Course Descriptions 3020|PWR|University of Colorado Boulder

3020 - Topics in Writing Course Descriptions

The following list is alphabetical, by course title. Not every course shown below is offered every semester. Check the current Course Schedule.

ACADEMIC PROPOSAL WRITING, Dr. Christine Macdonald

This course in Academic Proposal Writing, open to all students in A&S, helps students hone their critical thinking and rhetorical analysis skills as they develop a research plan for an academic project within their discipline. The course culminates with a grant proposal to gain funding for an academic research project. While most proposals will be UROP grants, students may obtain instructor approval to write a different grant of similar scope. For grant guidelines and eligibility please see: http://enrichment.colorado.edu/urop/.

Important considerations:

Fulfills the A&S upper division writing requirement.
Students need to be committed to developing a research project worthy of funding and should have a project in mind before the semester begins.
Research projects must either be in the student’s major or, if the project is interdisciplinary, include the major field of study in a significant way.
This is not an Honors Thesis writing class; rather, students will be making a case for the importance and viability of the project they want to pursue in a future semester, and for which they want to acquire funding support. Funding for proposals is not guaranteed.
Students will complete their UROP proposals in time to submit them for the funding cycle for the following academic year. Thus, although the course could be useful for graduating seniors who are planning to go to graduate school, seniors should note that they will not be eligible to receive UROP funding after they graduate.

AFTER THE HOLOCAUST, Dr. David Rothman

Description coming soon.

AMERICAN ROAD TRIP, Steven Caldes

The road is where both opportunities arise and dreams die. The road is peopled with a variety of characters—the outcast, the runaway, the opportunist, the felon, the lost soul, the intellect, the sopping wet and hopeless, the observer, the elitist, and the phony, just to name a few. While there are similarities between all these people, the road offers something different to each. In this class we will investigate the myriad reasons why we take to the road and attempt interpretations of what happens when we get there (wherever or whatever “there” is). Questions such as: In what ways might these forces, these exploratory impulses, be distinctly American, and in which ways are they more central to the essence of the human character? What is the role of the road in literature/media/art, and how does this role help shape public consciousness concerning the road? What do we seek to learn through travel? Can travel teach us anything about the value of slowing down or speeding up? Can it give us any insight into the human character that lies beneath cultural trappings? Once we’ve heard from others, we will then attempt to enter the conversation ourselves through an extended piece of literary journalism in an attempt to show through personal experience and contemplation some of the ideas, questions and concepts explored in the course.

AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, Tobin von der Nuell

Working under the concept that "everything is an argument," we will explore the realm of contemporary American short stories to shape and defend arguable opinions. We first will work through the challenges of reading stories critically to discern what questions they raise. Next we will derive working issues to frame arguments, and then we will analyze the text to find evidence to support our claims in defense of a thesis. We will shape arguments to convince a variety of audiences to our opinions. We will not be crafting short stories in the class; on the contrary, we will work hard to learn how to pull stories apart and argue within the confines of their data. The stories will come from such sources as the Best American Short Stories series, The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Atlantic Monthly.

BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS, Dr. Sarah Massey-Warren

In this course, we’ll explore the protean, creative form of the essay, using a selection of essays drawn from a number of sources, including The Next American Essay, by John D’Agata and other readings that will be on e-reserve. What is an essay? Why is an essay “American”? Can we classify essays that way? How do current events, locations, politics, ethnicity, other genres, cultural psychology, economics, and so forth affect the form and narrative of the essay? In this class, we will extract the essay from its academic box and understand what a rich poetic heritage it has. We will investigate the essay’s vital role in social, political, physical, and emotional exploration into what it means to be human on this planet. We will query how the narrator’s position in relation to audience, use of rhetorical devices and poetics, publication medium, and real world context affect the essay. An understanding of the work of essayists can influence your own forays into critical and creative writing and thinking. You will write a series of essays of different lengths to experiment with different kinds of essays for different audiences. Your essays will constitute a substantial part of class reading.

