Composing the Self

ENG 208: Composing the Self

Professor Richard Ruppel, Spring 2026
Office: 07 Smith Hall

Meetings: Monday, 4-6:50 pm

Office Hours: 2-4 pm Monday & by appointment.
Phone: (714) 997-6754 (office)

Updated January 6, 2026

Weekly Syllabus
Assignments
Units
Canvas
Useful Links

EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

I’ll add events throughout the semester, but if you know of other announcements or events that might appear here, send them along to me.

Course Description and Learning Outcomes: Flannery O’Conner, E. M. Forster, and Joan Didion all wrote something to the effect that “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” An equally valid corollary is “I don’t know what I don’t know until I write it down.” Writing requires us to discover what we know but also, even more importantly, what we don’t know.

Writing also helps us discover who we are, as every diarist will confirm. But writing is more than “discovery.” Writing helps us create our identities. As the title of this course suggests, writing helps us compose ourselves.

But there’s a dark side to writing. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a poem I teach nearly every year, the mariner bites his arm and drinks his own blood so that he can speak – a macabre tribute to the pain of tearing meaning out of the chaos of the universe. The mariner of the poem is an artist who is condemned to tell his story over and over, at great cost to himself. Red Smith, a brilliant sportswriter, wrote “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” Some supremely talented people write and publish, publish and write, churning out serviceable sentences, paragraphs, articles, and books effortlessly. For most of us, writing is hard, painstaking, daunting, and humbling.

This course will give us the space and time to discover what we know, what we don’t know, and who we are through our writing. We will read skilled authors who reveal themselves in their essays, and we will do this ourselves, paying attention to the elements of rhetoric: tone, audience, and purpose. We will begin writing brief autobiographies and then move on to more public writing.

Course Description & Objectives, from the Catalog: Students explore the relationship between identity and writing. Students will study a variety of genres (personal essays, researched essays, academic articles, news reports, case studies, and ethnographies) and theoretical approaches to learn how and why writers create versions of themselves for rhetorical effect. While investigating identity construction in writing, students will hone their own rhetorical and stylistic skills. Students will compose narratives, essays, reports, and multi-genre compositions, drawing from personal experience, observation, and primary and secondary sources. The course will also address the role of self in the research-writing process by requiring students to conduct original academic research projects. This course is appropriate for all majors, and no specialized writing experience is assumed.

ENG 208 satisfies Chapman’s Written Inquiry General Education requirement. Here is the description of the learning outcome associated with that requirement:

Students establish active, genuine, and responsible authorial engagement; communicate a purpose—an argument or other intentional point/goal; invoke a specific audience, develop the argument/content with an internal logic-organization; integrate references, citations, and source materials logically and dialogically, indicating how forms of evidence relate to each other and the author’s position; and compose the text with: a style or styles appropriate to the purpose and intended audience, a consistent use of the diction appropriate to the author’s topic and purpose. Students develop the ability to establish and vary authorial voice(s) and tone(s), to choose form(s) and genre(s) appropriate to their purpose and audience (forms may be digital and/or multimodal), and to make rhetorically effective use of language.

Texts & Supplies:

All readings will be online or in the “Modules” section of our Canvas pages.

Course Requirements:

Attendance: Please make every effort to attend each class. Let me know if you are unable to attend. If you miss more than one class, your grade will suffer, and if you miss three or more, you will not pass.

Communication: Please be courteous and constructive in our classes. I receive a large number of emails, so when emailing, please identify the course (ENG 208), your last name, and the subject in the subject line. I will respond promptly to your emails; please respond promptly to mine.

Essays: Please email your essays directly to my email: ruppel@chapman.edu. If possible, send them as MSWord documents. If you send a pdf, I will convert it to a Word document so I can mark it. Please DO NOT send a link to a Google doc.

Late essays will receive reduced grades, and I will not accept papers submitted more than a week late unless you provide a convincing explanation. To pass this course, you must complete all four essays. If you are having difficulty completing an essay or a Canvas discussion post, let me know.

I will accept a revision of one of your essays, but you must schedule a conference with me to discuss that revision before you submit it. I will average the grade of the original paper and the revision.

I will both grade and mark essays earning a grade of C- or higher. I will not put a grade on an essay that earns a grade lower than C-. If I return an essay to you that does not include a grade, you will need to schedule a meeting with me so we can go over the essay together and work out a revision strategy. I may ask you to schedule a consultation with the Writing Center before our meeting.

Canvas Discussion Posts: I will assign Canvas Discussion responses for many of the assigned readings. These responses will be due before we discuss the readings.

Grades:

              Autobiographical Essay: 15% Due February 25—1500-2000 words.
              “The Political is Personal” essay: 20% March 20—1600-2400 words.
              Essay concerned with health: 25% Due April 24—1600-2400 words.
              Final essay: 25% Due May 15—2800-3500 words.
              Participation*: 15%

*This is primarily your grade on the Canvas Discussion Board posts and workshop participation. Here are my criteria for evaluating your posts:

1. The posting should respond as specifically as possible to the prompt (or you should indicate why you’re modifying the prompt).

2. The posting should reveal close engagement with the work under discussion.

3. The posting should contribute to the discussion, so later postings should not simply repeat earlier postings, and they should reflect some engagement with earlier postings.

4. Postings should be brief but substantive.

I will post grades in Canvas, which will calculate your overall grade for the class. The official grades are those I calculate myself, and these are nearly always the same as those Canvas creates. If there is a discrepancy between the grade you see in Canvas and the grade I have in my gradebook, however, the gradebook grade is the one that’s correct. I am always happy to discuss assignment grades.

