Monthly Archives: February 2021

Getting Started

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This post has been updated with additional information about grading options and the assignments due next Tuesday. Remember: if you choose the “Structure and Accountability” grading option, you must come to class and do all assignments. If you choose the “Maximum Flexibility” option, you must only do the assignments in bold (and will only be graded on these), but you are WELCOME to still choose to do the other assignments and come to class for your own benefit. Whichever option you choose is only locked in for Unit 1. You can change your mind for future units.

Welcome to our course! Here’s an overview of the stuff we’re doing this week.

Goals for Our First Week

  • Get to know each other!
  • Get everyone set up with a CUNY Commons account
  • Discuss the shape of our semester and course policies

Who I Am

White woman with short hair and glasses smiling at the camera. She is wearing a black shirt with a red and green plaid blazer over it

First, let me introduce myself! My name is Olivia Wood. I’m studying for my PhD in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach here at John Jay, and I also work part time at the NYC College of Technology (City Tech) in Brooklyn. It is totally fine for you to just call me by my first name. Really.

I live in Washington Heights, but I’m originally from North Carolina, where the rest of my family still lives. I have a double major in English and anthropology, my master’s thesis was about Trump, Twitter, and Twitter activism, and my PhD specialization is in LGBTQ+ rhetoric, writing, and history.

In the Before Time (pre-coronavirus), I used to enjoy theatre, visiting my family, and going to weekly trivia nights in my neighborhood. Now, I mostly play video games and watch movies with my partner.

What To Do Before Our First Class

Now that you know a little about me, please fill out this Getting To Know You survey so that I can start getting to know you too! Only I will be able to see your responses.

  1. Click on the “Syllabus” tab in the main menu. If you’re on your phone, look for the “Menu” button at the top and then tap it to expand the full menu. You can read the syllabus closely, or just skim it so you know what information is there. You can always look back at it later.
  2. Click on the “Course Schedule” tab and read over the calendar for our class.
  3. Explore the other tabs and links to get a sense of what else is on our site.

Our First Zoom Class

Our first Zoom class will be on Tuesday, February 2nd at 9:25am. Because this class is Mixed Synchronous, we will NOT have class on Thursdays during this time. 

Here’s the Zoom link! For call-in info, go to Blackboard and then click on Course Information. (I’m not pasting it here in order to protect from Zoom bombers who use automated scanning programs to look for Zoom links.)

Zoom “Rules”

Totally okay to keep your audio/video off, just use the chat, etc. 
Totally okay if your family members/roommates, pets, etc. are visible
Totally okay if a child you’re responsible for needs to “attend class” with us

If your environment is noisy, mute yourself when you’re not talking.
If you’re doing something you don’t want us to see/hear during class, make extra sure you are muted/video off.
Be clothed

Participating

If no one is in line to speak, go ahead and speak! You don’t need to raise your hand. 
If someone is currently speaking, but you would like to get in line to say something, type “stack” in the chat. Whoever is first in the stack speaks next, then the second on the stack, and so forth. 

What To Do After Class

  1. Take this Syllabus “Quiz.” (Feel free to “cheat” as much as you want to find the answers. The goal is just to make sure you know some key information about our class.)
  2. Watch this video on how to get set up on the CUNY Academic Commons and follow the instructions. IGNORE the part at the end about Hypothes.is. 
  3. Join our course group on the CUNY Commons
  4. Introduce yourself to the class! Post an introduction to yourself (as a comment on this post or by making your first Post on our site)
    This can include whatever information you would like to share. It can be written, or it can be photos/a video, or a combination. You can include a real picture of yourself, a Bitmoji like I have on our site, or no pictures at all. It’s up to you!
  5. Post replies to your classmates to say hello! 

What To Do on Our Asynchronous Day (Thursday)

Although I will list asynchronous readings and activities as being due on Thursday, you can do them at any time unless otherwise noted.

For this first week, please read the following:

List of Some Everyday Genres
“What is Genre Theory?”

And read my digital lecture on genre.

After you’ve done the readings, keep a genre log for a day or two. Just write down (maybe in a note in your phone) all of the different genres you have read and/or written in during that time period. This is only required for people who choose the “Structure and Accountability” grading option on this survey.

What To Do Before Our Next Class (Tuesday, February 9)

Watch these videos:

Annotating Video 1
Annotating Video 2
Close Reading Video

Write an Imaginary Resume and either post it here on the course site or turn it in on Blackboard. (I hope you will choose to post it here on the site, so your classmates can see it too!) Instructions here.

For those who pick the “do all assignments” grading option:

We will practice annotating and close reading in class. Please bring one or two examples (a poem, a couple paragraphs of prose, a short video, etc.) to class for us to do together. Then you’ll turn in your annotations after class.

