English 3810: Advanced Composition provides student-writers the opportunity to practice more complicated/complex projects than they may have attempted in their early college writing courses. Professors who teach English 3810 often choose themes for their courses in order to help focus class discussion and promote an active, engaged learning community.

For this summer, we will be exploring a lot about ourselves and our pasts as we focus on what our textbook calls "the fourth genre." Specifically, we will be reading and writing memoir/autobiography and pastiche, all genres and concepts we'll define together in class.

Students should bookmark the web address for this site, as the syllabus, schedule, and all assignments will be posted here. However, this site is not a substitute for face-to-face (f2f) class time, so students are expected to be on time to class everyday, and they should show up prepared to do work with their peers and the teacher.

Central to my pedagogy for Advanced Composition is the assumption that groups of writers can work together in "community" to produce really stellar texts that can have an important impact on particular audiences at particular times. By "community," however, I do not mean that we will sit in here and sing each other's praises all the time. Communities often disagree, but they find ways to work through discord. I assume that as we wrestle with important issues and ideas in our writings, we will be respectful of each other, and more important, we will respect the insightful criticisms we receive from each other. Writers do not have to accept criticism, but they do need to listen to it seriously.

More than that, I hope that we will have a good time during this short summer semester as we work together to better develop our skills as writers, readers, and thinkers.