Chapman University Academic Integrity Policy:

Chapman University is a community of scholars that emphasizes the mutual responsibility of all members to seek knowledge honestly and in good faith. Students are responsible for doing their own work, and academic dishonesty of any kind will be subject to sanction by the instructor and referral to the university's Academic Integrity Committee, which may impose additional sanctions up to and including dismissal. (See the "Undergraduate Catalog" for the full policy.) Though I am not requiring you to submit your papers via Turnitin, I am an expert at finding sources, online and otherwise, so I will notice if you make unacknowledged use of someone else’s work. And if I have doubts, I will submit your work to Turnitin or to an LLM detector myself. So please save both of us from trauma and write your Canvas Discussion posts and essays yourself.

ChatGPT and other Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots:

1. Typing a prompt into an LLM chatbot, copying the response, and then submitting that response for an assignment is an obvious form of academic misconduct. Don’t do it.

2. Chatbots are sometimes inaccurate. When I asked for a biography of Richard Ruppel, a Chapman English professor, I found that I was born in Fairview (false), had been an expert on the Holocaust (mostly false), had graduated from Yale and Harvard (false), and was now dead (demonstrably, I hope, false). People in the field describe these errors as “hallucinations,” but they are presented with supreme self-confidence. Hallucinations are not uncommon.

3. If I suspect that you have pasted in a response produced by an LLM, I will check the various services that can detect this. If those services confirm my suspicion, I will call you in for a conference.

4. Chatbots can be inaccurate, but they do offer clear, useful information which users should check. These are early times, but through this semester (and through your academic career) we will all discover ways to help you use them to enhance your learning.

The following discussion of the use of LLMs in academic settings was developed by Dr. Nora Rivera, a professor in Chapman’s English department:

Acceptable Uses of LLMs

Not Acceptable Uses of LLMs

· To improve your work

· To brainstorm

· To explore potential counterarguments

· To fine-tune research questions

· To draft an outline to organize your thoughts

· To check grammar and style

· To check format

· To translate words and phrases

· To replace your work

· To cheat on the writing & research process

· To obtain answers to assessments

· To generate a full draft of your work

· To generate large chunks of text with little or no input from you as an author

· Students must cite AI technologies when appropriate (e.g., when using images generated by AI technologies, when referencing an answer provided by AI technologies, et cetera)

· Copying works entirely generated by AI technologies and submitting them as original content is considered an academic integrity violation

· Always revise your work before submitting it. You are responsible for any inaccurate, biased, offensive, or otherwise unethical content you submit regardless of whether it originally comes from you or an AI model.

In-Class use of laptops, tablets, and phones:

You may use a laptop only when it’s appropriate for that day’s class. Otherwise, laptops and tablets must remain closed, and you may not consult your phone during class. If you have a reason to use one of these devices during class, you must receive my permission to do so beforehand. If I see you consulting your phone during class, I will mark you absent. However, I do know how difficult it can be to remain phone-free through a class, so I will provide a five-minute break for you to tune in (or use the restroom).

Chapman's Students with Disabilities Policy:

In compliance with ADA guidelines, students who have any condition, either permanent or temporary, that might affect their ability to perform in this class are encouraged to inform the instructor at the beginning of the term. The University, through the Disability Services Office, will work with the appropriate faculty member who is asked to provide the accommodations for a student in determining what accommodations are suitable based on the documentation and the individual student needs. The granting of any accommodation will not be retroactive and cannot jeopardize the academic standards or integrity of the course.

Please contact me if you have ANY concerns about completing any of the requirements of this course. I want you to feel challenged, not overwhelmed.

Chapman Equity and Diversity Policy:

Chapman University is committed to ensuring equality and valuing diversity. Students and professors are reminded to show respect at all times as outlined in Chapman’s Harassment and Discrimination Policy. Any violations of this policy should be discussed with the professor, the Dean of Students and/or otherwise reported in accordance with this policy.

Weekly Syllabus*

Week 1 – February 2: Introductions and conversations about composing the self.
Week 2 – February 9: Discussion of essays on writing.

Week 3 – February 16: Draft workshop.
Week 4 – February 23: Autobiographical essay due February 23.

Week 5 – March 2: The political is personal – discussions of essays devoted to how authors developed, maintained, and/or changed their political positions.
Week 6 – March 9: Continued discussion of political essays.

Week 7 – March 16: Draft workshop. “The Political is Personal” essay due March 20.

Spring Break!

Week 8 – March 30: Discussion of health-related essays.
Week 9 – April 6: Discussion of health-related essays.
Week 10 – April 13: Writing workshop, health-related essays due April 17

Week 11 – April 20: Topics to be determined by class interests.
Week 12 – April 27:

Week 13 – May 4:

Week 14 – May 11: Final essay due May 15.

Week 15 – Final: TBA

*This syllabus will change, but I will give you plenty of notice, and I will keep the syllabus updated on the Web.

Assignments:

For Monday, February 2: Course introduction. We’ll introduce ourselves and go over this Web page and our Canvas pages. Read through our syllabus and bring questions, comments, and suggestions to class.

For Monday, February 9: Read “Why I Write” by George Orwell, “Why I Write” by Joan Didion, “Shitty First Drafts,” by Anne Lamott, and “Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan. These are in the Modules section of Canvas. Bring ideas for your first essay. and respond to the discussion question in Canvas by 10am February 9.