LIT 6076, Section 0001:

Studies in Contemporary Nonfiction

Spring 2019

Course Number: 19294

Professor: Jocelyn Bartkevicius

Credits: 3

Modality: Face-to-face

Office: 252 TCH--Hours by Appointment

Email: Jocelyn.Bartkevicius@ucf.edu

Prerequisite: Admission to MFA Program in CRW, one of the English Department’s MA

Programs, or Permission of Instructor

Part I: Announcements

This syllabus may be modified during the semester. UCF requires all faculty members to document students' academic activity at the

beginning of each course. In order to document that you began this course, please

complete the following academic activity by the end of the first week of classes, or as

soon as possible after adding the course, but no later than Friday, August 26. Failure to

do so will result in a delay in the disbursement of your financial aid:

o Goals for the Semester Assignment

Part II: Overview

We'll begin the semester by considering how contemporary nonfiction--in particular, the

personal essay and the memoir, might be considered the art of witness. We'll reflect upon how

each of the writers we study is, in effect, "writing an American life." Among the related

questions we'll pursue at first:

What does it mean to witness?

What does it mean to turn the act of witnessing into "art"?

Is there such a thing as an "American" life?

Can writing capture life?

We'll also explore what motivates--or even compels--writers to write about experience and

memory. For some, it is a pursuit of truth. For others, an evocation of character, or questions

about how memory itself works.

We’ll also consider "form" and "genre." We'll read The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien,

and discuss his suggestion that the way to tell the truth is to fictionalize. We'll consider writers

who, through study, intuition, and even imitation experiment with ways that genre, form, and

style affects the material they are drawn to write.

We’ll explore the role that memory and perception play in creating effective prose narratives,

and how writers interweave history, culture, class, social justice, war, and other matters into their

artistic renderings of the lives they are living. We’ll also examine how a book can be built from

individual or related essays as well as a variety approaches to crafting book-length memoirs,

graphic narratives, and subject- or adventure-centered works.

Reading List

The following books are available at the University Book Store, and also from online vendors.

Books are listed in the order that--most likely, but depending upon how the class reacts--we will

read and discuss them.

As a class, we'll all read the following books:

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

Marcia Aldrich’s Companion to An Untold Story

Jo Ann Beard’s The Boys of My Youth

Roxanne Gay’s Hunger

Dinty Moore’s Between Panic and Desire

Mimi Schwartz’s Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father’s German Village

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home

Inara Verzemniek’s Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming

on the War Roads of Europe

After Montaigne, a collection edited by David Lazar and Patrick Madden

Highly recommended as a companion to this collection, but not required: Donald M.

Frame’s translation of The Complete Essays of Montaigne

Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge: An Unnatural History of Place

Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential

Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime

Marcia Aldrich’s Waveform: Twenty-First Century Essays by Women

Sara Smarsh’s Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest

Country on Earth

The following books will be read and reported on by select students, depending upon

whether you are inclined to further your studies in the personal essay or memoir:

For essay specialists:

John D’Agata’s Next American Essay

For memoir specialists:

Sven Birkerts’s Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again

Projects

At the beginning of the semester, students will work with the professor to design individual

projects and approaches to reading and class discussion. The initial goal statement will launch

everyone on these projects.

In addition, projects will include:

Annotations (brief, focused, craft-centered analyses of each book).

Imitations or meditations (brief, intuitive, exploratory or inspirational riffs on each book).

Engaged class discussion.

Informal in-class presentations.

Formal in-class presentation.

Final project in the form of an exploratory or investigative article on craft OR an original

work of nonfiction accompanied by a reflection centered on craft.

Part III: Quotations to Consider

As we set out to explore matters of craft, art, and inspiration in contemporary nonfiction, we'll

begin by reflecting on what some contemporary writers (and their forebears) have said about

reading and creating nonfiction.

Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life:

[T]his is a book of memory, and memory has its own story to tell. . . . I have done my best

to make it tell a truthful story.”

Patricia Hampl "Memory and Imagination" (from I Could Tell Your Stories):

"It still comes as a shock to realize that I don't write about what I know, but in order to

find out what I know. Is it possible to convey the enormous degree of blankess,

confusion, hunch, and uncertainty lurking in the act of writing? .... I sit here before a

yellow legal pad, and the long page of the preceding two paragraphs is a jumble of

crossed-out lines, false starts confused order. mess. The mess of my mind trying to find

out what it wants to say."