BIOMEDICAL ETHICS, Don Wilkerson

We will use current issues in biomedical ethics to study the basic elements of an argument. We will write three papers, the first of which will be patterned after the MCAT writing test. This assignment is designed to introduce students to the basic elements of awritten analysis. (The assignment might also offer valuable test-taking preparation to students planning to take the MCAT.) In the second paper, students will respond to a fictional case study or public policy scenario in light of some of the common ethical precepts that inform biomedical debate. This assignment is designed to help students develop a sense of audience and to teach them how to summarize and refute counterarguments. In the last paper, students will perform one of the following tasks: they will refute a brief essay on a current issue in biomedical ethics, or they will analyze an existing policy or professional code to show that it is unlikely to achieve its stated ends. This is not a survey course in biomedical ethics; instead, we will use issues in biomedical ethics as a framework for developing the students' skills as writers and analytical thinkers.

BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH ETHICS, Dr. Naomi Rachel

We will explore the complexity of this vital topic by reading selections from Case Studies in Biomedical Research Ethics (MIT) as well as selected readings from The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Mother Jones. Students will give presentations based on interviews with experts. In addition to writing essays relating to the reading, students will write a VERY SLOW RESEARCH PAPER from proposal to outline to abstract and scope. Throughout the term, guests in the field will come to class including an expert in PTSD who works in a psychiatric ward, and a famous malpractice attorney. In addition to the usual writing class critiques, we will have live debates and other creative exercises. Participation is 20% of your grade so be prepared to be engaged. The work done in this class is modeled on the MCATs and will help students form opinions on current major medical issues.

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND NEW MEDIA, Michelle Albert

What does it mean to be “literate” in the 21st Century? What does it mean to be “engaged” in college, on the CU campus, and in your local and national communities? In this course, we will examine the intersections of literacy practices, new media, and civic engagement. In the digital and networked and globalized world of the 21st Century, we need to redefine literacy in ways that reflect the actual communication practices we engage in every day, especially in civic settings. In this class, you will learn rhetorical, composition, and digital literacy skills that allow you to communicate effectively in the world beyond the classroom and empower you to become part of broader public conversations.

CONVERSATIONS ON THE LAW, Dr. Gail Georgeson

In this upper division course we will explore legal arguments on a variety of issues at the forefront of cutting edge law and policy including those in the arenas of discrimination, privacy and free speech. Students will become involved in the process of researching and writing briefs, developing rhetorical strategies, and they will practice their oral argument skills in a “Moot Court” case based on an actual controversy before the courts. Conducting outside research and working as part of a legal team will be important components of the course. Issues explored will be driven by students’ own interests; students will develop critical thinking skills while gaining experience in simulated law firm and courtroom settings.

CONVERSATIONS ON THE LAW, Dr. Kathryn Pieplow

The law pervades American society: from the O.J. Simpson trial to Judge Judy, from contracts to traffic tickets. Through our writings, we will discuss the law as its own creation and as a civilizing force. Topics for exploration may include the unique language of the law, how the law is viewed by those inside and outside of the profession, the development of common law versus statutory law, alternatives to "the law," and the law in other societies.

CROSS-CULTURAL WRITING FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS, Dr. Andrea Feldman

Cross-Cultural Writing for International Students is a section of WRTG 3020, 3030, and 3040 that is intended for non-native speakers of English who wish to enroll in an upper-division writing course. The course is taught as a rigorous writing workshop using advanced readings and materials, emphasizing critical thinking, analysis, and argumentative writing. Course readings focus on cross-cultural communication in the arts, business, and scientific fields. Assignments will be tailored to meet the needs and interests of individual students.

DON'T FENCE ME IN, Dr. Jay Ellis

"I don't know what happens to country."— John Grady Cole in All the Pretty Horses. How is it that Americans feel entitled to open spaces, with privacy somehow included? This course studies the aesthetics of, ambivalence about, and violence in American spaces (real and imagined) to provide students with a field of inquiry for writing well researched and radically revised academic essays. We will range widely from poetry and fiction through spatial theory in two progressions. Progression I, Dimensional American Fictions, leads through brief exercises to a revised close reading essay on literature or film. Progression II, Histories and Theories of Space, explores the violence that tensions over space elicit in art and life; students weave extensive research through several revisions of an interdisciplinary essay. Readings may include poetry from Emily Dickinson to Walt Whitman; fiction from Chester Himes to Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy; and brief selections of non-fiction from F. J. Turner to Michel de Certeau and contemporary journalists. We will study one film, such as Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. All students are welcome: close reading skills, advanced research, attention to the writing process, and stylistic prowess are goals of - not prerequisites to - this class.

