AUG 25

WRITING STORIES

“Notebook Strata,” via Present & Correct

TO PREPARE FOR TODAY:

• Read THREE of the following:

  • Goldstein, “Why Kids Can’t Write”

  • Lasky, “What Poetry Teaches Us About the Power of Persuasion”

  • O’Rourke, “I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What AI Is Doing to Students”

  • NCTE, “Understanding and Teaching Writing”

IN-CLASS DOCUMENTS:

• Presentation, Week 1 Powerpoint (coming soon)

• Handout, Course Syllabus (coming soon)

SUPPLEMENTAL RESOURCES (THINGS I’LL DRAW FROM OR REFERENCE IN CLASS):

• Exquisite Corpse

• Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel Lecture

• Origins of writing: Denise Schmandt Besserat, How Writing Came About

• The dangers of writing: Plato, Phaedrus; Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication; J. Elspeth Stuckey, The Violence of Literacy

• Impacts of print: Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change; Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book

• Literary salons: Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters; Jurgen Haberman, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.

• Functional uses of writing: Ben Kafka, The Demon of Writing; Craig Robertson, The Filing Cabinet

• The idea of “seeing the present through a rear view mirror” comes from Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore’s The Medium Is the Massage.