1. SEMESTER AT SEA COURSE SYLLABUS
Discipline: English Writing
Spring 2009
ENWR 357Z: True Lies: Creative Writing as Critical and Trans-Cultural Consciousness
Upper Division
Faculty Name: Mark Shadle
Suggested Pre-requisites: None, but a previous college-level writing course is recommended.
“The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.”
Naguib Mafouz, Egyptian novelist and recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Why have people enjoyed inventing and telling stories around campfires and on-board ships since time
immemorial? How have writers imagined worlds into existence? How do our stories record, inscribe and critique
our experiences, especially when traveling? How can the lie of fiction expose the truth of experience? These are the
kinds of questions we will seek to discover, extend and answer through our fiction. We’ll begin where most fiction
around the world does, with telling a story in order to discover others, and read novels from Egypt and India.
Writers are readers who make the magic of fiction, and we’ll gear our writing to particular places we’re visiting,
incorporating theory and criticism from reading, composition, rhetoric, literature and cultural studies. We’ll use film
clips and music to expand the quality, originality and appeal of our fiction, and reflect upon translations and
meanings between languages and cultures. Exploring the rhetorical process—which includes writer, audience,
occasion, message and purpose—will help us discover topics autobiographically. We’ll believe in the power of
fiction to tell its truth, based upon research, and by exaggerating details to appeal to intellect (logos), emotion
(pathos) and ethics (ethos). We’ll use a textbook, two novels, web readings, interactive lecture, seminar discussion,
small group collaboration and teacher-student conferencing.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
• Practicing creative and critical reading of published, relevant fiction from countries being visited.
• Complicating the notion of voice/self: multiples voices/selves open up when we think of this plurality of
intentions as a healthy or useful thing.
• Juxtaposing and/or integrating the details and processes of speaking, listening, reading, writing, thinking and
the senses.
• Writing in not only an either/or, but also either/AND consciousness to capture the complexity of life, especially
across cultures we will be visiting.
• Overcoming "writer's block" by trying new kinds of pre-writing, including cubing, writing to music and writing
to visuals.
• Learning new kinds of collaboration with teacher, classmates and Writing Lab tutors.
• Understanding and practicing new kinds of revision of writing, based upon attention to audience and
constructive criticism.

2. TOPICAL OUTLINE OF COURSE
IL: Interactive Lecture; RF: Rhetorical Focus; AD: Analytic Device; PW: Pre-Writing/Inventon; WA: Writing
Assignment; SGF: Small Group Focus; TR: Textbook Reading; W/ER: Web Reading or Electronic Reserve;
1/19/09: Depart Nassau
1/21: A1: Self-Introductions and Overview of Course; IL: “Wilson Harris’ Anchor Story as Story Finder”; PW: Three
Columned List: http://books.heinemann.com/researchwritingrevisited/; TR: Preface; Chap 1; “Use of Force”
W/ER: my large post-Fulbright multiwriting project: “A Pororoca of Desire: Genesis, Colonizatio, Projection,
Connection & Sustainability in the Brazilian Amazon”:
http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/outreach/fulbright07/;
1/23: A2: RF: Writer; AD: grapevine; WA: Unusual Experience; SGF: Tai Chi Handshake; W/ER: Gardener’s
Multiple Intelligences: http://wilderdom.com/personality/L2-4GardenerMultipleIntelligences.html; Kolb’s
Perception Chart: http://changingminds.org/explanations/learning/kolb_learning.htm; Kiersey Test:
http://keirsey.com/siteexplain.html
1/26: A3: : IL: “Duende: Taking an Appropriate Risk with the Personal and the Private”; PW: Drawing; TR: Ch 6 &
7; W/ER: “Circular Ruins,” by Jorge Luis Borges: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jatill/175/CircularRuins.htm;
Garcia Lorca, “The Play and Theory of the Duende”;
1/28-2/1: Cadiz, Spain
2/2: A4: RF: Writer as audience; AD: Syncope; WA: “Self-Portrait”; W/ER: “Borges Y Yo”: text:
http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~fabianb/borgesandi.html; performed with flamenco:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqxR4AVsEz8; SGF: Revising-Editing Checklist introduced, and synesthesia;
2/4-2/8: Naples, Italy
2/9: A5: Film: Il Postino (Neruda’s exile in Italy); Begin reading Naguib Mafouz, Midaq Alley.