DYSTOPIAS ON FILM, Dr. James Walker

Films like The Matrix, Bladerunner, and Brazil dramatize not just futuristic fictions, but present-day fears, questions and social concerns. What is the nature of intelligence (artificial or otherwise) and how do our answers to this reflect on what it means to be human? How do we define or “know” reality and how is technology challenging this? What are the limits of government in overseeing, protecting, or policing our personal freedoms – and what are our responsibilities? The course uses recent filmic representations of dystopias – that is, anti-utopias or worlds-gone-wrong – to address these and other issues. Students are encouraged and assisted in developing their own analytical and creative responses, which may be based on films, written texts, secondary sources, and/or concepts – including current trends or events. Why and how have artists at least since Plato turned to imagined worlds to discuss the here and now? Why is it we so often fear what we create? What is the nature of the world we are creating?

EDUCATION/AUTHORITY/GOOD STATE, Tim Lyons

In this course, we will explore the connections between education, authority (particularly governmental), and our efforts to bring about a good society. Readings will include such works as Plato's Republic and Crito, Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority, Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, and may include other writings such as those of Alfie Kohn, John Taylor Gatto, Harold Bloom, Adrienne Rich, and others. In personal research projects, students can explore current issues (e.g. No Child Left Behind, bi-lingual education, Ebonics, the role of religion in public education, current funding priorities) or more general concerns (e.g. the role of church and/or state in the formation of educational programs and curricula).

ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING, Dr. David Williams

In this course we will researching and discussing a host of environmental topics, everything from the historical debate between Conservation and Preservation, to Eco Worldviews past and present, Global Warming, Wildlife Extinction, Sustainability, and Environmental Ethics. We will also examine our deep connection to nature through evolutionary theory, dealing with issues ranging from DNA to neuroscience to gender, and how all of these play into our thinking about ecological concerns. Students will engage in the rhetorical analysis of writing and media in relation to the environment, and they will create and critique their own work through various papers and media presentations.

FOOD & CULTURE, Dr. Merrit Dukehart

The UN estimates that over 1 billion people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight. Meanwhile more Americans than ever suffer from the complications of obesity and diabetes. Food crisis in 2008 sparked violence and civil unrest across the globe from Haiti to Egypt, and critics of the food system foresee more problems. What is behind these problems and discrepancies? What role can you play in the ever evolving outcome? In this course you will come to understand the major problems and players of the American and global food system including the farmers, food transnationals, trade organizations, and food activists that are shaping the environment and the food we eat. We will read about the origins of the global food system, the problems plaguing our system, neoliberal-globalization, sustainability, and the actors who have emerged to combat food related problems. Featured authors include critical geographers Tony Weiss and David Harvey; food and environmental activists Vandana Shiva and Walden Bellow; civic agriculturalists; advocates of sustainable farming; and feminist farmers. To glean a more careful understanding of community based activism, you will select a local food-based activist network, non-profit, or grassroots organization to research, and write a persuasive paper in relationship to one of the issues they tackle. Additionally members of the class will help plan and write for a Global Hunger Awareness week on campus.

FOOD & CULTURE, Juliet Wittman

"Food, Glorious Food!" Food is a rapidly developing and constantly changing area of study that draws from many scholarly disciplines: anthropology, psychology, economics, nutrition, geography, journalism, history, archeology. Essayists, memoirists, film makers, novelists, restaurant critics, and chef-authors have all added to the voluminous discourse on food and the topic is prominent in the civic realm, as politicians, farmers, restaurateurs, supermarket owners, seed and chemical companies, scientists, and the public at large ponder the ways in which we produce and distribute food, and whether or not our current systems are sustainable. In brief, the topic of food is as intimate as the French fry you put into your mouth at lunch time, and as vast and wide-ranging as the history of our species. Empires have risen and fallen because of food, economies have collapsed, and rulers been overthrown. In the 15th century, tales of spices and the connotations they carried of mystery, sensuality, intrigue, magic, and sin lured sailors into dangerous voyages of trade and discovery. In 1945, during the Russian blockade of Berlin, American bombers rescued the city by dropping food behind enemy lines, as well as candy bars tied to small parachutes. Food in this situation was more than simple sustenance. It was also both a military tactic and a powerful symbol for sugar-starved Europe of American wealth and beneficence. In this class, we will analyze the many ways in which the topic of food has been approached and addressed in our country, the symbolism of food and its place in the creation and transmission of culture.

