Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. A writing-intensive workshop that stresses the development of college-level thinking and writing skills through frequent writing assignments. Emphasis is on the writing process: prewriting; drafting; revising; using peer and teacher critique; editing and proofreading. Evaluation is partly based on a portfolio of revised writing. Enrollment by advising. This course provides 3 general elective credits.
A workshop course to develop thinking and writing abilities through frequent writing and digital composition assignments based on critical response to intellectually challenging questions. Emphasis is on the academic writing and composing process--drafting, revising, using peer and teacher critique, editing, and proofreading. Evaluation is partly based on a portfolio of revised work. Satisfies Communication: Writing GenEd requirement; satisfies SEEDS Effective Writing I student learning outcome in alignment with Educated Citizenry; Self Discovery and Self Care value.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. The second semester of the intensive first-year writing sequence. Emphasis on the writing process continues as students learn to study the literature of a variety of fields in order to improve their writing and their understanding and appreciation of complex texts. Formal writing, including at least one documented essay. Satisfies Communication: Literature GenEd requirement; satisfies SEEDS Effective Writing II student learning outcome in alignment with Educated Citizenry,Diversity and Intercultural Competency value.
Intensive writing and revision in genres and styles common to coursework in the sciences. Students will use writing to explore their connection to the sciences and career interests while developing familiarity common genres: lab reports, scientific abstracts, annotated bibliographies/literature reviews. Students will hone their abilities to write accurate descriptions, edit for clarity, and summarize and integrate secondary research; finally, students will experiment with communicating about science to the general public through a variety of modes. Through the duration of the course students will write approximately 4,500 words, practice revision, and submit a portfolio of successfully revised prose. Satisfies SEEDS Effective Writing I student learning outcome in alignment with Educated Citizenry value.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. This course is an introduction to the practices and theories of professional and public writing. Students will gain experience with a variety of writing tasks, and they will compose documents that identify or solve problems, raise readers' awareness, or help readers make decisions. Students will learn methods for analyzing situations, and for discovering and implementing strategies to meet the unique demands of each new situation and task. Students will study a range of written artifacts to gain understanding of the rhetorical challenges and strategies other writers have encountered.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. This course is dedicated to intensive, advanced work on public, professional, and technical writing. The course provides sustained attention to achieving clarity of prose, with particular emphasis on editing, style, grammar, syntax, and mechanics. Students develop their skills as writers through drafting, revision,and peer review of original work, as well as through a collaborative editing project. Students analyze their strengths and weaknesses as writers, develop strategies for editing and polishing, and enhance their ability to analyze and construct arguments. The course addresses editing as a contextualized process contingent on modality and audience, and highlights recent trends in professional, scientific, and technical contexts toward plain communication.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. Writing for Social Media explores the ways in which writing within social media platforms, blogs, and other online forums create a unique type of writing, communication, and composition in the 21st century. Exploring how social media relies on interconnectivity, we look at specific cases where connection and SEO keyword searching oftentimes become just as important as the writing itself (as evidenced by the preponderance of writing bots in social media platforms). This course analyzes this emerging form of writing by having students participate in it, but also by having them critique and explore its uses.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. This writing-intensive course focuses on the skills needed for effective communication in the workplace, with an emphasis on audience, genre, and use of technology. Students will learn how to construct persuasive proposals, executive summaries, and other professional writing documents. Satisfies SEEDS Effective Writing II student learning outcome in alignment with Engagement, Agency and Leadership; Diversity and Intercultural Competency value.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. This course develops writing skills essential in technology, science and industry,with an emphasis on task-oriented writing, mechanism and process description,collection/analysis of data, and recommendation reports. This course introduces students to various technical documentation software, content and project management tools, and usability testing. Students compose technical documents for use in print and various digital contexts. Satisfies SEEDS Effective Writing II student learning outcomes in alignment with Engagement, Agency and Leadership value.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. This course explores how people write digitally, through multiple modalities and in varied contexts. Digital writers make use of all semiotic channels to communicate effectively among different groups and for different purposes, and thus students in this course will analyze and produce texts that combine alphabetic writing with audio, video, and images. Classical rhetorical principles such as kairos, invention, delivery, purpose, pathos, audience, and arrangement will provide the foundation for discussing how authors can effectively deploy messages in digital contexts. This course will balance production and analysis, with students creating and critiquing digital texts. Meets the Graduation Writing Requirement for majors in Public and Professional Writing.