Welcome to Advanced Essay Workshop: The Art of the Review! I am Dr. Mary Isbell, and I’ve created this page to communicate what we’ll learn and how we’ll learn it this semester. I’ve tried to present this information as clearly as possible. I’ve also hidden the name of a major league baseball team somewhere on this page. Students who e-mail me the name of the character before the start of the second class will have one missed informal writing assignment forgiven. The penalty for sharing the secret word with a classmate who has not carefully read the entire syllabus is…guilt.
Contact Me
I love talking to students. Please get in touch often to ask questions, share ideas you’re having about the course, or discuss something interesting you’ve read or watched.
- E-mail: misbell@newhaven.edu
- Office Hours (just drop in!): Wednesdays, 7:30pm-8:30pm at this link
- Schedule a one-on-one appointment (especially if you’re not free during office hours): https://calendly.com/maryisbell
Course Description
In this course, we will learn the conventions of the review essay by reading a diverse sampling of reviews (from film reviews in The New Yorker to product reviews on The Worst Things for Sale) and experimenting with a variety of critical personae. As a class, we will explore the role of reviews in our culture and consider what can/should be reviewed: we will decide together which cultural events and products we will review and explore various routes to publication for review work.
Required Materials
All texts assigned in this course will be made available through our Canvas site.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
- write essays using the elements of the specific genre being studied
- identify the use of these elements in the works of others
- critique writing in a workshop format
- revise essays with attention to form, style, and rhetorical concerns
Major Assignments & Grade Breakdown
| 25% | Informal Writing Assignments |
| 50% | Average of Graded Reviews |
| 25% | Final portfolio Reflection |
My Course Policies (read carefully!)
Diversity Statement
I value human diversity in all its richly complex and multi-faceted forms, whether expressed through race and ethnicity, culture, political and social views, religious and spiritual beliefs, language and geographic characteristics, gender, gender identities and sexual orientations, learning and physical abilities, age, and social or economic classes. I respect the value of every member of the class, and everyone in the class is encouraged to share his or her unique perspective as an individual, not as a representative of any category. Multicultural and intercultural awareness and competencies are key leadership skills, and I intend to present material and classroom activities that respect and celebrate diversity of thought, background, and experience.
Attendance
Attendance and participation in our synchronous class meetings will enable a much richer experience in this course, but I understand the unpredictability of the moment. Astros. Students who are unable to attend our virtual class sessions synchronously can complete in-class activities (described in the course schedule) by 11:59pm on the day of class with no grade penalty.
Deadlines
There is no penalty for requesting an extension for any work due in this course. Send me an e-mail if you need more time. You do not need to give a reason for the request.
How We Will Use Zoom
We will gather twice a week on Zoom, a platform that can be a little tricky to navigate. We will spend some time at the start of the semester developing a process that will allow us to communicate as clearly as possible. I offer here a set of strategies to get us started, but we may revise these at some point.
- Video: There is no expectation for you to turn your video camera on for this course; you can absolutely join with audio only.
- Audio: For the most part, I will keep everyone muted
- Zoom Chat Window: To ensure that all students have a clear path to sharing ideas and asking questions, I will ask all students (those with cameras on and those with cameras off) to type “I have a question/I have a comment” in the chat window. If I call on you, I’ll invite you to unmute so you can ask your question live.
- Note-taking Document (a Word Online Document): You are all welcome at any time to add ideas, questions, and links to this document (I hope this will keep the chat window clear for people to say “I have a question/I have a comment”)
- To protect the privacy of you and your classmates, I will only record short bits of class sessions (and I will alert everyone on the call before I do this in case they want to mute and turn video off)
Please…
- Read the syllabus and/or assignment prompt carefully before contacting me with a question about the course. An e-mail that includes some variation on “I re-read the assignment and I still have a question” is a way of signaling to me that you respect my time (this will work with other professors as well!).
- Include a greeting (Hello, Hi, etc.) and a closing (Thank you, Best, Sincerely, etc.) in all e-mails that you send to me (and all professors!).
Online Tools (to reference as needed)
I will be introducing a number of free online tools for reading, writing, and researching over the course of this semester. I include instructions for each of these programs below and you will see in the course schedule when you should get them set up. Please don’t hesitate to drop by office hours or e-mail if you have trouble navigating this technology. I strongly recommend that, where possible, you use your university e-mail username and password when registering for these accounts to cut down on confusion when logging in.
Word Online
Word Online documents are accessible via a link (they live in “the cloud”) and any changes made to them are available in real time. I will create a private Word Online document for you to use for the entire semester. This document will only be viewable by you and me. I will ask you to post informal writing in this document, while your formal projects will be submitted through Canvas. I will grade the work in your Word Online document on a pass/fail basis and keep a running tally of your grade in Canvas. You can use Word Online without downloading Microsoft Office for your computer, but you will need Word when creating formal assignments to be uploaded to Canvas. Instructions for getting set up with Office 365 and downloading the applications for your computer are at this link.
Microsoft Teams and Canvas Discussion
I think it’s important for us to be able to chat in an ungraded and unstructured way. This typically happens organically and I’m not sure which platform will work best, so I’ve created a Microsoft Team and an open discussion thread in our Canvas site. I chose these two platforms because neither of them require you to create a new user account. I will not communicate any new information through these channels, but I do hope we’ll find one that helps us get to know each other better.
Kaizena
Kaizena is a tool you can use to request and give feedback on papers at any point in the semester. I will sometimes share a paper from a previous class for all of us to review together on Kaizena, but you can also share a draft of your paper with just me or a group of students. I will demonstrate how to use Kaizena early in the semester, but if you need a refresher after the fact, follow these steps:
- Go to app.kaizena.com (make sure you don’t go to kaizena.com…that’s the wrong place!)
- Click sign up (I suggest signing in with Microsoft Office–you can then use your university e-mail address)
- Choose ‘Student’
- Enter the code for our group: hnmdm
Zotero
Zotero is the best tool around for gathering, annotating, and citing sources. I don’t require students to use Zotero, but I do offer extra credit on the research project if you save your source material in Zotero and share it with our class group. If you want to use a very quick version of it (better than easybib, in my opinion), visit https://zbib.org/. If you want to try out the full application, you can register for an account here: https://www.zotero.org/user/register/. After you have registered for an account, download the version of the application appropriate for your computer here: https://www.zotero.org/download/. Visit this link for a video demonstrating how to create an account and download Zotero. You can find instructions for using groups in the screencast at this link (please note that you’ll have to send me an e-mail with your Zotero account username so I can add you to our class group). The process will be slightly different for each of you depending on your computer and the internet browser you use most often. I am happy to help if you have trouble, but first see if you can find an answer to your question by searching the Zotero forums: https://forums.zotero.org/categories/. If you can’t find an answer to your question on the forum, post a question!
Hypothesis
Adding notes in the margins of the texts you read (annotating) is one of the best ways to understand what you are reading and begin to formulate your own ideas in response. Many of you have probably discovered that it is hard to take notes when reading online. Hypothesis is an annotation tool we will use to annotate readings for this class. When you open an assigned reading in Canvas (including this syllabus!), you’ll notice that when you select text, you are prompted to make an annotation. Please annotate actively as you read and respond to the annotations of your classmates. If you run into any technical issues, please send an e-mail to support@hypothes.is and copy me on the message.
Note: It is possible to use Hypothesis to annotate anything you read on the web (instructions at https://web.hypothes.is/). We’ll be using the tool from inside Canvas because it makes things simpler in the classroom, but I encourage you to try the free online version on your own (it can be very helpful for the research project in this class and those you’ll encounter in the future!). I’m happy to answer questions if you have any.