Phillip Lopate, the Introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay:

"The essay form as a whole has long been associated with an experimental method. This

idea goes back to Montaigne and his endlessly suggestive use of the term essai for his

writings. To essay is to attempt, to test, to make a run at something without knowing

whether you are going to succeed."

Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story:

“Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or

circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies

the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.”

James McConkey, The Anatomy of Memory:

“Memory is responsible for our identity; it is the faculty whereby we perceive

connections between past and present, thus enabling us to make sense of our

surroundings; it underlies our creative achievements.”

Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory:

The following of . . . thematic designs through one’s life should be, I think, the true

purpose of autobiography.

Bernard Cooper, "Marketing Memory" (from Charles Baxter's The Business of Memory:

The Art of Remembering in an Age of Forgetting):

"[A] good memoir does more than dredge up secrets from the writer's past. A good

memoir filters a life through resonant narrative, and in doing so must achieve a balance

between language and candor. It was not the subject matter of my memoirs that I hoped

would be startling, but rather language's capacity to name what was once nameless, to

define what had once been vague and chaotic."

Virginia Woolf, "A Sketch of the Past" (from Moments of Being):

"Here I come to one of the memoir writer's difficulties--one of the reasons why, though I

read so many, so many are failures. The leave out the person to whom things happened.

The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being. So they say: "This is

what happened"; but they do not say what the person was like to whom it happened."

Part IV: Course Policies and Procedures

About the Course

Over the course of the semester we’ll consider the ideas explored by the writers above as well as

related ideas about contemporary nonfiction. We’ll start by considering the nature of narrative

prose, how a writer finds and conveys truth or character or memory or meaning. We’ll reflect

upon the role that memory and perception play in creating effective prose narratives.

We'll also explore how writers reach beyond the intricacies of the self to create a cultural context

(or, "build a world) by interweaving history, culture, class, social justice, war, and other matters

into their artistic renderings of the lives they are living.

We'll also discuss other elements of craft, including the following: What is story? Why tell

stories? Do all nonfiction writers engage in story telling? Are we “hardwired” for narrative (as

some writers and neurologists claim)? Or is narrative overrated? What is "lyric," and how does

such a stylistic approach affect character, truth, etc. Is the impulse to write literary nonfiction the

same as to write fiction? Is the “result” or “product” similar? And why does all this matter

anyway?

Finally, we'll discuss two "subgenres" of literary nonfiction, the personal essay and memoir, and

consider how a writer's understanding of "genre" and "subgenre" impacts the writing. We'll

consider some of the following questions: Is every short piece of nonfiction a "personal essay"?

Is their value in studying the history of a genre? Does writing in a "subgenre" suggest imitation

and adherence to "rules" and tradition? Does "contemporary" mean throwing off the strictures of

the past--whether genre or other aspects of style?

Guidelines for Discussion (in class and online)

Throughout the semester, you’ll be working in collaboration. There will be conversations about

craft, goals, and reading. There will be weekly discussions about the reading.

It’s important during discussion to respect the viewpoints of others, whether or not they

correspond to your own. One of our chief goals is to work together to become more effective

readers and writers. We can learn from interpretations and approaches that differ from our own.

That learning is best achieved through an atmosphere of respect and openness. By sharing

alternative points of view with respect and honesty, we can work together to broaden our views

of reading.

There is no one factual interpretation of any of the books or essays we'll read. Listening closely

to other people's reflections about the reading is a great way to enrich your own view of

nonfiction.

Likewise, the art of interpretation is inherently an interaction between writer (or text) and reader.

We are here to consider what these writers and books and essays have to say to us, not to riff on

a topic without regard for how the writer is presenting it. To that end, everyone is asked to refer

to specific passages in the book to ground discussions and insights.

During presentations or readings of imitations—discussion of peers’ close studies and original

works—it’s important to balance honest interpretation with tact. Remember that the writing is in

progress. Our goal is to motivate writers to take their work to the next level. Constructive

criticism is the goal.

NUTS & BOLTS:

This is a course for writers and scholars, that is, for those who are inspired to engage in these

questions because they matter to their own writing, and to their approach to reading and to craft.

