Reading
The following texts are available at the Davidson College bookstore:
- Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics
- Kyle Baker, Nat Turner
- Richard McGuire, Here
- Art Spiegelman, Maus
- Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, Daytripper
- Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
- Gerald Graff, They Say/I Say
In addition to these graphic narratives and the writing guide, we’ll also have a number of online readings. When we have PDFs, I strongly encourage you to print them out and read them offline.
Other Materials
In addition to the required texts above, you’ll need a few other things to succeed in WRI 101:
- A steady supply of red, yellow, and green colored sticky tabs
- Your Davidson-provided Google Account
- A Hypothesis account
- A Davidson Domain
Work
This course is structured around four major writing projects. Each project takes approximately three weeks to complete. Each project involves a work plan, peer review, and a series of drafts and revisions. Only the final draft of each writing project will receive a letter grade.
Each unit of the course will kick-off with a warm-up assignment designed to help you better understand your object of study. These warm-ups will all involve writing, but they are not your typical essay. Rather, they are creative-critical projects.
You will also have assorted in-class and out-of-class small writing assignments. These are ungraded, but failure to do them impacts your participation grade.
Grading
The grading for Writing 101 breaks down as follows:
- Four Warm-ups: 20% of your final grade
- Four Writing Projects: 60% of your final grade
- Peer Review and Self-Critique: 10%
- Participation: 10%