Introduction

1. College Writing
Self, Society & Sustainability
Introduction

2. Today WELCOME!
 In Class Today:
 Lecture: Course Overview
 BREAK
 More on Class Format
 BREAK
 In-class writing (or HW): Response #1: What did your
reading of A Short History of Dublin reveal to you about
the values and traditions of society in Dublin? How
does the portrait of Dublin compare with your
expectations of the Dublin you imagined and the reality
of contemporary Dublin you have experienced? (150
words) DUE Monday Sept 21st.

3. FOR HW:
 Download and/or print Syllabus from Moodle – Read it; bring any
question to the next class.
 Background Readings: Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M.
Sullivan, Ann Swidler, Steven M. Tipton. Habits of the Heart.
 “Preface to the 2008 Edition” and
 “Preface to the 1996 Edition: ‘The House Divided’” ppvi-xli., and
 “Preface to the First Edition” (1985)
 On Thursday:
 Overview lecture.
 For HW:
 Do Diagnostic Assessment Test during your assigned Moodle
training slot.

4. College Writing
Self, Society & Sustainability

5. The Civil Society
“ ‘ How ought we to live?
How do we think about how to
live?
Who are we …?
What is our character?’”

6. Self
How can I be
most myself?
How can I best
lead the most
fulfilling life?
Others
How does my
life enrich by
others?
What duty do
I have to
others?
Sustainability
What kind of lifestyle feels most
sustainable for me?
Are the patterns of consumption &
governance today sustainable into
the future?
Do I have a duty to leave future
generations a world that has at least
the same freedoms and
opportunities I had?
Society
What kind of society is truly
in my best interest to fight
for or preserve?
What responsibilities do I
have to society in return for
the freedoms I enjoy?

7. “What Is An American?”
A question asked, in some form, by many
well-known writers:
Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
Alexis de Tocqueville
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Walt Whitman

8. American character / ideals
 Are central ‘American’ values?
 Where did they come from?
 Was this what the Puritans
were really saying?
 Were they always the same?
 Anything missing?
 Does such individualism serve
us, either individually or as a
society?
• ‘Self-reliance’
• Independence
• Freedom to
determine and direct
one’s own resources
• The pursuit of
happiness

9.  Is the perceived selfishness
spawned by the intersection of
democracy, capitalism and
individualism limited to
America?
 Might other nations and
cultures vociferously resist the
influence of America precisely
because they detect aspects
within their own culture and
people that are too susceptible
to being too like America?
 Is extreme individualism
more a factor of
technology, capitalism and
cosmopolitanism – and
therefore transnational?

10. In this module
 Has American identity always been the same?
 Have people changed in some fundamental way?
 What are the implications for for the individual, for
society and for the planet?

11. “What Our Words Tell Us”
– David Brooks, NYT, May 20, 2013
“We write less about community bonds and obligations
because they’re less central to our lives.”
words and phrases like
“personalized,” “self,”
“standout,” “unique,” “I come
first” and “I can do it myself ”
were used more frequently.
Communal words and phrases
like “community,” “collective,”
“tribe,” “share,” “united,” “band
together” and “common good”
receded.
general moral terms like
“virtue,” “decency” and
“conscience” were used less
frequently over the course of the
20th century. Words associated
with moral excellence, like
“honesty,” “patience” and
“compassion” were used much
less frequently.

12. “What is the American?”
 Patrick Deneen, in “Awakening from the
American Dream,” starts his essay by asking the
same question others do.
 Is that question even possible any more in our
transnational world?

13. Transnationalism

14. Post-structuralism
- Pure identities can’t exist.
- At best, we’re ‘mostly’ x, y or z with
elements of other identities
reconstituting us continually.
Jacques Derrida, 1930-1984
Yet something remains, a
trace, which reflects the
original identity; however, the
new identity is now different.

15. Sicily?
Staten Island?

16. Bell Harbour
Rockaway, Queens, NY? Co. Clare?

19. The New Irish

21. We need to ask
“ ‘Who are we …?
What is our character
How ought we to live?
How do we think about how to
live?”
These questions are perhaps more
pressing because of
transnationalism.
“ What is the American?’
and
Questions common to all
identities:

22. “What Is An American?”
self-reliant,
free, [and]
concerned with the
pursuit of happiness
duty to family
service to the
community,
civic virtue,
[and]
the common
good
(or the commonweal)
Are other cultural identities trying to
harmonise these spheres as well?