THE GROTESQUE, Dr. Nancy Hightower

"When you assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision appear by shock--to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures” (Flannery O’Connor). Authors and artists who incorporate the grotesque into their work use a culture’s construction of what is “normal” or “acceptable” and distort the image, allowing thereader to see the incongruities that marginalize people and ideas within that framework. In this course we will examine how authors such as Flannery O’Connor, Franz Kafka, and artists such as Mark Ryden, Laurie Lipton, and Jenny Saville use the grotesque in their writing and art in response to their ever-fracturing cultures. Students will examine the verbal and visual rhetoric authors and artists use in order to illuminate and criticize the distortions they see in their own society.

THE LANGUAGE OF WAR, Allie Rowland

This writing course explores popular culture productions in response to U.S.-involved wars in the twenty-first century—especially the “War on Terror.” We’ll interrogate a broad range of texts (including novels, essays, poetry, film, commercials, memoirs, video games, criticism, and theory) in order to understand how literary and media forms and genres make sense of recent mass wars. Because this is a writing course, we’ll focus on our own use of craft, genre, and revision as we respond to and analyze these cultural productions. Topics will range across issues such as PTSD, weaponized drones, the Abu Ghraib sexual torture scandal, weapons of mass destruction, and suicide bombers.

THE LANGUAGE OF WAR, Dr. Seth Tucker

This is a writing course based on the culture of war, with a focus on the rhetorical strategies and language used by both sides of the issue. Our primary concern is to consider how literary forms and genres have developed to make sense of the twentieth century's mass wars, how wars are remembered and forgotten, and how war has been adapted to the dominant aesthetic and cultural movements of the century. The bulk of our readings will center on the American Civil War, World War I, the Vietnam War (from both perspectives), World War II, and from more recent conflicts such as the first Persian Gulf War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will end the class with “research” in speculative fiction for World War III, dystopian futures, etc. Issues of national identity, memory, gender, irony, and protest, will be at the forefront of our inquiry. We will read both combatant and civilian writers, and our readings will be drawn from a variety of genres, including fiction, poetry, memoir, film, cultural studies, and theory. This is a writing workshop, so there will be particular attention paid to differing approaches to specific genres, careful craft techniques, and revision strategies.

The course is organized chronologically, but each week we will explore a broad topic, applying certain concepts to the literature of the time. We will write extensively and sophisticatedly about the following topics: conventional war language and its undermining; the body in pain; the language(s) of protest; masculinity resplendent and masculinity under siege; commemoration and memorialization; the problem of mental disease (shell shock, post-traumatic stress disorder); reporting, propaganda, and the press; experimental forms for representing war (absurdism, black humor).

MULTI-CULTURAL RHETORICS, Dr. Andrea Feldman

This course will ask students to write analyses and arguments based on readings that reflect our multi-cultural heritage. In responding to texts that represent cultural diversity, students will evaluate issues and relate them to their own multi-cultural experiences. Through these readings as well as class discussion of written assignments, students will learn to make reasoned arguments in defense of their own opinions. By examining diverse voices, this course helps students meet the challenges of academic writing. The need for a cross-cultural writing course becomes more apparent as the United States becomes ever more interdependent with its worldwide neighbors. Students need to join this "global village" by thinking critically about the roles of writing and language in forging a multi-cultural society. Because language and writing are necessarily culturally bound, diverse aspects of our own culture are often neglected in traditional writing courses. This course offers a chance to examine and debate concerns which are all too often undervalued or ignored. Language -- often a tool to disenfranchise -- can thereby become a tool to meld.

