Unit information: Critical Writing in the Humanities in 2019/20

Unit name	Critical Writing in the Humanities
Unit code	AFAC10001
Credit points	20
Level of study	C/4
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Dr. Cleo Hanaway-Oakley
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Arts Faculty Office
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit aims to teach the skills needed to write well, to help students evaluate others’ writing and their own, and to understand the links between writing and the social context of communication. The principles and practice of critical writing will be explored through a theme (or set of interrelated themes), engaging a variety of genres (e.g. academic journals, newspapers, reviews, student essays, the internet) and relating to issues they are studying in other units. Examples of themes are atheism, nationalism, gender, beauty, corruption, education, the media, terrorism, human rights and so on. Lectures will provide the material that will then discussed and interrogated in the seminars and assessments. Over the course of the teaching block, students will be given the tools to develop critical thinking, researching, and writing skills, with particular emphasis on motivating a claim, structuring an argument, and analysing evidence. Assignments will be peer reviewed or workshopped.

The unit aims:

• To instruct students in three fundamental skills of critical writing (the ‘three C’s’): clarity; correctness, cogency.
• To develop good practice in planning, writing, and revising written work, with a twin emphasis on self-scrutiny and peer review.
• To enhance students’ ability to evaluate the quality of the critical writing they encounter in their study

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the unit, successful students will be able to:

1. demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the principles of good critical writing in the humanities appropriate to level C/4.
2. apply these principles in their own writing.
3. evaluate and revise their own written work.
4. engage in productive peer-review.

Teaching Information

Assessment Information

1. Peer-review exercise (50%). At the beginning of the unit, each student would be required to submit a piece of critical writing (1000 words) on a topic chosen from a designated list. They would be given one week in which to complete this task. They would be required:

• to submit the piece of writing to one of their fellow-students for ‘peer review’;
• to meet their reviewer and discuss his/her feedback;
• to revise what they had written in the light of their own, and their reviewer’s, comments;
• to submit the revised piece of writing with an accompanying statement (300 words) of what they had learned from this exercise.

Each student would review and be reviewed. Pairings would be allocated randomly by the unit director. This essay will be due early in the teaching block to allow students to incorporate the feedback given here in their final essay.

2. Summative essay (50%). An essay (2,000 words) on a topic related to the unit, from a designated list. These will be workshopped in seminar.

[Both assessments will assess ILOs 1-4.]

Reading and References

Eric-Udorie, June (ed.), Can We All Be Feminists? New Writing from Brit Bennett, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and 15 Others on Intersectionality, Identity, and the Way Forward for Feminism (London: Penguin, 2018).

Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Fourth Edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018).

Hayot, Eric, The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

Goatly, Andrew, and Preet Hiradhar, Critical Reading and Writing in the Digital Age: An Introductory Coursebook, Second Edition (London: Routledge, 2016).