It is a course that is rigorous in the study of craft, but meant to inspire your writing (not test your

critical reading skills . . . or your literary politics).

Our weekly sessions will focus on matters of craft and genre. And life, because for most writers,

writing is, in a sense, a matter of life and death.

Each week, one or more of the graduate students in the class will be charged with starting our

conversation by presenting a bit of research about the writer and work in question and starting us

out with a few questions about craft. And for each book, everyone in the class will be asked to

write an annotation, a brief study of an element of craft.

Also each week, each student in the class will be asked to contribute insights into his or her own

ongoing project, whether through a discussion of weekly annotations or imitations or both.

In addition, there will be opportunities for experiments in style, and an individual presentation

and final project.

The reading and writing requirements for this course will be very demanding—so be prepared to

dedicate the required time. Sometimes you might feel a bit overworked. At other times, you will

be exhilarated when you discover something about your writing--something that surprises you

because it is so unexpected.

Course Objectives (What You'll Learn This Semester):

Whether your specialty is creative writing (nonfiction, fiction, or poetry) or Literature and

Cultural Studies we’ll explore a range of approaches to narrative that should fuel your creative

and/or scholarly work. Among the objectives for the semester are to:

Explore a range of approaches to storytelling in general and nonfiction in particular;

Obtain a thorough knowledge of craft-based approaches to discussion, analyzing,

reviewing, and interpreting literary nonfiction;

Understand the contemporary scene in literary nonfiction, including the personal essay

and memoir;

Explore strategies for writing narrative, lyric, segmented, graphic, and postmodern works

about the self;

Practice and refine the art of reading like a writer, attending to craft;

Build an appreciation for the various approaches to contemporary literary nonfiction;

Explore you own writing from a fresh perspective;

Draft a philosophy of the genre and consider possible professional contributions to the

field.

_______________________________

How to Do Well in This Course:

It is absolutely essential to attend our Tuesday night sessions, complete the projects due on

Canvas each week, and to check the Webcourse every weekday when projects are occurring

online, to produce well-thought-out and sustained projects as assigned, to meet all project

deadlines, and to participate in class discussions and workshops with enthusiasm, sophisticated

and analytical commentary, and respect for all those present.

Announcements, assignment updates, and emails may be sent out as often as daily during the

week, and it is your responsibility not only to keep up with the posted assignments and deadlines,

but also to keep track of any modifications or announcements that may go out during the school

week.

Remember: Writing—and a career related to writing—takes commitment and dedication. If you

do the bare minimum this semester, you'll achieve the bare minimum as a writer and

professional. (And surely earn a less than stellar grade.) You’ve already learned from workshop

that writing takes devotion and effort, that writers can't wait for inspiration. They write--and

read--every day. Preparing for a profession that supports your writing is similar. The more you

put into your writing and studies of craft this semester, the more prepared you will be to sustain

your writing after graduation.

Required Assignments and Projects

This is an overview of the major projects you will participate in this semester. For full details and

guidelines, consult the assignments, modules, and announcements you will receive throughout

the semester.

1: Annotations

These are short studies of craft that will be due prior to our face-to-face classes whenever we

read a new book.

2: Experiments in Style and/or creative responses to reading.

Most weeks, you will be asked to write an imitation, or otherwise to create a piece of writing

inspired by one or more of the books we or essays we've read.

3: Informal Presentation

Each week, a select student or group of students will be asked to initiate the discussion of the

assigned reading by introducing a bit of research about the book or writer and by asking some

opening questions.

In addition, each of you will be asked to contribute some insight gained from your annotation for

the book in question.

4: Formal Presentation

Each member of the class will collaborate with peers to present perspectives on their independent

reading. Such presentations could become a mini conference paper on an individual project. This

is meant not only as a creative and writerly project, but also as practice for writing and delivering

a paper at a conference such as FLAC or AWP. This project will focus on both recommended

reading and required reading.

5. Final Project

This project combines analysis and creative writing, and may take the form of a craft study or

another kind of article that might find a home in a journal such as AWP Chronicle or Poets and

Writers. It may also be a work of original writing accompanied by a reflection on craft and the

semester's reading.

6. Final Reflective Essay

This project is an informal essay about what you’ve learned about craft and your own writing;

how your writing has evolved, where your weaknesses and strengths lie, and where you see your

writing taking you—your goals, dreams, aspirations.

