 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! In part, I will direct these writings so that they form an assignment sequence designed to help you progressively develop your writing voice, awareness of your own process as a writer, your analytical and argumentative skills.
• A final exam that defines your progress this semester.

• The bulk of the course grade, 60%, will be determined by the formal writing assignments.  Thus, the grade breakdown is as follows:
• 30% -- Informal Reading Notebooks and class participation
• 10% -- Final Exam
• 60% -- Formal Writing Assignments

• Track your writing progress: what writing issues are you working on, how are you working on them, how are critical reading, thinking, and writing skills evolving?  Use your reading notebook entries and your writing issues checklists for your evaluated work to track your progress.

Readings/Texts

• Susan Griffin A Chorus of Stones: A History of the Private Life of War -- at campus bookstore
• You will also need to get a college-level dictionary and a Handbook.  I don't care what handbook you get-- I suggest that you find a good used one from either the local bookstore or www.amazon.com.  The Blair Handbook has an extensive online support site at http://cw.prenhall.com/bookbind/public_html/pubbooks/fulwiler/ and Your Dictionary http://www.yourdictionary.com is a quick and easy look-up.  I have additional links to online writing resources at http://www2.gasou.edu:80/facstaff/lamy/tools.html.

Reading Notebook Entry # 1
Construct a sequence of events for this book. This will require a different understanding of "event" than that which you employ for discussing most texs.

1. First, define what constitutes an "event" in this text (note: this is related to RN #3, definition of historicity)
2. Outline the characters narrated. Since this book unfolds characters in a series of concentric circles, you'll need to read recursively:
   • In your notes, write down the name of each character and the page on which s/he is introduced. Jot down key pieces of i information about the character.
   • As you continue to read, expand your reading notes for the characters. Add additional page numbers on which the characters are developed, new information, etc.

Reading Notebook Entry # 2 -- For Sections I and II/ "Denial" and "Clytamenstra's Memory"
Explain the point of view of narration and determine the attitude of the narrator to the characters. To do this, you have to pay careful attention to the italicized sections narrating the development of weapons technology, cellular funtioning, memory, etc.

• Try reading the italicized sections by themselves and figuring out what they are telling us.
• Explain the relationship of the italicized/historical-technological evolution information to the people and stories about which you are reading
• Carefully note sections in which emotion is described -- pain, loss, fear, anger, love, compassion, etc.

Reading Notebook Entry #3
Explain Griffin's use of history in this text, of psychology, and of empathy. How do these explain her narration of characters (including herself)?

Reading Notebook Entry #4
Diaspora is a crucial theme of this text. What is diaspora, and what is the relation between diaspora and denial?

Reading Notebook Entry #5
For this notebook entry, turn in the group work you did tracing the development of the italicized sections in Section II and the relationship of the narrative to the italicized sections. You maya turn in one entry for the entire group, but be that everybody's name is on the notebook. This notebook builds off of the thinking you began in entry #2.

• Begin by making a two-column chart
• On the left column, write down the page number of each italicized section and a few key words describing the information from that section
• Trace the development -- as we discussed in class, we move from cells to weapons, cells to weapons . . .
• On the left column, write notes summarizing the narrative -- pay attention to the relationship between the narrative section and the italicized sections that come before and after it.
• When you are done analyzing the structure of this chapter, explain what this structural analysis shows you about section II.

Reading Notebook #6:

• Compare your notes to the essay your partner wrote about you -- did s/he write about the same things you remember talking about?  Note any differences between what you remember saying and what you read.
• Did your interviewer seem to see you the way you see yourself?  If so, how.  If not, what are the differences?
• Discuss the interview process -- were you comfortable asking your partner questions about her/himself?  Listening to her/his replies?  Were you comfortable talking about yourself?

Reading Notebook #7

1. What does Griffin tell us about: Enrico Fermi? Enola Gay? Rita Hayworth? see especially details on pp. 75, 78, 79, 86, 94, 96 
2. Explain Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty

Reading Notebook #8

1. p. 84 & 84 -- what is the relationship between "fragementary thought" and "shared secret"?
2. Explain Griffin's point about Oakridge (see especially Edna's story). How do each of the people/events about which she writes in "Exile" mirror Oakridge?
3. POV -- What effect did having students at the front of the room, me sitting among the rest of the students, and students moving to different locations, have on your experience of class?  Use this experience to think about Griffin's point about fragmented memory/percpetion and the Heisenberg principle.
4. 102-103 -- How is that we fail to remember major historical events or to connect them to what goes on in our own immediate worlds and lives?  This is evidence of historical amnesia and of fragemneted memory which is also evidence of fragmented knowledge.   How does Griffin's work explain this as a problem and what does she seem to suggest that we do about it?
   

Reading Notebook #10
1) Reread your paper, re-reading my comments as you go;
2) Summarize my commentary, and discuss those points that you think might be helpful to your revision as well as those points that you may not agree with me about or that you do not think you want to focus your revision energy on;
4) Explain how, after this exercise, you might revise your paper.

Reading Notebook #12
Use our in-class work defining questions issues from Chorus of Stones and turning those issues into questions to develop an idea for your final project and questions to start research for your final project. Email the questions you develop to the class list. (If you do not have an email with the class's addresses in it, email me for this / lamy@georgiasouthern.edu)

Reading Notebook # 14
Free-write about your project plans-- 

• What is your focus? 
• What questions have you posed for your research? 
• Have you identified others in class working on similar issues?
• What help have they been to you in your research?
• What help do you need from me?
• Is there anything about this project that you don't yet understand?
• How is your proposal coming along?

Remember, one important component of this final project is to analyze cultural violence. As you begin drafting, make sure that you schedule a conference for me so that I can assess your work for this conceptual development and give you feed back as you write.

Final Exam:
Your final exam needs to demonstrate to me that you have learned something about the processes of critical reading, critical thinking, and analytical writing.  You may explain to me what you have learned and how you have most effectively learned by:

1.  explaining something about problems in your early writing, how you revised for these problems, and how successfully you think you addressed these problems;
2. explaining something about what we have read, how you engaged with that reading, and how your engagment (class discussions, personal thinking/conversations, personal writing, reading notebooks) expanded your critical thinking'
3. explaining something about your research project -- defining a topic, conducting research, developing a web site, etc.