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. Students will consider the impact of the pervasiveness of the visual in contemporary society. Visual rhetoric is the way the images work on their own and collaborate with written text to create an argument designed to move a specific audience. Emphasizing the rhetorical nature of visuals and design, the course draws attention to the thinking, process, and skills that are part of design, with a focus on the design of various documents professional writers encounter. Students will be introduced to a variety of theories and design approaches. Through readings and projects, students will gain critical and practical skills to become better consumers and creators of visual texts. Satisfies SEEDS Creative Expression student learning outcome in alignment with Diversity and Intercultural Competency value.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. Students will explore the written documents related to elections and social movements in the United States, critically examining the rhetorical strategies that activists and politicians use in order to persuade their audiences. Beginning with the classical agora, where the art of rhetoric was refined for political purposes, through the modern day, with rhetorically‐gifted politicians such as Barack Obama and speechwriters such as Peggy Noonan, students will examine political rhetorics composed in a variety of contexts and for myriad purposes. In addition to writing analyses of the political texts of others, students will also intervene in contemporary political debates by composing their own persuasive political texts.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105. In Travel Writing we will explore how people make sense of their traveling experiences via writing. Why do people travel? How does writing help us to make sense of our travels? What role does food play in experiencing a new location or culture? We will look at the work of writers in a variety of genres including travel essays, blogs, podcasts, and tv shows. Given that travel can be a privileged activity, we will also devote attention to reasons for travel aside from pleasure (such as migration). Throughout the course of the semester, we will write several short travel essays, incorporating photos and video into some of our pieces, as well as composing other, more media-based pieces.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. This course will explore in depth one aspect of writing studies or one issue related to writing studies that either is not covered in regular department offerings or warrants more in-depth treatment that is possible in an existing course. May be used by Writing Studies majors as a departmental elective. May be repeated as long as the topic is different. Satisfies SEEDS Effective Writing II student learning outcome in alignment with Social Justice and Equity value.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. Examining writers at work in a variety of situations reveals the various social, personal, and political contexts in which writing occurs. Through research methodologies drawn originally from anthropology, researchers discover how writing works in diverse settings. Particular attention is paid to the various technologies and modes of communication in these practical settings.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. Study of rhetoric from the classical period to the present. Students will gain a working knowledge of rhetorical terms and an understanding of major theoretical trends. The course includes examination of major primary source materials, both spoken and written, with an emphasis on the place of rhetoric in civic, political, and cultural contexts. Satisfies SEEDS Historical Thinking student learning outcome in alignment with Educated Citizenry value.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105 or HONP 100. This course will familiarize students with theories and practices of written collaboration and coauthoring, which are essential to the work of professional writers across fields. Students will read scholarship in the fields of rhetoric and composition studies, which offers theories for how and why writers collaborate, including the ways in which they problem-solve, compose, and revise in concert. Additionally, the course will examine a series of "case study" examples of coauthored texts across genres and disciplines in order to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of how coauthoring and collaborative writing function in professional contexts. Finally, students will practice these skills, drawing on the tools, theories, and models studied throughout the semester, through the development and revision of their own coauthored and collaborative writing projects.
Prerequisite(s): Any WRIT 200-level course or departmental approval. This course will provide students with the skills and tools to identify potential grant sources and will walk them through the steps to successful completion of the grant application process. Real‐world examples and applications in the course will provide students with practical experience. The instructor will provide basic theory and tips to strengthen confidence and skills in successful grant writing. Students will have the opportunity to complete an application for a program or initiative.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 105, WRIT 106, WRIT 107, WRIT 206, WRIT 207, or WRIT 240. This course equips students from diverse academic backgrounds with the methodological skills necessary to collaborate effectively in interdisciplinary teams addressing complex real-world problems, often for external clients and community partners. Working with science-based organizations, students will analyze multifaceted "wicked" problems, evaluate stakeholder needs, and design innovative solutions through structured prototyping processes. Students will integrate research and design methods from various disciplines, create and adapt communications for multiple audiences, and develop multimodal artifacts to demonstrate their prototypes. The course emphasizes enhancing collaborative skills through intentional interpersonal communication, empathy, and effective project management strategies. Through intensive team-based project work, students will gain valuable experience in interdisciplinary problem-solving applicable to diverse professional contexts.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 201, WRIT 204, WRIT 205, WRIT 206, WRIT 207, WRIT 208, WRIT 209, WRIT 217, WRIT 240, WRIT 270, WRIT 280, WRIT 290. This course examines theories and histories of writing technologies, especially focusing on recent developments in digital, wearable, audible/voice communications, and AI. Intersecting with conversations about writing and disability studies, this course investigates the social and rhetorical nature of technology as it connects to writing the body.
