L

(Both addresses pop into my yahoo account.) I encourage you to stay in touch with me via e-mail and web site. Please don't disappear. Stay in touch, talk to me if you run into problems, want to share a new enthusiasm, or you want to discuss your reading and writing projects.

BOOKS WE WILL READ (and we'll read them in this chronological order):

ü Crew, Linda. A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon 1845.Portland,OR: Oregon Historical Press, 2005. ISBN 0-87595-291-7. 2005 YA Oregon Book Award. Crew lives in Corvallis.

ü Gloss, Molly. The Jump-Off Creek. Mariner Books, 1999.

ISBN: 0395925010. 1990 Oregon Book Award. About a lone woman homesteader in the 1890s. Gloss lives in Portland.

ü Love, Glen A., ed. The World Begins Here: An Anthology of Oregon Short Fiction. Corvallis, OR: OSU Press. 0-87071-370-1. A variety of stories to give us a sense of history through the 20^th century.

ü Drake, Barbara. Peace at Heart: An Oregon Country Life. Corvallis, OR: OSU Press, 1998.ISBN 087071455-4. 1999 Oregon Book Award Finalist. Life in rural Yamhill at the end of the 20^th century by a Linfield professor.

ü Moore, Kathleen Dean. The Pine Island Paradox: Making Connections in a Disconnected World. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2004.

ISBN-10: 1-57131-281-1. . 2005 Oregon Book Award Creative Non-fiction. Making sense of life in Oregon in the 21^st century by the chair of the OSU philosophy dept. Moore lives in Corvallis.

I am pleased and excited to invite you into a course of reading and thinking about

Oregon Women Writers. I didn't take a "representative" approach; rather, I collected five books that I enjoyed and that spoke to me about Oregon, about women, or about what women writers think about Oregon. The major themes I see as I think about these books are:

ü the nature of the land to heal,

ü human dramas played out against a challenging landscape

ü the development of personal character by encountering natural forces

ü the “Eden” at the end of the Oregon trail

These stories take place in landscapes familiar to most of us who live in the West:

ü the old Oregon Trail (it runs right up the Willamette Valley from Oregon, over to the Umpqua, all the way to Ashland)

ü Corvallis, the Willamette Valley, King's Valley, & the nearby coast

ü the Alaska coastal islands

ü the Blue Mountains in NE Oregon

Each book has strong characters and authors I hope you will want to cheer for, learn from, and feel personally richer for having known.

RELEVANT WEB SITES

http://www.linfield.edu/library/index.html

Remember to go to the ADP/DCE link on the home page.

Molly Gloss's Home Page:

http://www.mollygloss.com/

Linda Crew's Home page:

http://www.lindacrew.com/

Kathleen Dean Moore's Home Page:

http://www.riverwalking.com/

Writing about Fiction:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_fiction.html

HELP!!! I Have To Write About This Novel, Poem, Play, Etc.!!!

http://uwc.tamu.edu/handouts/lit.html

Indispensable Writing Resources: A Complete Collection of Writing Essentials

http://www.quintcareers.com/writing/writing_labs.html

American Western Magazine Online (see: The Literary West)

www.readthewest.com/index.html

ABOUT THE COURSE

Upon entering the course, the student should be able to:

Ø Read college-level texts fluently

Ø Write short 500 to 1000-word papers with good control of grammar and mechanics

ü Make appropriate learning choices for him or herself

ü Manage personal time to meet class deadlines

Upon completion of the course the student should:

ü Have read or viewed a variety of texts by Oregon women authors critically

ü Have new experience making reasonable inferences using such critical thinking skills as compare/contrast or developing an argument to support a position

ü Have new experience finding a writing topic from reading or viewing and annotating. This means he or she needs to consider the evidence, organize the material, and communicate judgments in a variety of effective genres

ü Have new experience thinking and writing about meaning, interpretation, and evaluation of literature:

ü Compare and contrast characters and their motivations

ü Explain theme or plot by writing about them

ü Use direct quotes from texts to support written points in an essay and refer to and cite secondary sources when needed to develop a point

Ø Have an appreciation of Oregon literary themes and be eager to seek them out in other aspects of daily life

ü Have an awareness of the diverse voices that have shaped Oregon’s literary world in terms esp. of culture, gender, religion, race, and character

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION

This is a self-guided tour through a variety of books. Your own thinking and development of the assignments and interactions with the texts constitutes the "instruction." More than any other kind of class, life itself and the process of working your way through the materials will add to your ability to be in the world as a more cultured and educated person. The degree to which you enter into dialogue with me and/or other students in the class to augment your understanding of the material is self-motivated. I invite you to be adventurous in your reading this semester, to open your mind and heart to the new cultures, ways of writing and being you'll experience as you read, watch, write, and think about Oregon Women Writers.. This may be education at its most traditional, engaging directly with the world, letting it teach you with me over your shoulder saying, "Now read this cool book!"