MULTI-CULTURAL RHETORICS, Dr. Anna MacBriar

NATIVE AMERICAN TOPICS, Dr. Catherine Kunce

Zitkala-Sa published a series of articles that helped her become the 'darling' of Boston literati for a short time. But one critic claimed that Zitkala-Sa "injures herself and harms...the race from which she spring." By analyzing Zitkala-Sa's collected writings and by dissecting her critic's charge, we will attempt to discover why her stories repelled some and charmed others. We will then explore some contemporary American Indian works to see if we can discern similar patterns of accommodation and rupture of audience expectations.

NEW YORK TIMES TOPICS, Alyssa Raymond

This course uses the New York Times as its primary text. Students will be required to have a digital subscription to the Times and access to the paper version of the Sunday Times during the course. The Times is a widely-read and well-respected source for national and international news, and provides many interesting topics to discuss, write about, and research. Students will compare the content and rhetorical elements of various types of writing and compose their own versions of the texts that appear in the Times: news articles, editorials, letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, and reviews.

ON THE BORDER: U.S. AND MEXICO, Dr. Tracy Ferrell

This course will explore the spaces where Mexico and the U.S. intersect both on a literal and metaphorical level. We will look at the unique cultures of the “frontera”, the effects of government legislation on the peoples of the two nations and the ways in which Mexican and U.S. cultures inform one another on a larger scale. In exploring these issues, students will explore such questions as: What effect has NAFTA had on the peoples and economies of the two nations? In what ways is illegal immigration beneficial or detrimental to the two countries? Does Mexican and American cultural integration create new forms of culture? How do drug cartels and the war on drugs affect the border regions? The course will employ fiction, non-fiction, music and video in exploring these topics. Readings may include T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain, Sandra Cisneros’ short stories, essays by Gloria Anzaldua and more.

POWER, LANGUAGE, PERSUASION, Dr. Dawn Colley

Language is power. Through words, we come to understand ourselves; through language, we shape the world around us. In this course, we will develop a deeper appreciation for the ways in which language both creates and limits understanding, and students will apply this knowledge to their writing in order to develop more effective strategies of communication. To this end, we will begin the semester by questioning the relationship between meaning, truth, and authority, and we will consider the ways in which rhetoric controls this relationship. This knowledge will then be utilized through a series of written activities and presentations. Students can expect 3 major projects, a variety of readings, and online discussions.

QUEER RHETORICS, Megan Morrissey

Our first challenge will be to unpack the concepts of "queer" and "rhetoric," to create working definitions of our subjects, definitions that will likely evolve over the course of the semester. We will consider and experiment with various kinds of texts including essays, literature, film, poetry, and theory, always remaining attentive to the points of intersection between these genres. The work we do will center around the following sorts of questions: What constitutes queerness? What is the nature of gender and sexuality? How is identity constructed by the body? How is the body itself a construct? What is the performative nature of embodiment? And how do all of these subjects come alive in our writing? In this course, writing will be a tool, a medium we use to engage our subjects and the world, however we will also consider the nature of writing itself. Thus, the course will be both about queer writing and about queering our own writing.

RACE, CLASS, GENDER, Dr. Olivia Chadha

Description coming soon.

RACE, CLASS, GENDER, Dr. Patricia Sullivan

Race, class, gender—all three are tied to the basic question of identity. In this class, we’ll begin by reading and discussing a wide range of perspectives on identity. We’ll then explore how various definitions of identity are revealed in matters of race, class, and gender through analyzing both scholarly and popular texts. The course will involve three major writing projects that emphasize analysis and argument.

THE RHETORICS OF SUSTAINABILITY, Dr. Rebecca Dickson

Our Earth is far bigger and more powerful than humankind, but the Earth’s ecosystems do nonetheless register the effects of seven billion human beings—which is why sustainability concerns have become so prevalent. Whether in the political, corporate, non-profit, or academic arena, everyone is talking about the sustainability of our everyday practices. Sustainability relates to the global environment and its ecosystems, to national and international labor practices, to human health, to humanitarian concerns. Though no course could cover all these topics comprehensively, in Rhetorics of Sustainability, students will explore several key sustainability concerns while analyzing the rhetoric behind these concerns. Students will watch several films about sustainability and compare and assess their approaches to the given topic. Students will also interview and write about a professional involved with sustainability concerns and will engage in real-world writing (a grant proposal, graduate school application, etc.)—this project will include a literature review. Students will also engage in a service learning activity that gets them outside.

