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WRITD Course

Proposal

Note: The Writing in the Disciplines Course Guidelines may be found in the Faculty Book (yellow pages) at:

Date: 1/10/15

I. Course Information

A. Department: ENG

B. Course #: 350

C. Course Title: Editing and Publishing: Professional Practice in Literary Journals

D. Name of Instructor(s); multiple instructors may apply for WRITD designation for a commonly taught course: Lawley

E. Has a copy of this proposal been shared with the department chair? Yes X No

F. Maximum enrollment: 20

The maximum enrollment cap for WRITD courses is 20.

G. Catalog course description:

This course is an immersive, hands-on experience in professional publishing. Students will work as an editorial staff and produce issues of literary journals--online with the nationwide Razor Literary Magazine, and in print with the campus journal Firethorne. Student editors will work through all phases of the publishing process, including receiving submissions of fiction, poetry, and art; editing the journal layout; discussing content to be accepted for publication; and promoting the final product to wider audiences. They will also research current literary journals, discuss cutting-edge literature and art, study the publishing marketplace, and learn about publishing’s role in literary history. The course will teach students practical skills in editing and publishing as well as an understanding of publishing as a means to further the literary and graphic arts.

II. Writing Conventions

Although WRITD courses do not require use of a specific style manual, what discipline-specific writing conventions (MLA, APA, etc.) will students be asked to use within this course?

As our course focus is on producing literary magazines for a popular audience, we will follow The Chicago Manual of Style.

III. Please respond to the following questions as completely as possible in the space below. Refer to the WRITD course criteria in section 2.2.2 (yellow pages) of the Faculty Book found at the link listed at the top of this form.

A. WRITD courses require students to search for at least some of the texts, data, artifacts, artworks, etc. that they will be writing about, or to generate their own data (through interviews, experiments, observations, composition, etc.). Describe one assignment or activity that will help students search for or generate their own data or texts.

Students will be required to research the field of literary magazines by searching existing databases for a journal that intrigues them. Once students discover a journal, they are required to research and analyze at least three copies of the journal’s issues, researching the journal’s mission statement, editorial policies, staffing and relationship to universities, and so forth. They are also required to read texts published in those issues in order to discern the taste and style favored by the journal. Through this research, students then write an analytical assessment of the journal, noting how the mission statement is reflected in the works published, and how the researched elements such as circulation size, affiliation, years in print, and other factors affect the journal.

B. WRITD courses should develop students’ ability to find, evaluate, and incorporate outside source material into their writing. Describe one assignment that will require students to find, evaluate, and incorporate outside source material into their writing.

Students in this course will be responsible for writing and preparing one of the essays to be published in the “Before the Razor” series, in which our published contributors tell the backstory of the creation of their stories or poems or art. Published contributors to the magazine will be asked where their ideas come from, what their writing process is like, where and when do they work, and so forth. Students in my class will be required to take this outside source material and shape it into an interesting and appropriate presentation for the “Before the Razor” section of our literary magazine, illuminating the creative process of a specific work for a popular reading audience.

C. WRITD courses should require students to complete one or more major assignments in stages, with revision cycles, before final grading. Describe one example of such an assignment, including its revision cycle.

Students in this course must write an Editorial Statement as one of the major writing assignments. This assignment asks students to analyze their reading tastes and personal understanding of literary success in order to articulate their vision as an editor. Yet this vision is something the class is designed to broaden and sharpen, so the Editorial Statement is a semester-long assignment. Students write an early version based on their past reading experiences; using feedback from the professor, research into literary journals, and discussions of submissions to our literary magazine, students revise their Editorial Statement at mid-semester. This revision cycle is repeated again for the end of the semester, at which time they must put it into practice with an individual publishing project such as a small website, a chapbook, or a screenprint.

D. WRITD courses ask faculty to spend some class time engaged in activities involved in the writing process. Describe a strategy or exercise you will use to engage students in the writing process during class.

As part of the literary magazine this class will produce, our published submitters will detail the backstory of their creative processes, telling the story of how the poem or story was written. In class, we will discuss these creative process essays from our submitters, in order to help students fully understand the creative process.

We will further use these discussions to sharpen students’ ideas as they work on their own publishing projects, and will dedicate a portion of class time on the writing process as students prepare and finalize their individual publishing projects towards the end of the semester.

Submit this form to the Provost’s Office at the following email address: courseproposal@gustavus.edu

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