2/11-2/15: Istanbul, Turkey
2/16: A6: RF: Addressed and Invoked audiences; WA in ER: “Roaming in Mind” in Teaching Multiwriting; SGF:
Synecdoche; Finish reading Mafouz’s Midaq Alley;
2/18-2/22: Alexandria, Egypt
2/24: A7: IL: “Is Egypt “Black” or “White”: The Tug-of-War in the Fiction of Ishmael Reed’s Novel, Mumbo
Jumbo, and Scholarship of Bernal in Black Athena to Make Egypt “African”; discuss Mafouz novel; PW: layered
writing as Hieroglph; TR: Ch 2;
2/26: A8: RF: “kairos” (timing/occasion); AD: prosody (music behind text); WA: revise Fieldwork Journal Entry for
prosody; SGF: prosody in Mafouz and our work; begin reading Arundhati Roy’s novel, The God of Small Things.
2/28: No Classes
3/1: A9: IL: “The Loose Talk of Persuasion: Ethical Appeals Through Descriptive Fiction”; PW: small space
observation on board; TR: Ch 4; W/ER: “The Loose Talk of Persuasion” in Teaching Multiwriting; finish reading
Roy novel;
3/3: A10: RF: purpose; AD: symbiosis; syncretism; sympathy; WA: Observation of Small Space; SGF: details across
the senses;
3/5-3/9: Chennai, India
3/10: No Classes
3/11: A11: IL: “The Extraordinary Quality of Everyday Life: The Voice of Things”; discuss Roy novel, using
Observation papers and Fieldwork Journal Entries; PW: Listing; TR: Ch 10; W/ER: Thai novelist Pira Sudham, who
was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature: 211.84.160.7/jingpinkecheng/wyx/englishkejian/kejian1/d103.ppt
3/13: A12: IL: “The Unconquered Mind: Fiction as Resistance and Change Agent”; discuss Sudham excerpt; PW:
broadsheet for POW’s and ourselves; TR: Ch 10 (especially Sherman Alexie’s “This Is What It Means To Say
Phoenix, Arizona”);
3/15-3/19: Bangkok, Thailand
3/20: A13: IL: “Getting Behind the Front of War: A Review of Books and Films by Americans About the Viet Nam
War”; PW: epitaph to elegy; broadsheet to parody; fieldwork journal to flash-fiction; TR: Ch 3; W/ER: excerpts
from Andrew Pham’s Catfish Mandala;
3/22-3/26: Ho Chi Minh, Viet Nam

3. 3/27: A14: 3/29-3/30: Hong Kong, China
4/2-4/3: Shanghai, China
4/4: A15: RF: Forest of Rhetoric: http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm; AD: paralepsis, paronomasia and
parody; WA: First Long Piece due; SGF: overlay;
4/6-4/7: Kobe, Japan
4/9-4/10: Yokohama, Japan
4/11: A16: IL: “Inside and Beside Ourselves: Japanese Literature as Homage to Ancestors and Isolation”; PW: free-
write on kanji; TR: Ch 5 and 9: W/ER: tanka and haiku poetry: http://www.ahapoetry.com/TANKA.HTM; W/ER:
excerpts from Basho’s Narrow Road to the North, Bruce Jay Friedman’s Tokyo Woes and Jay McInerney’s Ransom;
4/12: A17: RF: epideitic; AD: metonymy; WA: tanka or haiku; SGF: listening techniques;
4/15: A18: Student-Teacher Conferences and Small Group Conferences to evaluate all work for Deadline Portfolio
revision;
4/17: A19: IL: “Testing Reed’s Law: ‘When a parody is better, it replaces the original”: Are Our Parodies of
Ourselves in the Pacific Still ‘Off-Base?’”; PW: periplum ; TR: Ch 11; W/ER: excerpts from Malinowski fieldwork,
Mark Leyner’s Et tu, babe?” and Asian-American stand-up comics Frank De Lema and Margaret Cho;
4/19: Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.