ASSIGNMENT & GRADING

For this class you will do five assignments, each worth 20% of your total grade.

You may not read only four of the books or do only four of the five assignments without grade consequences. My total grade assignment for you is predicated on you attempting 100% of the assigned work. A penalty of –10% will be assessed by anyone attempting only 80% of the class work. Let me be perfectly clear: Even if you had 80/100 points, if you opted to complete the class at that point, an additional 10% would be deducted from your grade, resulting in 70% or C-.

90%-100% = A 80-89 = B 70 - 79 = C 60 - 69 = D

NOTE: This class does not carry automatic re-write privileges. If you wish to re-write a project, check with me first.

Each book will have a different assignment. Sometimes the points will come all in one paper; in other instances, you will complete an online quiz, I may require a forum discussion, plus a paper. I try to change it up to keep you interested.

Basic rules for the papers:

ü You must write in such a way that I can tell you've read the assigned text and understood it.

ü You must quote from the books to help make your points. This shows me your brain is engaged with the text.

ü Due dates are firm, although you are welcome to negotiate with me to make your life work. However, you must complete the work from one book seven days before the next one is due. I have a phobia against paper-dumping. Again, let me be clear: You may not write multiple assignments and “dump” them on me all in the last two weeks.

GENERAL DUE DATES

I am not a "deadline-nazi", but this is a general sense of when papers should come in if you were to write four papers:

No papers accepted after midnight, Thursday May 25.

ABOUT MY CRITERIA FOR GRADING

I look for intellectual involvement, a sense of excitement and commitment to the class and your personal explorations.

ü "C" is "average college work." That means you hit all the minimum requirements, quoted the text to make your points, and did just fine.

ü "B" means I can see you made particularly good use of citing the text; perhaps made an effort to add outside sources; perhaps thought through something particularly tricky or made a very specific effort to enrichen your writing and thinking. You didn't slow me down with a lot of mechanical errors and you generally did a very good job.

ü "A" is reserved for extraordinary work. The thesis is unusual, strong, and relentlessly developed with both quotes from the text and outside sources. Flawless editing and informal magazine-style citations don't get in the way of my pure intellectual enjoyment of reading your insightful critiques. Style, warmth, flair, and control of tone are those extras that helped take your grade "over the top."

METHODS OF EVALUATION

CONTENT Is there "beef?" You have something meaningful to say and have worked to put your thoughts in words. Good use of evidence, examples, data, etc. For literature papers, this means supporting your points with direct quotes from the texts and referring to secondary sources when its clear you need to.

ORGANIZATION Is the essay logically organized with good transitions an attention-getting introduction and a thought-provoking conclusion? Are paragraphs well-developed?

STYLE Good control of syntax? A variety of sentence lengths, attention paid to the quality of language? Good use of sentence attribution when quoting sources?

MECHANICS Spell-checked with good control of grammar and mechanical details.

ABOUT RETURNING YOUR PAPERS

I try to return comments and grades within ten days of receipt.

I am very disciplined about this and will meet this deadline (barring unforeseen medical emergency). This may seem like a long time for you to wait, but I need it to make sure you get my undivided attention.

Please, call me Sandy. Feel free to e-mail me any time. I'm not much of a "phone person," but if you feel you need to talk to me on the phone, that's okay, too.

ABOUT INCOMPLETES: I will consider an Incomplete when a student has successfully submitted three-quarters of the class work, has a reasonable chance of completing the course in a timely manner, has a documented emergency, and has contacted his or her advisor. The less work of yours I've seen, the less likely I am to grant an Incomplete.

Eng 306 Diverse Voices in Literary Expression

ABOUT MY CRITERIA FOR GRADING