Prerequisite(s): Any WRIT 200-level course or JOUR 210 or GSWS 201. This course exposes students to writing-as-social-action through intensive study of the topic of sexual violence against women. Students will gain a broad-based understanding of community literacy and the role of writing outside school walls in order to fully explore how writing can function as an activist tool for the prevention of sexual violence. We will read broadly on the issue of sexual violence against women-analyzing depictions of rape in popular language, exploring how rape has been discussed in feminist theory and scholarship, and researching community-based and activist responses to rape and its prevention--in order to strengthen our own literacy practices towards prevention and awareness-raising. Students will be familiar with local, national, and international agencies that work to protect women from sexual violence and advocate for rape survivors. Students will develop activist writing projects that work to serve and further these existing efforts. Mutually Exclusive with GSWS 350.
Prerequisite(s): WRIT 106 or HONP 101 or MEDH 101; and any 200-level WRIT course. Examination of western medical experience and discourse as rhetorically constructed and embodied between doctors and patients, in popular language about illness, diagnosis, and treatment, and within the medical community itself, its textbooks, training, and talk. Understanding of rhetorical concepts from the classical period and critical application in contemporary contexts. Analysis of textual artifacts, including popular writing and media, and cultural representations of illness and health, using rhetorical concepts.
Prerequisite(s): Any 200-level ENGL course or any 200-level WRIT course. Students will explore three general but inter-related areas: how writers write, how they learn to write, and how to help writers revise their work. Students will read recent and historical scholarship in Writing Studies, learn how to provide useful comments on drafts of papers, original research on writers and writing, and reflect on their own experiences as writers and tutors. Students will practice these approaches in class, on line, and in the Center for Writing Excellence or College Writing Studio. Mutually Exclusive with ENWR 385.
Prerequisite(s): Any WRIT 300-level course or departmental approval. This course will explore the ways in which writing exists beyond the boundaries of what we have come to know as "writing or school". As we learn about the many manifestations and purposes of writing outside of school, we will ultimately reflect on more traditional ideas about school writing in order to think about the relationships between these varied contexts. We will explore writing practices that extend beyond academic discourse alone and into alternate genres that can bring communities together and create social and political change. This writing can take on many different forms: oral history projects; community-based creative writing collections; political manifestos; grant proposals; awareness-raising pamphlets and newsletters, and more. This course will offer a foundational understanding of how writing practices develop on the community level, distinct from school-based practices, and invite and expanded notion of what it could mean to write inside-and outside- of school. We will work as researchers and program builders in order to put some of these ideas into practical shape. Satisfies SEEDS Political and Civic Life student learning outcome in alignment with Engagement, Agency and Leadership value.
Prerequisite(s): Any 300-level WRIT course. Students will design and executive a major writing project or series of projects that reflect their expertise as public and professional writers. Student writing projects may be applied or theoretical, but must provide students with the opportunity to showcase multiple modalities and distribute their advanced understanding of the rhetorical situations in which they are working. Students will draw on their peers for feedback, criticism, and mock audiences. May be repeated for a maximum of 9 credits as long as the topic is different.
Prerequisite(s): Departmental approval. This course will provide students with the tools to identify potential grant sources, to evaluate projects and stakeholder needs, to understand the dynamics and challenges of access to funding sources, and the skills to draft effective grant proposals. Students will study successful grant proposals, meet with funders, grantees, and other community stakeholders to develop a full understanding of how grants function in context. Students will receive draft feedback and instruction in editing and style, and they will develop a full grant proposal that targets an opportunity relevant to their interests.