THE RHETORICS OF SUSTAINABILITY, Dr. Veronica House

How is food rhetorical? What arguments do you make with every food purchase and with every bite you eat? As a class, we are going to study the rhetoric surrounding the burgeoning food movement in the United States and its connection to issues of sustainability. To do so, we will consider the history of U.S. agricultural and meatpacking practices, the rise of agribusiness and factory farms, counter-movements such as the organic and local movements, and social issues such as food security and food justice. We will consider who has access to what kinds of food, the socio-economic consequences of our current food system, the role of government subsidies, the practices of factory farming and large-scale monoculture, and how organic, beyond-organic, and local food movements have responded to the current food climate.

Our course readings, discussions, writing assignments, and service-learning community work will center on the intersection of food, sustainability, and rhetoric. We will read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and excerpts from Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Barbara Kingsolver, and others. We will analyze documentaries about the national and global food crisis. For the service-learning portion of the course, which will consist of a minimum of 15 hours of community-based work spread across the semester, you will work with community organizations that engage in food issues in Boulder. The course will end with a service-learning showcase for the CU and Boulder communities, featuring your poster presentations and multimedia or interactive projects about local and national food concerns.

SPORTS IN AMERICAN CULTURE, David Visser

Sports in America are a multi-billion dollar industry-- and yet, somehow, one that we're supposed to simply enjoy and not think too much about or scrutinize too closely. Why not? What do sports say? Specifically, this course will involve intense on-sight observation and analysis of a professional sports experience, the recognition and utilization of rhetoric within sports, and a multi-media presentation aimed at answering a larger question regarding the intersection of sports and culture. We'll attempt to arrive at responses, however fleeting, as to what our collective passion for sports says about our American culture.

TELEVISION AND AMERICAN CULTURE, Jamie Jones

In 1961, Newton Minow (Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman) referred to television as a "vast wasteland," which is a description that has long since been associated with the medium. Despite this assessment, television has become more ubiquitous and influential. As a result, the medium requires increased critical attention. This class will use a variety of approaches to assess the material, rhetorical and cultural impact of a medium that many people have been eager to dismiss. In this class, we will seek to answer such questions as: How do audiences of the 21st century tune in and why? How do we define the contemporary viewing experience(s)? How does that experience differ from earlier decades? How has television adapted to the new media environment? How has the TV industry changed through the years? We will address these queries through class discussions, weekly critiques, along with plenty of writing and analysis.

TRAVEL WRITING, Bryan Erickson

In this course, we will interrogate the meaning of travel as we learn how to craft narratives based on experience, research, and movement. Among other aspects of the travel writing genre, we will study the way that landscape both shapes and reflects character, the way we navigate the line between traveler and tourist, and the way our personal experiences play out against the backdrop of history. We will focus on learning the conventions of the genre and how to manipulate our writing in order to meet and play with our readers’ expectations. In addition to this genre study, we will undertake an intense investigation of the sentence form as a structure. We will read broadly in the travel writing genre, including many selections from the Best American Travel Writing series, as well as works by Annie Dillard, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Xavier de Maistre, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Evan S. Connell, and others.

TRAVEL WRITING, Lara Jacobs

“There is no frigate like a book.” -Emily Dickinson

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

We often ask where to travel yet rarely consider how to travel or why to go. Through readings, discussions, lectures, and writing assignments, we will deconstruct the act of travel. Are journeys of the imagination as satisfying as firsthand experiences? Can traveling around our neighborhoods challenge us as much as trips across the world? Is traveling a mindset, a perspective as much as a physical act? From anticipation, to journey, to destination, to return, students will question our motivations for leaving, examine our relationships to our native countries, pause at travel’s liminal space and time, and evaluate how the traveler’s gaze has shifted inward. We no longer travel to record new worlds but to see ourselves and to gain insight into what we already know. We will focus on the traveler’s outsider status--a perspective that is both the travel writer’s strength and inherent weakness. We will rhetorically analyze travel narratives for insights into writing our own. Similar to travel’s conversation between the traveler and the place, students’ writings will engage with factual research, visual representations, and narratives of previous travelers, in addition to their own observations. Through experimentation with creative, analytical, argumentative, researched, and reflective genres of writing, students will hone analytical and rhetorical skills, writing and reading consciously and critically. By the end of the semester, our deconstruction of travel will not reduce our perspective but expand our vision.