7. Sustained, analytical participation in class discussion that reveals close and careful

reading of the assigned works.

Attendance and Deadlines:

Attendance at our weekly meetings and in online discussions are essential to success in this class.

You will have one “free” absence, best saved as a sick day. Beyond one absence, it is extremely

difficult to earn a respectable grade in the class—so much depends upon being part of the

community of this course.

All assignments must be completed by the deadline. Late work will receive a score of "zero." Be

sure to keep pace with assignments. If you anticipate problems with making deadlines, talk to the

me early to develop a strategy for meeting deadlines and avoiding procrastination (or working

around other deadlines and commitments).

Remember that reading and writing—whether creative or professional writing—take time. Leave

time to read closely, to write your annotation, to sketch, rework, add new material, rework, and

sketch some more before turning in your projects, whether a short annotation, a presentation, or a

final project. It is not possible to produce quality writing in a matter of a few hours. Give

yourself the time to explore your projects well before the deadlines.

Ask yourself this: What do you want to get out of the course? Do you want to fuel your

writing, to understand craft, and to join the national conversation among writers? If so, by all

means meet all the deadlines and attendance requirements. But go beyond the minimum. If

you focus on just doing the minimum to get by, you may pass the course, but you will get

minimal results. For maximum benefits, put in maximum effort.

Disability Accommodation

UCF is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all persons with disabilities.

Students with disabilities who need accommodations in this course must contact the professor at

the beginning of the semester to discuss needed accommodations. No accommodations will be

provided until the student has both contacted the professor to request accommodations and

registered with Student Disability Services, Student Resource Center Room 132, (407) 823-2116,

before requesting accommodations from the professor.

Academic Honesty and Original Work

All work that you submit for this class must be your own. Your online postings, your quizzes,

sketches, stories, final portfolio, and any other assignment you turn in for the course must be

original--that is, written by you alone and written for this course and no other course. Your

writing will improve only to the extent that you put in the effort to create your own postings,

stories, and other writing, and strive to reach your vision.

"Recycling," in which students turn in a project for more than one course (or make a few changes

in writing turned in during a previous semester) is cheating. It will result in an "F" for the

assignment.

"Rewriting," in which students consult a source, change a few words, and present the material as

their own, is plagiarism. Plagiarism and cheating of any kind on an examination, quiz, or

assignment will result in at least an "F" for that assignment and may also lead to an "F" for the

entire course. Plagiarism and cheating subjects a student to referral to the Office of Student

Conduct for further action. See the UCF Golden Rule for further information

(http://www.goldenrule.sdes.ucf.edu/)

The professor may require you to run any or all assignments through turnitin.com at any

time during the semester.

Computer and Software Requirements:

You will need access to a reliable internet connection, MS Word, and a very reliable virus

protection program to participate in and complete this course. If you have a wonderful laptop and

can work well at home, in the library, or a coffee shop, so much the better. However, equipment

does fail. Computer equipment failure (or loss of computer or internet) is no excuse for

missing assignments. UCF provides students with wonderful computer labs and internet access.

If you are sometimes working from out of town or out of state, look for a local library, college,

or university that offers access to computers.

Have you heard of Murphy's Law? "If something can go wrong, it will." Be prepared. Leave

enough time before all deadlines so that you can complete assignments successfully even if your

internet goes out, your laptop flies out the window, or your roommate's dog chews through your

computer cords.

You will be uploading and downloading files all semester. It is important to the success of

everyone in the course that attachments are virus-free.

Grades:

To pass the course, you need to meet all the requirements specified above. To pass with

distinction (that is, to earn a grade of A or B), you'll need to make a special contribution in one

or more of the following ways:

Participate in discussions (in class and online) with well-thought-out responses and

questions;

Hand in all work on time;

Draft, redraft, and revise all writing projects (and complete them by the deadline).

Understand that drafting any kind of writing takes time and effort--not a single burst of

inspiration or an all-night writing frenzy. Begin work on writing projects well before the

deadline, and take them through several drafts before turning them in.

Participate avidly and effectively in discussion and any workshop we may have, taking

each classmates' writing seriously, genuinely pitching in the help improve each draft, and

posting tactful, well-thought-out responses.

