Documents

I've started to put handouts in this section when I have them in easily printable form.

Start Small, Start Strange (substantial PDF) is my mini-textbook for college writing. It includes some of the materials below, but it collects them sequentially and adds framing materials, examples of student writing, and more.

Moving from the English Major to the Early Career (PDF) is a packet of information I use to start conversations with my students and advisees.

This is a guide for students about writing college essays with the assistance of ChatGPT (or other LLMs), including warnings about the academic dishonesty that those programs generate routinely: ChatGPT (and Its Relatives) and College Writing: A Quick Guide for Students (PDF)

Here is a guide for students doing Special Collections work in identifying printed illustrations: Printed Book Illustrations before 1900: A Grinnell Guide (PDF)

Here is a sequence of handouts meant to guide students through the process of reading and writing analytically:

• Getting from Topic to Thesis (PDF)
• Reading For a Thesis (PDF, translates Getting from Topic to Thesis into an algorithm)
• Five Ways of Looking at a Thesis (PDF)

These handouts relate to information literacy and undergraduate research:

• Bibliography assignment for the first-year Tutorial (PDF)
• Library Research Guide for Secondary Sources (PDF)
• Quick Guide to Chicago NB Style (PDF)

And here are some other handouts that I use for teaching analytical reading and writing:

• On Transitions (PDF)
• Close Reading, Formalism, and New Criticism (PDF)
• Punctuation Patterns (PDF, adapted from a handout by Deborah Simpson--thanks, Mom!)