College WritingSelf, Society & Sustainability

Introduction

Today WELCOME! In Class Today:

Lecture: Course Overview BREAK More on Class Format BREAK In-class writing (or HW): Response #1:

What did your reading of A Short History of Dublin reveal to you about the values and traditions of society in Dublin? How does the portrait of Dublin compare with your expectations of the Dublin you imagined and the reality of contemporary Dublin you have experienced? (150 words) DUE Monday Sept 21st.

FOR HW: Download and/or print Syllabus from Moodle – Read

it; bring any question to the next class. Background Readings: Bellah, Robert N., Richard

Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, Steven M. Tipton. Habits of the Heart.

“Preface to the 2008 Edition” and “Preface to the 1996 Edition: ‘The House Divided’”

ppvi-xli., and “Preface to the First Edition” (1985)

On Thursday: Overview lecture.

For HW: Do Diagnostic Assessment Test during your

assigned Moodle training slot.

College WritingSelf, Society & Sustainability

The Civil Society

“ ‘ How ought we to live?How do we think about how to live?Who are we …?What is our character?’”

SelfHow can I be most myself?How can I best lead the most fulfilling life?

OthersHow does my life enrich by others?What duty do I have to others?

SustainabilityWhat kind of lifestyle feels most sustainable for me?Are the patterns of consumption & governance today sustainable into the future? Do I have a duty to leave future generations a world that has at least the same freedoms and opportunities I had?

SocietyWhat kind of society is truly in my best interest to fight for or preserve?What responsibilities do I have to society in return for the freedoms I enjoy?

“What Is An American?”

A question asked, in some form, by many well-known writers:

Hector St. John de CrevecoeurAlexis de TocquevilleRalph Waldo EmersonHenry David ThoreauWalt Whitman

American character / ideals

Are central ‘American’ values?

Where did they come from?

Was this what the Puritans were really saying?

Were they always the same?

Anything missing? Does such

individualism serve us, either individually or as a society?

• ‘Self-reliance’

• Independence

• Freedom to determine and direct one’s own resources

• The pursuit of happiness

Is the perceived selfishness spawned by the intersection of democracy, capitalism and individualism limited to America?

Might other nations and cultures vociferously resist the influence of America precisely because they detect aspects within their own culture and people that are too susceptible to being too like America?

Is extreme individualism more a factor of technology, capitalism and cosmopolitanism – and therefore transnational?

In this module

Has American identity always been the same?

Have people changed in some fundamental way?

What are the implications for for the individual, for society and for the planet?

“What Our Words Tell Us”

– David Brooks, NYT, May 20, 2013

“We write less about community bonds and obligations because they’re less central to

our lives.”

words and phrases like “personalized,” “self,” “standout,” “unique,” “I come first” and “I can do it myself” were used more frequently. Communal words and phrases like “community,” “collective,” “tribe,” “share,” “united,” “band together” and “common good” receded.

general moral terms like “virtue,” “decency” and “conscience” were used less frequently over the course of the 20th century. Words associated with moral excellence, like “honesty,” “patience” and “compassion” were used much less frequently.

“What is the American?”

Patrick Deneen, in “Awakening from the American Dream,” starts his essay by asking the same question others do.

Is that question even possible any more in our transnational world?

Transnationalism

Post-structuralism

- Pure identities can’t exist.

- At best, we’re ‘mostly’ x, y or z with elements of other identities reconstituting us continually.

Jacques Derrida, 1930-1984

Yet something remains, a trace, which reflects the original identity; however, the new identity is now different.

Sicily?

Staten Island?

Bell Harbour

Rockaway, Queens, NY? Co. Clare?

The New Irish

We need to ask

“ ‘Who are we …?What is our character How ought we to live?How do we think about how to live?”

These questions are perhaps more pressing because of transnationalism.