Digital Lecture: What is Genre?

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You’re probably most familiar with “genre” in terms of kinds of books or movies: sci-fi, action, romance, comedy, horror, thriller, etc. When you know the genre of a book or movie, you make assumptions about what the story will be like, what kinds of things it will or will not contain, and whether or not you will like it. A lot of these assumptions will be correct! If you’ve ever thought, “Oh, I bet they’ll get together at the end” or “Oh, I bet he’s the bad guy,” you’re already doing genre analysis.

A genre is a type of writing, defined by certain rules, norms, patterns, or expectations. Genre shapes content, but it doesn’t determine content. Writers have lots of room to play around and be creative within a given genre, and tell the story they want to tell. If they break too many of the norms/patterns for their genre, their story might be called “genre-bending” or just be classified as a different genre entirely. I might say that the Mandalorian is genre-bending, because it’s technically science fiction (it takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, and there are spaceships), but it’s also a Western (Mando is basically a space cowboy who travels around to different remote settlements and helps them out with stuff). People might also say that a story “redefines the genre.” For example, most British/American fantasy is heavily influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien and Lord of the Rings. And a lot of paranormal romance is influenced by Stephenie Meyer and Twilight.

Parodies sometime use the norms/expectations of a genre to make fun of that same genre by subverting them in some way– Scream makes fun of horror movies, The Last Action Hero makes fun of action movies, Deadpool makes fun of superhero movies, etc. They belong to those genres, but they’re also commenting on them/joking about them.

Okay, now to move away from literary/fictional genres.

These same principles apply to other kinds of writing– in fact, basically EVERY other kind of writing.

Here are some genres I’ve used just in communicating with you:

  • Syllabus
  • Calendar
  • Interpersonal Introduction
  • Semi-formal email
  • Survey
  • Blog post

And here are some other genres I’ve read or written today:

  • News article
  • Tweet
  • Facebook post
  • Text message
  • Academic essay
  • How-to instructions
  • To-do list
  • Poem
  • Weather alert

Your ability to interpret what I’ve communicated to you is partially dependent on your familiarity with these genres. You know how to read a calendar. Since most if not all of you are entering your second (or later) semester of college, you will have seen college-style syllabuses before. You know at least a little bit about how to navigate them and what kinds of information you can expect to find there.

The rules of genres are not always clear. If you’ve ever been anxious about sending an email because you’re not sure if it’s formal enough, or polite enough, or too friendly, or not friendly enough, that’s genre anxiety!

How do you know if something is a genre? Is “non-fiction” a genre? If “romance” is a genre, is “paranormal romance” a genre, or a subgenre? A Buzzfeed article and a New York Times article are usually very different, but they’re both news. Are they the same genre, or different genres? Can something belong to multiple genres at the same time?

There isn’t any one answer to these questions. We could probably argue about any of them for a long time! In this class, I’m not worried about technicalities of what counts as a genre. But just about anything we write, we’re not writing from scratch (even if we are starting with a blank page), because we already have other people’s genre expectations to work with.

For example, when I sat down to write our syllabus, I didn’t start with the question of “What even is a syllabus? What should I include on it?” I already knew what types of things it needed to contain. I just had to decide on the organization, the formatting, and the actual content (the genre tells me I need to have a grading policy. What is MY grading policy?).

So, this class is about looking at writing from the level of genre. We’ll be practicing:

  • Analyzing examples of a genre to figure out its rules/norms/expectations
  • Replicating those rules/norms/expectations ourselves
  • But inhabiting the genre with our own ideas/content

The better you are at these skills, the easier it will be to write things you’ve never written before.

Here are some genres we will write in in this class:

  • Resume
  • Personal reflection
  • Personal introduction
  • Review
  • Online/social media criticism
  • Academic criticism
  • Lab report/experimental article
  • Ethnography
  • Discussion post
  • Field notes
  • Peer feedback
  • Literacy narrative
  • Annotations
  • Personal website

And we’ll read/watch/listen to even more genres!

Why Genre and Imagination?

I teach this class with a theme of “making stuff up” because if the content is all imaginary, none of it is real anyway, it directs your focus more to the form/organization/style (genre!) than to being accurate in your information. If I asked you to write a real resume for yourself, for our assignment due next week, you’d probably be stressed about how to best describe your experiences and how your classmates and I will view you based on your resume. Which would make it harder to really focus on “what is the genre of resume?”. So, we’ll be writing resumes for fictional characters, and you can use those same skills to make (or revise) your real resume later.

Your Task

Before our next class, keep a genre log for a day or two. Just write down (maybe in a note in your phone) all of the different genres you have read and/or written in during that time period. You might also want to notice whether they’re genres you feel comfortable in or not.