TRAVEL WRITING, Dr. Christine Macdonald

“Wherever you go, there you are.” This cliché implies that people cannot change themselves or their perspective by changing their location. In this course we will explore the potential and limitations of travel as a means to facilitate different types of journeys: physical, cultural and psychological. We will study theories of “place,” and the interplay between the viewpoints of traveler, “native,” writer, and reader. In addition to writing critical analyses of the readings, students will write their own travel narratives. You need not have traveled extensively to take this course. Readings may include works by Jon Krakauer, Herman Melville, Annie Dillard, Bill Bryson, Paul Theroux, Homer, and others.

TRAVEL WRITING, Vanessa Schatz

This course is dedicated to exploring tales of “the Other” in a local and global context. We will study a variety of historic and contemporary travel writing literature/media with the goal of establishing a profound familiarity with this genre’s particular writing styles. A majority of the semester will evolve around the development of notions of “home” and “homeland” as central themes in cross-cultural encounters. We will also engage with the local international community through different in-class workshops and outside-of-class project activities. Ultimately, this course will emphasize the discovery of different narratives through travel writing as a communicative device that captures the complex dynamics, the potential pitfalls, and the beauty of engaging particular cultural “others.” Note: Previous travel experience is a plus but not required to take this class.

WORD AND IMAGE, Dr. Mary Angeline

Description coming soon.

WORD AND IMAGE, Alexander Fobes

Students will explore the extraordinary 20th- and 21st-century convergence of word and image through a host of artistic and social media, with the goal of honing their discursive ability and versatility. Readings and viewings will include a cinematic novel, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and theory, as well as photography, painting, sculpture, film, and all that falls in between. In a variety of approaches, students will analyze, critique, and create visual texts, select and pursue lines of inquiry related to their areas of interest, and apply their informed knowledge of word, image, form, and perspective to refine their communicative skills and style. Engaged class and workshop participation a must.

WRITING ABOUT ART, Dr. Mary Angeline

This course will examine art magazines, scholarly essays, art criticism and general writing about the arts. Visual analysis addresses both the art works formal elements as well as historical context and interpretation of meanings. Students do not need to be “artists” they should though have a general interest and appreciation of the Arts and a readiness to take that appreciation a step further by exploring art via the writing process.

WRITING THE AMERICAN WEST, Dr. James McVey

In this class we will work on developing your academic writing skills while adding to your rhetorical knowledge. We will build on your ability to comprehend and write advanced forms of academic writing. Our topic for the semester is the American West and its primary myths and realities. We’ll look at how the rhetoric surrounding the American West has shaped the US and the world, and we’ll also consider how that rhetoric has changed over time. You’ll read a number of western novels and essays in addition to watching western movies. You will write three major papers for the course. Through reading academic essays, all highly readable, you’ll get an idea of the range and possibilities of academic writing. You will also be engaging with your colleagues and me regularly, and you’ll frequently do worksheets on basic writing conventions.

WRITING TO KNOW POETRY, Dr. Eric Burger

This course is an exploration of 20th century American poetry, with an emphasis on how students can come to know poems better through their own writing. You will write a variety of critical papers in this class: some traditional, some a bit unusual, some pretty far out. You will also produce imitations of the work of some assigned poets. We will workshop major assignments and we will read, among others, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O’Hara, Robert Creeley, and James Tate. Throughout, we’ll consider the big question: What does it really mean to know a poem, anyway? It is my hope that in writing in a number of ways about poetry, you will develop a richer, more rewarding relationship with it.

WRITING TO KNOW POETRY, Dr. Sigman Byrd

This course will focus on poetry written in the United States and around the world since 1970 and will explore fresh, invigorating ways of writing about poetry that push beyond standard academic writing. While analyzing and evaluating the work of such poets as W.S. Merwin, Louise Gluck, Tomas Transtromer, and Wislawa Szymborska, we will also consider how genres such as the personal essay, literary journalism, analytical critiques and reviews can deepen our understanding of poetry and strengthen our vision of the poet as a provocateur of the imagination, or, in the words of Wallace Stevens, as one who “creates the world to which we turn incessantly.”