4/20: A20: RF: message and purpose; AD: satire; WA: do satire of Fieldwork Journal entry; SGF: hyperbole;
4/22: A21: IL: “Inside Pyramids of Blood and Stone: How Mayans and Mosquitoes Are Transforming the Magically
Real Monroe Doctrine in Central America”; PW: free-write to Mayan slides three ways; W/ER: excerpts from Popol
Vuh and contemporary Mayan poets Victor Montejo and Maya Cu;
4/24: A22: RF: classical rhetoric applied to glyphs; AD: syncope related to “disappearing people”; WA: Second Long
Piece Using Reflection due;
4/25: GS Exam
4/26: Study Day: revise all writings;
4/27: A Exams: Small Group Workshops on revising all writings for Deadline Portfolio;
4/28: Study Day
4/30-5/1: Guatemala (port TBA);
5/2: Reflection/Re-Entry: Wrap up and sharing reflective pieces and self-class evaluations;
5/3: Transit Panama Canal
5/4: Packing: Deadline Portfolios Due
5/5: Packing/Convocation
5/6: Arrival in Miami: goodbyes
FIELD COMPONENT
Students will write regularly in their Field Journal during site visits when in port. The notes, pictures and artifacts of
these journals will go beyond mere description to include careful observations, reflections, interviews and more. They
will eventually generate topics for two longer pieces of fiction worth 40% of the grade for the class. Samples of both
published and student journals using multiple genres and media across the disciplines to record the various cultures will
be provided, and the Field Journal will be discussed, along with other work, during the regular small-group
revision/editing sessions, as well as in the Student-Teacher Conference. Journals in this class might re-inscribe the
kinds of sites in the novels we are reading from Egypt and India, or meetings with authors or writers in various
countries we visit. They might record relations of race, class and gender in the cultures we will be visiting, which will
be used in characterization in their fiction, and they may include an understanding of what is unique about particular
places used in creating a setting. Personal and political relationships observed among individuals and groups in port
may provide the idea of structure for students’ fiction.

4. METHODS OF EVALUATION
The percentages of the grade are as follows:
Class Attendance 10%
Class Participation 10%
Small-Group Collaboration 10%
Field Journal: 2 Longer Pieces 40%
Short Writings/Listenings 20%
Student-Teacher Conference 5%
Course Evaluation 5%
Total: 100
Assessment: A Revision/Editing Checklist (attached to syllabus) will be negotiated and agreed upon for awarding
points. Holistic assessment of two longer pieces and the numerous shorter writing and listenings that generate them
will occur, but the Revising/Editing Check Sheet will outline organization, style and conventions. Key factors
concerning a grade include:
• Demonstrated Understanding of Cultural Difference through Fiction
• Demonstrated Growth in Critical Eye through Collaboration and Revision
• Care and completeness of research
• Appropriateness and cleverness of form and style
• Number of errors in mechanics and grammar at sentence level
• Overall organization, logic, neatness and aesthetic integrity
Attendance & Participation: Students are expected to attend all classes, on time. After several unexcused
absences (usually medical ones, reported to the professor ahead of time), a student’s grade will be lowered for
attendance, and late assignments are discouraged and accepted at the discretion of the professor. Beyond attendance,
students are expected to have done reading, research and writing listed for each day’s class, and make sure their
voice and ideas are heard in seminar discussion.
Small Group Collaboration: Students will be required to do workshops together in small groups and regularly
participate in critiquing their own and classmates’ work. These sessions are crucial, as they allow students to bring
together and apply the interactive lecture, rhetorical focus, analytic device and reading to the pieces being revised
and edited. Various theoretical and practical strategies for sharing work will be introduced by the professor.
Field Journal: Students are expected to write regularly in their Field Journals, especially during site visits. Here
this will make connections between our readings, lectures, discussions and films. These notes in these journals will,
through pre-writings, lead to two longer pieces of fiction of publishable quality, which students will be encouraged
to submit to undergraduate journals or other media.
Student-Teacher Conference: At least one student-teacher conference will be required two thirds of the way
through the course, to discuss the strengths and weaknesses, and consequent grades, for the student’s work.