Read all assigned reading carefully and critically, thinking about how what you read can

feed your writing, and contribute to your professional development and that of your

classmates';

Post and/or contribute critical, thoughtful responses to reading assignments, and reply

respectfully and thoughtfully to classmates' comments about reading;

Write a strong, convincing final narrative about your semester;

Do exemplary work on every project you are be assigned;

Delve into your writing--read and write like a professional rather than on a student just

getting by.

As in most graduate courses, you will receive comments on your work rather than “scores.” If at

any point in the semester you have a question about how the comments translate into a grade—or

what grade you would be earning were the semester to stop at that point—please set up a

conference with some advance notice so that I can review your work.

Appointments and Other Forms of Help:

If you have any questions about any aspect of the class, be sure to ask them early in the semester.

For routine questions, the first place to go is the community discussion called "Assignment

Help." Post any questions that classmates are likely to benefit from reading about (or be able to

provide answers for). For example, if you can't get documents to attach, or can't figure out a due

date, post in "Assignment Help." (But if you are having major technical problems accessing or

navigating the web portion of the class, get help from the techrangers at Web Services!) For

questions, more focused on your own work, consult me via email or during an appointment.

It is crucial to ask questions as soon as you have them. Do NOT wait until the end of the

semester to ask questions, especially if they concern improvement or grades. Send an email when

there's still time to have an effect on your work. I can't tell if you have any questions or concerns

about the internship unless you talk about them. In certain cases, a visit to the Writing Center or

possibly a face-to-face appointment may be essential.

The grading scale for the course follows the standard UCF plus/minus grading system. The

points you receive on your work throughout the semester are added up, divided according to the

number of projects, and translated into letter grades according to the following point system:

A, 93-100; A-, 90-92

B+, 87-89; B, 83-86; B-, 80-82

C+, 77-79; C, 73-76; C-, 70-72

D+, 67-69; D, 63-66; D-, 60-62

F, 0-59

Grades of "I" (Incomplete) may be negotiated only in extreme, documented emergencies such as

long-term hospitalization.

Schedule Overview (Subject to Change) Week 1, 1/8: Course overview and introduction. Goal statements due.

Week 2, 1/15: Read and discuss Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Write annotation and

imitation. Request for informal presentation due.

Week 3, 1/22: Read and discuss Marcia Aldrich’s Companion to An Untold Story. Write

annotation and imitation.

Week 3, 1/29: Read and discuss Jo Ann Beard’s The Boys of My Youth. Write annotation and

imitation.

Week 4, 2/5: Read and discuss Roxanne Gay’s Hunger. Write annotation and imitation.

Week 5, 2/12: Read and discuss Dinty Moore’s Between Panic and Desire. Write annotation and

imitation.

Week 6, 2/19: Read and discuss Mimi Schwartz’s Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My

Father’s German Village. Write annotation and imitation.

Week 7, 2/26: Read and discuss Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. Write annotation and imitation.

DUE: Independent Project “bid.”

Week 8, 3/5: Read and discuss Inara Verzemniek’s Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of

Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe. Write annotation and imitation.

Week 9, March 11-15: Spring Break. Read and write an annotation on the first book for your

independent project.

Week 10, 3/19: Read and discuss After Montaigne, a collection edited by David Lazar and

Patrick Madden. Write annotation and imitation.

Highly recommended as a companion to this collection, but not required: Donald M.

Frame’s translation of The Complete Essays of Montaigne

Week 11, 3/26: Read and discuss Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge: An Unnatural History of

Place. Write annotation and imitation.

Week 12, 4/2: Read and discuss Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Write annotation and

imitation.

Week 13, 4/9: Read and discuss Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime. Write annotation and imitation.

Week 14, 4/16: Read and write an annotation on your second book for the independent projects.

In class: Discuss projects and presentations.

Week 15, Classes end Monday, April 22. Final Exam period, Tuesday, April 30 will be devoted

to presentations and discussions of your final projects, also due by 4/30.

The following books will be read and reported on by select students, depending upon

whether you are inclined to further your studies in the personal essay or memoir:

For essay specialists:

John D’Agata’s Next American Essay and Marcia Aldrich’s Waveform: Twenty-First Century

Essays by Women

For memoir specialists:

Sven Birkerts’s Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again and Sara Smarsh’s Heartland: A Memoir of

Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest

Country on Earth