English R1B

Other Readings and Media

Hunter S. Thompson. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (1971); Oscar Acosta. Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. (1972); Lorna Dee Cervantes. Emplumada. (1981); Lucha Corpi. Cactus Blood. (1995); Nikki Giovani. Love Poems. (1997); Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers. (5 th ed.)

Description

"Alfred Arteaga, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis, Allen Ginsberg, Thom Gunn, Robert Hass, Lyn Hejinian, Janice Gould, June Jordan, Cherr�e Moraga, Maxine Hong Kingston, Huey P. Newton, Ishmael Reed, Sonia Sanchez, Amy Tan.



Course Description: This course is designed as a writing workshop. Through peer editing and multiple drafts of papers, we will learn the art of proposing and sustaining an argument, the difference between grammar and rhetorical style, and the various stages of a research project. Together we will close-read for elements of style and composition and work across a variety of literary forms (autobiography, novel, poetry, journalism, and political essay), taking Bay Area writers as model rhetoricians. By focusing on writing as a process of rewriting and rethinking that is always in relation to the social life of the author and the social life of language itself, we will destroy the image of the solitary writer whose artistic product comes to her/him in an unmediated lightning bolt of inspiration (voil�! a poem! a novel! an eight page college research paper!).



Students will be encouraged to research a Bay Area social movement and the literatures associated with it (e.g. LGBT, Black Panthers, The Third World Strike or Ethnic Studies, Free Speech Movement, Beat Generation, Gonzo journalism, Black Arts movement, etc.). Once we have identified your area of interest, we will learn how to locate secondary materials and how to incorporate your research findings into the flow of your argument. "