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.

This class will introduce students to the thought of the two major Ancient Greek thinkers, Plato and Aristotle. For both thinkers we will begin by exploring their basic metaphysical beliefs, then examine how those beliefs lead them to ethical and political reflections that are both parallel and contrasting. Finally, we will ask how art fits into their vision. We will read broadly from their works, with special emphasis on Plato¿s Republic and Aristotle¿s Nicomachean Ethics.