23. B R E A K

24. Self
Others Sustainability
Society

25. Wk 5:
Associational
life (then):
Tocqueville,
“Individualism
in Democratic
Countries”
Wks 3&4:
Solitude,
Space, Nature
and the
Environment
Emerson &
Thoreau
Wk 8:
Ayn Rand,
“The Virtue
of
Selfishness”
Wks 1&2:
Do we have
“wonderful”
lives? & How
can we define
happiness?
Wk 7:
Associational
Life (today):
Joel Stein & Josh
Sanburn,
Will Millennials
Save Us?
Wk 6
Associational
Life (more
recently)
Robert Putnam
Role of Clubs
(Associational
Life) in Society
Wks 11-12:
What are the biggest THREATS to
happiness, for the individual and
for society?
Week 9:
SUSTAINABILITY
Wk 10:
Reading Week
Wks 13-14:
What are the best ROUTES to
happiness, for the individual and for
society?

26. Mondays
 Lectures
Self, Society and Sustainability
CLASS FORMAT
Thursdays
 In-class writing tasks
 Peer reviews (where you swap
papers with a partner and get
feedback on your writing), or
 “News stand” (analyse the
rhetorical features of a piece of
writing)
Happiness

27. 1– Wk 1&2 - What is “A Wonderful Life” and What is Happiness?
Close-reading essay, 1 response piece, 1 article/writing task- upload, 1 peer review, 1 outline
2 - Wk 3&4 - Solitude, Space, Nature and the Environment: What
are the benefits of spending time alone?
Synthesis essay, 2 quizzes, 2 response pieces, 1 peer review, 1 outline.
3 - Wk 5-8 - Associational Life: Benefits of Groups
Terministic Frame essay, 3 response pieces, 1 peer review, 1 outline.
4 – Wk 9-15 - Sustainable Development: What are the greatest
threats to happiness and best routes to happiness, for the individual
and for society?
3 response pieces / tasks (students select 2); 2 outlines, and and an Exam (compulsory to
pass).
FOUR PROJECTS

28. Don’t be boring!
“ John Dewey [once said], ‘any
teaching that bores the student is likely
to fail.’”
[Booth] “Any teaching that bores the
teacher is sure to fail.”
Wayne C. Booth,
1921-2005

29. Booth: how to avoid boring essays.
1. Develop an awareness of writing for an audience.
2. Have something of substance to express.
3. “Enliven your mental personality” -- Improve your
habits of observation and of approach to the task of
writing

30. 1. Writing for an audience.
 Write with a sense of an audience to be persuaded.
 Write with [a sense] of a serious rhetorical purpose to
be achieved.

31. 2. Have something of
substance to express.
 We want good content in your essays. We want to read
your ideas, and we want those ideas to be rich, and
supported by research and evidence.
 We don’t want regurgitated ideas.
 Have you, as Edith Wharton says, nourished yourself
on the “food of the full-grown” or have you simply
grabbed what was nearest to hand?.

32. 3. Don’t be controversial
for the sake of it.
As Wayne Booth warns,
“Our students bore us, when they take a
seemingly lively controversial tone, because
they have nothing to say, to us or to anybody
us else.”
“If and when they discover something to say,
they will no longer bore us, and our comments
will no longer bore them.” (256).

33. “Enliven your mental personality.” Genuinely.
 Become perspicacious.
 Develop your habits of observation
 Be scrupulous and creative in your
approach writing and re-drafting.
 Be diligent
 Write drafts.
 Essay structure clear or can it be improved in a way that would make
my argument more effective?
 Your introduction: Can it be improved? Is it inventive?
 Is there an elegant (and apposite) metaphor or quote you might
integrate?
 Your conclusion: simply restate the thesis?, or have you signalled tthe
implications of your thesis?

34. 4. Develop impeccable
grammar and syntax skills.
"No passion can survive a
woman's seeing her lover hold
his fork the wrong way.”
- Edith Wharton, The Gods Arrive

35. B R E A K