Euonymous - 2005-2006
An E-Anthology of First-Year Writing
Issues: 2004-2005 | 2005-2006 | 2006-2007
The collective effort of student authors, faculty and their classes, and student and faculty editors, Euonymous (literally, “well named”) brings together some of the most compelling thinking and writing produced in the Fall 2005 semester of UW20, the first-year writing course at The George Washington University.
Introduction
With a new edition of Euonymous come new ideas about the possibilities of first-year writing. This year's student editors engaged in spirited discussions about how to shape and define the anthology, how to represent the devoted work done across the range of themed writing courses, and what they most wanted to see come to print in these pages. From their initial editorial meeting on through the selection panels conducted with faculty, these editors emphasized the value they placed on writing that showed the sparks of interest and invention. They wanted to bring forward writing that spoke to readers like themselves—college students involved in the intellectually rigorous work of critical thinking, reading, and writing—but that could also open up to the true public sphere this Internet publication might bring. They sought, determinedly, to choose pieces that would capture readers' interest and interrogations alike.
The resulting second issue showcases the breadth of work students do in their fall semester first-year writing courses. Through this collection, we see not only a variety of ambitious, provocative, and original pieces, but also a rich diversity in students' approaches to research, analysis, argumentation, and prose writing. Electronically bound within these digital covers is an ethnographic exploration of the eating habits of four George Washington University roommates alongside a critique of the movie Mean Girls , an evaluation of faith and the Holocaust alongside an exploration of sexual identity in the black church, and a literary analysis of two versions of Robin Hood alongside an editorial arguing for a new look at the laws that govern medical marijuana.
This anthology exists as testament to the dedication of writers engaged in the process of coming into authorship and, with it, authority. At this year's University Writing and Research Symposium, student writers, student editors, and faculty advisors took the stage together to talk about the ways that creating this publication and the work it contains get at the heart of the challenges and chances of engaged writing. Academic writing in its many forms starts a new conversation, one that, by necessity, evolves and complicates at each juncture. Because research and writing are ongoing processes, many of these papers represent snapshots of ambitious projects-in-progress. It is the writers themselves at that roundtable who reminded us that the great opportunities of taking work public are to see it live out in the world but also to invite it to progress even further, in an incarnation past even what you see here in these pages. Read, question, disagree, confront, engage. Answer back by writing your own work with your own inventive argument or form. The writers and editors of this year's anthology wouldn't have it any other way.