Kerry Balden

FYS II further develops the skills learned in FYS I, with specific attention to writing for readers. Throughout, students will learn, practice, and analyze principles of writing such as argument, introductions, conclusions, and more. But all of this with a view to motivating and convincing particular readerships. After several introductory weeks of finding and reading pieces from your fields of interest, we begin short written assignments that focus on a certain writing principle of the week. By the third or fourth week, each student will have selected a research topic that they will focus on for the remainder of the course. Those who do not already have some notion of a topic beforehand will be supported with suggestions of artists, critics, and movements across the far-reaching areas of study at SAIC. Students can expect most class days to be divided into three parts: peer analyses of the previous week's writing, lecture and exercise on a new principle of writing, and in-class time for writing and research. The course depends on and flourishes from the peer analyses, and the samples of writing that students find in their fields of interest. From these, students experience how, as a reader, it is to read both the better and the worse, and how to improve from the latter to the former: Writing is a process, to which revising for readers is essential. The variety of topics, techniques, styles, and discourse communities provide the opportunity not only to become well-versed in your particular field of interest, but competent to discuss and critique other fields, whether adjacent or otherwise. From week to week, the written assignments become slightly longer, with students writing in total 20 pages of formal, revisable writing.

In this course, we learn to inquire according to the most basic question available to us: to ask what something is. For this purpose, we'll read a handful of Platonic Dialogues, which are as comprehensive as they are artistic. Each dialogue asks a question about something fundamental to human life: What is love? What is art? What is friendship? What is power? What is god? What is courage? What is justice? Throughout the course, we'll write a couple of shorter assignments in preparation for a final paper. Building on FYS I, we now further learn how to write for specific readers. Far from merely demonstrating that you the author understand something, your writing will have to explain something to someone who doesn't understand, someone who may be resistant to understanding. In order to do so, we rely on regular, structured sessions of peer feedback, which involve specific, suggested revisions, rather than mere indications of like and dislike. And though we'll learn select principles of writing, such as those of argument, or of introductions, or of conclusions, the course utterly depends on your involvement: If we cannot be readers for one another, in all our idiosyncrasies and specific feedback, then we can't learn how to write for this or that discourse community. Students can expect to write at least two pages per week, culminating in a final research paper or project. Over the semester, students produce 20-25 pages of formal, revisable writing.