Seminar in Scholarly Inquiry 1 SSI1 104 Why Travel Tales from Far Wide Sec A Tues Thurs 2 3 20pm Wyatt 206 Sec B Tues Thurs 3 30 4 50pm Wyatt 206 Fall 2018 Priti Joshi Professor Office Hours Tues 1 2 pm Wed 5 6 pm Thurs 5 6 pm and by appointment Office Wyatt 338 e mail pjoshi pugetsound edu Phone 879 3515 Mailbox Wyatt 331 Writing Advisor Will Keyse Office Hours Tues 6 9 PM Wed 11 12 PM Thu 2 4 Fri 11 1 PM Sun 3 5 cwltappointments pugetsound edu We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time T S Eliot The Four Quartets Overview and Objectives The purpose of this course is two fold I II To familiarize you with the critical reading analytic and writing skills of the academic community To do the above under the auspices of the topic Why Travel a focus that will introduce you to the ways humans have engaged the world beyond their immediate precincts Why do people travel Our ancestors of course were nomadic and as far as we can tell settled humans have continued to feel the urge to explore and move beyond the boundaries of their known world We travel so much that it would not be unreasonable to call our species homo peripateticus This course will engage theories of travel drawn from diverse disciplines such as anthropology history and philosophy and examine some seminal instances of travel writing from Herodotus the father of travel writing to Columbus to contemporary writers such as James Baldwin and Orhan Pamuk In each instance we will test a theory against one or more case In doing so you are invited to enter a scholarly conversation and offer your own contribution to it We will focus on developing and strengthening your skills of academic writing a type of writing that is not discipline specific Such writing requires writers to make an argument by engaging in a critical dialogue with other generally published writers Throughout the term we will work on honing three broad abilities 1 Reading accurately generously and critically 2 Making an argument that engages with others ideas by testing and extending them 3 Using textual evidence to make your arguments and ensuring that you responsibly acknowledge credit and cite others ideas In addition to these primary goals you will also learn the following specific skills To EVALUATE SOURCES for reliability and appropriateness To distinguish between TYPES OF SOURCES scholarly v popular primary vs secondary To distinguish between SUMMARY ASSESSMENT ANALYSIS and INTERPRETATION and to learn to use each effectively and appropriately in your writing To develop strong ASSERTIONS OR CLAIMS and provide EVIDENCE for them To SELECT TEXTUAL EVIDENCE judiciously and deploy it economically To distinguish between WAYS TO USE TEXTUAL EVIDENCE and to deploy a range of strategies To SITUATE AND INTEGRATE textual evidence into your arguments to best effect To ORGANIZE your papers effectively and clearly To eliminate GRAMMAR and SYNTAX errors in your writing To present your work ORALLY to an audience If this sounds daunting take heart I do not expect you to know how to do all this at the start of the semester We are together for 14 weeks during which time you will have many opportunities to develop these skills Thus the final paper is worth more than the earlier two Course Requirements This is a reading intensive course The readings are neither simple nor quickly absorbed hence we will spend considerable time on each Plan to return to the readings often and to re think your initial responses to them As your understanding of an essay develops so will the complexity of your writing about it In order to help you with the complex readings prepare you for discussing and writing about them and provide a low stakes writing environment I have assigned a Process Writing for almost every class In order to receive credit you must post your PW to Canvas prior to the start of class The PWs constitute 15 of your final grade and you must complete a minimum of 15 of 17 PWs if you complete all 17 I will drop your two lowest grades You will be assessed on your engagement with the text s and the thoughtfulness of your responses A mere summary of the reading will receive a B or C at best a thoughtful engagement with the reading an A For each paper you will submit a typed draft If you miss the draft workshop or come without a substantial daft your grade on the paper will be lowered a letter grade We will workshop a lot in this class peers will read your PWs and drafts and provide feedback for revision you will also read peers work and be asked to respond to it constructively Please be prepared to share your work with others and to be as Page 2 of 11 constructive and generous with your peers as you would like them to be with you The focus of this class is on college level critical reading writing and thinking One of the tasks for all liberal arts thinkers is to translate ideas and issues from one sphere into another To start you on this path I will ask you to complete one informal project in which you take a journey and communicate it in a medium of your choosing The journey can be a bus ride to a part of town unknown to you a visit to one of Tacoma s museums attending a meeting of a group you are not a part of etc the submission could be a map a written review an audio recording etc You are limited only by your imagination The key is that you integrate the critical ideas of our class into another realm medium Grade Breakdown Paper 1 Paper 2 Paper 3 Process Writings Translation Project Participation Presentations Peer Reviews 15 20 25 15 10 10 5 Required Texts o There is no textbook for this class all readings are on our class Canvas site You should PRINT A COPY of each reading mark and annotate it as you are reading and bring your marked copy to class You can print in the library or stop by the bookstore and request a copy of the readings via Print on Demand You will pay for the packet upfront and be notified when it is ready for pickup in approximately 24 hours o Copyright and Fair Use Course materials are subject to the copyright law of the United States Title 17 U S Code They are for educational purposes only and limited to students enrolled in the course Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited o Sound Writing the handbook written and produced by Puget Sound students with the support of the CWLT the handbook is born digital and is best consulted on a digital or mobile