“ What is the American?’

and

Questions common to all identities:

“What Is An American?”

self-reliant, free, [and]concerned with the pursuit of happiness

duty to family

service to the community,

civic virtue, [and]

the common good (or the commonweal)Are other cultural identities trying to

harmonise these spheres as well?

B R E A K

Self

Others Sustainability

Society

Wk 5:Associatio

nal life (then):

Tocqueville,

“Individualism in

Democratic

Countries”

Wks 3&4:Solitude, Space, Nature and the

Environment

Emerson & Thoreau

Wk 8:Ayn Rand,

“The Virtue of

Selfishness”

Wks 1&2:Do we have

“wonderful” lives? & How can we define

happiness?

Wk 7:Associational Life (today):Joel Stein &

Josh Sanburn,

Will Millennials Save Us?

Wk 6Associational

Life (more recently)Robert PutnamRole of Clubs

(Associational Life) in Society

Wks 11-12:What are the biggest

THREATS to happiness, for the individual and for

society?

Week 9:

SUSTAINABILITY

Wk 10:

Reading Week

Wks 13-14:What are the best ROUTES to happiness, for the individual

and for society?

Mondays

Lectures

Self, Society and Sustainability

CLASS FORMAT

Thursdays

In-class writing tasks

Peer reviews (where you swap papers with a partner and get feedback on your writing), or

“News stand” (analyse the rhetorical features of a piece of writing)

Happiness

1– Wk 1&2 - What is “A Wonderful Life” and What is Happiness?  Close-reading essay, 1 response piece, 1 article/writing task- upload, 1 peer review, 1 outline 

2 - Wk 3&4 - Solitude, Space, Nature and the Environment: What are the benefits of spending time alone?  Synthesis essay, 2 quizzes, 2 response pieces, 1 peer review, 1 outline.

3 - Wk 5-8 - Associational Life: Benefits of Groups Terministic Frame essay, 3 response pieces, 1 peer review, 1 outline.

4 – Wk 9-15 - Sustainable Development: What are the greatest threats to happiness and best routes to happiness, for the individual and for society?3 response pieces / tasks (students select 2); 2 outlines, and and an

Exam (compulsory to pass).

FOUR PROJECTS

Don’t be boring!

“ John Dewey [once said], ‘any teaching that bores the student is likely to fail.’”

[Booth] “Any teaching that bores the teacher is sure to fail.”

Wayne C. Booth, 1921-2005

Booth: how to avoid boring essays.

1. Develop an awareness of writing for an audience.

2. Have something of substance to express.

3. “Enliven your mental personality” -- Improve your habits of observation and of approach to the task of writing

1. Writing for an audience.

Write with a sense of an audience to be persuaded.

Write with [a sense] of a serious rhetorical purpose to be achieved.

2. Have something of substance to

express.

We want good content in your essays. We want to read your ideas, and we want those ideas to be rich, and supported by research and evidence.

We don’t want regurgitated ideas.

Have you, as Edith Wharton says, nourished yourself on the “food of the full-grown” or have you simply grabbed what was nearest to hand?.

3. Don’t be controversial for

the sake of it.

As Wayne Booth warns, “Our students bore us, when they take a seemingly lively controversial tone,

because they have nothing to say, to us or to anybody us else.”

“If and when they discover something to say, they will no longer bore us, and our comments will no longer bore them.” (256).

“Enliven your mental personality.” Genuinely.

Become perspicacious. Develop your habits of observation

Be scrupulous and creative in your approach writing and re-drafting.

Be diligent Write drafts. Essay structure clear or can it be improved in a way that

would make my argument more effective? Your introduction: Can it be improved? Is it inventive? Is there an elegant (and apposite) metaphor or quote you

might integrate? Your conclusion: simply restate the thesis?, or have you

signalled tthe implications of your thesis?

4. Develop impeccable grammar and syntax skills.

"No passion can survive a woman's seeing her lover hold his fork the wrong way.” 

- Edith Wharton, The Gods Arrive

B R E A K