Self-Class Evaluation: Each student will complete this, noting how their work and consciousness has changed
through the course, and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, as well as those for the course. Students will
explain what happened to their initial fears and expectations, and critique objectives, methods, texts, facilities and
pedagogy in useful detail.
"I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia..."
Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges

5. REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS
AUTHOR: Burroway, Janet
TITLE: Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
PUBLISHER: Pearson Longman
ISBN #: (prefer paperback): # ISBN-10: 0321277198 or ISBN-13: 978-0321277190
DATE/EDITION: January 2007
COST: $62.95 (Amazon.com)
AUTHOR: Mafouz, Naguib
TITLE: Midaq Alley
PUBLISHER: Anchor
ISBN #: 10: 0385264763 and 13: 978-0385264761
DATE/EDITION: December, 1991 (English)
COST: $10.17 (Amazon.com)
AUTHOR: Roy, Arundhati
TITLE: The God of Small Things
PUBLISHER: Harper Perennial
ISBN #: 0060977493 and ISBN-13: 978-0060977498
DATE/EDITION: May, 1998 (English)
COST: $10.17
Students are also expected to have a college-level dictionary and grammar desk reference of the student’s choice.
RESERVE LIBRARY LIST
AUTHOR: Sunstein, Bonnie and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater
TITLE: Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research
PUBLISHER: Bedford/St. Martin’s
ISBN #: 10: 0312438419 and 13: 978-0312438418
DATE/EDITION: Third Edition; September, 2006
COST: $40.95
AUTHOR: Shadle, Mark and Rob Davis
TITLE: Teaching Multiwriting: Researching and Composing with Multiple Genres, Media, Disciplines, and Cultures
PUBLISHER: Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN #: 10: 0809327546 and 13: 978-0809327546
DATE/EDITION: First Edition; March, 2007
COST: $35
AUTHOR: Eldon, Dan and Kathy Eldon (editor)
TITLE: The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon
PUBLISHER: Chronicle Books
ISBN #: 10: 0811815862 and 13: 978-0811815864
DATE/EDITION: August, 1997
COST: $23.10

6. AUTHOR: Couseineau, Phil
TITLE: The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred
PUBLISHER: Conari Press
ISBN #: 10: 1573245097 and 13: 978-1573245098
DATE/EDITION: April, 2000
COST: $11.53
ELECTRONIC COURSE MATERIALS
AUTHOR: Garcia Lorca, Federico and Norman Thomas Di Giovanni and Christopher Maurer
ARTICLE/CHAPTER TITLE: “Play and Theory of the Duende”
JOURNAL/BOOK TITLE: In Search of Duende
VOLUME: # ISBN-10: 0811213765 and 13: 978-0811213769
DATE: April, 1998
PAGES: 48-62
AUTHOR: Borge, Jorge Luis
ARTICLE/CHAPTER TITLE: “Circular Ruins”
JOURNAL/BOOK TITLE: Labyrinths: Selected Writings and Other Stories; ed. Donald Yates, James Irby and
William Gibson
VOLUME: New Directions; ISBN-10: 0811216993 and 13: 978-0811216999
DATE: May, 2007
PAGES: 45-51; available online at: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jatill/175/CircularRuins.htm
AUTHOR: Shadle, Mark
ARTICLE/CHAPTER TITLE: “A Pororoca of Desire: Genesis, Colonizatio, Projection,
Connection & Sustainability in the Brazilian Amazon”
JOURNAL/BOOK TITLE: http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/outreach/fulbright07/
VOLUME: Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies of the University of Texas at Austin
DATE: January, 2008

7. PAGES:
AUTHOR: Shadle, Mark
ARTICLE/CHAPTER TITLE: “Traveling at Home”
JOURNAL/BOOK TITLE: Wendell Berry
VOLUME: University of Idaho: Confluence Press; ed. Paul Merchant
DATE: 1991
PAGES:
AUTHOR: Berry, Wendell
ARTICLE/CHAPTER TITLE: “Standing by Words”
JOURNAL/BOOK TITLE: Standing by Words: Essays by Wendell Berry
VOLUME: Shoemaker and Hoard
DATE: January, 2005
PAGES: