Orange Alert

Spring 2021 WRT courses

Spring 2021
Linked course titles have extended descriptions. Syllabi provided where available.
Course Title Day Time Instructor Room Syllabus Description
WRT 255 M001 Advanced Writing Studio: Advanced Argumentative Writing TTH 12:30-1:50 Tony Scott Intensive practice in the analysis and writing of advanced arguments for a variety of settings: public writing, professional writing, and organizational writing. (Core Requirement for Majors & Minors.)
WRT 255 M002 Advanced Writing Studio: Advanced Argumentative Writing TTH 9:30-10:50 Lois Agnew Intensive practice in the analysis and writing of advanced arguments for a variety of settings: public writing, professional writing, and organizational writing. (Core Requirement for Majors & Minors.)
WRT 302 M001 Advanced Writing Studio: Digital Writing MW 12:45-2:05 Rajendra Panthee Practice in writing in digital environments. May include document and web design, multimedia, digital video, weblogs. Introduction to a range of issues, theories, and software applications relevant to such writing. (Core Requirement for Majors.)
WRT 307 Advanced Writing Studio: Professional Writing Multiple Instructors Professional communication through the study of audience, purpose, and ethics. Rhetorical problem-solving principles applied to diverse professional writing tasks and situations. (Core Req for Majors.)
WRT 308 M001 Advanced Writing Studio: Style Winterlude 12/21/20 – 1/15/21 Collin Gifford Brooke Don't let them tell you that style is just on the surface, something you polish before you hit send. Style runs deep, lurking at the heart of everything we speak or write. Style can dazzle, enchant, seduce, repulse, or bewilder. It can stop you in your tracks and rewire your brain. In this course, we will experiment voraciously with language, shape and reshape our writing, build our stylistic repertoires, and hone our sensibilities. The course will focus primarily on short writing exercises and individual feedback, meeting online (asynchronously). (G&P)
WRT 331 M001 Writing Center Peer Tutor Practicum MW 2:15-3:35 Ben Erwin In this course, students will discover more about what it means to be an effective Writing Center tutor. The course covers a mixture of Writing Center history, theory, and pedagogy, with an emphasis on real-world experience and application. The course culminates with students serving as consultants in the Writing Center. (G&P)
WRT 340 M001 Advanced Editing Studio (Intertext) F 9:30-12:15 Patrick W. Berry What does it take to produce a publication from start to finish? In this course, we will explore publication processes: reviewing past issues of Intertext, analyzing audience, reading and selecting submissions, editing copy, finding and creating visual content, designing layouts, and developing supplemental editorial content. We will also explore production and manufacturing costs as well as issues pertaining to marketing, social media, promotion, and advertising. The ultimate goal is to create the 2020 issue of Intertext along with a supplemental Web-based component. (G&P)
WRT 413 M001 Rhetoric and Ethics TTH 2:00-3:20 Jonna Gilfus Introduces historical conversations concerning rhetoric's ethical responsibilities and explores complications that emerge as assumed historic connections between language and truth, justice, community, and personal character are deployed in various social, political, cultural, national, and transnational contexts. (Core Requirement for Majors.)
WRT 417 M001 Technical Documentation & Usability: Usability and User Experience TTH 2:00-3:20 Joshua Wood User Experience (UX) Design shapes everyday life: from a series of images on handwashing to a simple door handle. In this course, we’ll study the design principles behind UX, and analyze websites, apps, and even games to uncover how UX shapes the way we rhetorically compose, experience, and communicate information. You’ll apply this knowledge as we produce technical documents across various media, and evaluate works using heuristic evaluation, usability testing, and more. You’ll gain an understanding of the ideas and vocabulary behind usability and UX, and a portfolio of your own work in the genre. (G&P)
WRT 422 M001 Studies in Creative Nonfiction: Writing Identities MW 12:45-1:50 Gael Sweeney A mixed race boy living under Apartheid. A minimum-wage maid. A prisoner on Death Row. An Irish Feminist. A gay activist. A newly divorced woman. A Harvard law student. A sex worker. A Christmas Elf at Macy’s. A Trans woman coming out and negotiating her place in the world. What makes “identity”? And is there only one way of identifying yourself? Do identities come from family? Place? Gender? Situation? Or from your aspirations and self-creation? We’ll write memory, description, dialogue, beginnings and endings, and about all the identities and experiences that make you YOU. (G&P)
WRT 423 M001 African American Rhetoric: Love. Craft. Country. TTH 3:30-4:50 Kevin Browne “Name yourself. Where do you want to be? Who do you want to be? Name it.” Lovecraft Country’s Hyppolita thought she had everything she wanted, until Beyond C’est challenged her to go further—to free herself. But how do we name—and free—ourselves in these times? What is America supposed to be for us? Can we craft a new reality? This course examines the series Lovecraft Country as African American Rhetoric. By analyzing episodes and conducting research to produce original, innovative writing, we’ll explore its relevance as a catalog (of art, history, and tradition), and its potential as a vehicle for change. (H&T)
WRT 424 M001 Studies in Writing, Rhetoric, Identity: Identity Rhetoric in Conflict TTH 9:30-10:50 Tony Scott Jia Tolentino writes that in recent years “identity, culture, technology, politics, and discourse seemed to coalesce into an unbearable supernova of perpetually escalating conflict.” In an anxious time of heightened political awareness, conflict and continual pressure to curate identities in social media, the lines between identity performances and our everyday, lived sense of ourselves can blur. In this class you will explore rhetorics of identity with the goal of finding language and genres that open up ways for you to express your identity as complicated, relational, emotionally imbued and always evolving. (H&T)
WRT 436 M001 Feminist Rhetoric(s): The Other F Word: Feminist Rhetorics for Social Change TTH 11:00-12:20 Eileen Schell Whether through hashtag feminist movements like #MeToo, blogging/vlogging, investigative journalism, public policy work, art, theorizing, or creative writing, feminist rhetoricians are using writing and activism to raise awareness, identify and address injustices, and initiate social change. Our course will examine historical and contemporary feminist rhetorical theories, figures, and movements. You will develop writing, research, and advocacy projects that engage directly with feminist issues and movements that matter to you and that enlarge our understandings of feminist rhetorical work in the world. (H&T)