Class 01: Welcome to ENG 111

This is the Academic Commons page for ENGL 111. A few bits of information about books and digital tools that might be helpful as we introduce the course today.

Books & Book Groups

Our class lists four books available for purchase. You need only acquire and read ONE. The choices are Fairest by Meredith Talusan; Heavy by Kiese Laymon, and Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz (available in both English and Spanish editions).

Our class uses book groups to practice, analyze, and hone the skills of academic reading and essay writing. You’ll have a choice of three books. Each is a memoir about race and identity in the contemporary United States. From these three (again, Diaz’s Ordinary Girls is available in English and Spanish) you will acquire and read ONE.

It wouldn’t be a COVID semester without an early snafu so here’s ours. The books were ordered to the Lehman Bookstore. Apparently, as of August 24, they are “out of stock.” If that is the case (and if it is, I’m sorry to hear it), then I’d suggest ordering them through Bookshop.Org or Powells.com. You don’t need them right away, and again, you DON’T need to buy all three. Just one. I’ll go over this more over our first week.

Digital Tools

This Fall, we’ll use a number of digital tools to work. The big ones are CUNY Academic Commons, Hypothes.is, and Zoom.

CUNY Academic Commons

The Commons is one tool we will use a lot. You’ll use your CCNY email address to join the Commons. The instructions for how to join the Commons are here. Within the Commons, there’s our class blog (this is it). That blog is on our course site (the overall site you’re on now and every link in the menu above.) You’ll use the Commons as creators, too, designing your own four-page portfolios over the course of the semester.

What is the Commons blog?

Our blog is a place where the reading and writing work of the semester will get done. When we think and talk about the “world as a text,” this is where the words get processed. I’ll do most of this processing at first; you’ll do much of it by the end. I’ll invite you to the class group via your City College emails. Once you join the class site and class group, you should all have the ability to leave comments. We’ll test this out as early as our first week. As your instructor, I should have the means to leave public and private comments. Both will have their purposes as we produce informal writing.

What is the Commons group?

The ongoing link for the Commons group is here. You should receive an email inviting you to join it in your Lehman email. The instructions for how to join our Commons group are here. Readings and files and discussion threads are all possible uses for this. I’m still learning how to use this feature so we’ll see what works.

What is Hypothes.is?

Hypothesis is a social reading plug-in. You might think of it as a cross between Comments on Google Docs and the notes you take in your psychology textbook. We’ll use this to discuss a variety of readings as a group, including some of the writing you do yourselves. You can also make private notes using Hypothes.is. It works best on Chrome. The link to join the Hypothes.is group is here.

“But I hate technology.”

This is, of course, a writing class and not a technology class. While our major assignments, exploratory exercises, disciplinary writing experiments, and other informal classwork will certainly develop some of your digital literacy skills, the main goal of that work ahead of us is to nurture your capacity as a reader, writer, researcher, and active, accountable, engaged member of this academic community.

Links

Tasks (in-class, Aug 25, finish by Aug 30)