Writing about Real Things
As the cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside: the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators; the cartons of records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags…
~Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985)
This description of students moving into their dorms must sound a bit archaic to incoming Duke students in the year 2009, but I’m guessing you will engage in your own unpacking ritual as soon as you arrive on East campus. Why do we choose to surround ourselves with certain objects? How do these “things” accumulate meaning? What are the true benefits and costs of the objects we own? In this seminar, we will take up such questions as academic writers. We will write our way through the curious world of material culture and consumer goods—in short, the world of “real things.” Our seminar, however, will concern itself less with notions of economic value and the exchange of goods than with questions about how and why certain things become valued or iconic. From the clothes we wear to the foods we eat, from homes we dwell in to the art we hang on our walls, how do we use things to make meaning, to re-invent ourselves, to satisfy our desires, or to calm our anxieties? How do objects become the things we just can’t live without?
Over the course of the semester, we will read and respond to several different kinds of texts—works of art, history, cultural studies, literature, and philosophy—that explore consumer practices and de-familiarize the way we use objects to identify and satisfy our desires. As students of writing, we will pay particular attention to how writers define their key terms, develop their methods of inquiry, and construct arguments about consumer practices and material culture for specific audiences. You will learn how to use and efficiently respond to the work of other writers, how to articulate a strong central claim for an academic audience, and how to develop your own new and exciting writing projects.
The course includes a variety of writing assignments. You will post three entries to our course Blog and offer comments in response to your colleagues’ posts. The formal work for our seminar will also include three Short Essays (750 words each) and two Major Projects. The Short Essays offer a space for you to develop and hone skills essential to effective academic writing: summary, textual analysis, research, synthesis, and revision. For your first Major Project (1,500 words), I will invite you to substantially revise one of your Short Essays. The second Major Project (2,500 words) will require you to perform some outside research, compose an annotated bibliography, and write an essay that offers an interesting and unique perspective on an iconic object in U.S. culture.
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