Question: What is an author, to what extent are you already one, and how might you become one?

To prepare to answer this question, review the explicit and implicit definitions of "author" that you have encountered this semester. Review assigned texts (including films, websites, and author visits) from this course to find material that supports, complicates, and contradicts your own ideas. (If there are assigned sources that you haven't yet read, skim them to see how useful they might be.) Collect samples of your work from this course (and, if you wish, from others) to demonstrate the extent to which you believe you are already an author.

Suggestions:

1. Pay particular attention to the work of Barthes and Foucault.
2. Think about the ways in which the word "student" is often assumed to be outside or even the opposite of "author."
3. You may want to use your August 29 and November 28 writing on this topic as prewriting for the paper, or you may want to include them as documents in your portfolio.

Manuscript preparation: Follow the specifications here.

Due date: The final draft is due in hard copy in 239 HBC by December 11. The paper should be the first document in a portfolio of your work. If you would like to have the portfolio mailed back to you, include a self-addressed envelope big enough to hold it.

Grading: It will be important for this paper to draw broadly on sources. As I read, I'll be looking for a thesis-driven essay, and the thesis should be insightful, rather than repeating huge thematic claims such as "the author in our culture is typically male." If I'm convinced that the writer cares about what s/he's saying, I'll feel that I should care to read it. I always appreciate arguments that take multiple points of view into account--arguments that offer evidence for and consider counterevidence to the thesis. Editing matters; so does the manuscript presentation and the citation and documentation of sources. If you do the assignment as requested and hand it in on time, you'll get a "C." If you do it well, you'll get a "B." If you do it exceptionally well, you'll get an "A." This paper counts as 15% of your final course grade.

WRT 428
Authors, Writers, Heroes

Section 1, Fall 2006
Syracuse University
Time: TTh 11-12:20
Place: 323 HB Crouse

Instructor:
Rebecca Moore Howard
Office: 237 HB Crouse
Office hours
Phone 315-443-1620
FAX: 315-691-9821
rehoward@syr.edu
AIM: ProfBfromWV