Summer 2021

WRTG 3020: TOPICS IN WRITING 

ADVANCED CREATIVE NONFICTION, Dr. John-Michael Rivera

As an advanced creative nonfiction WRTG 3020, this class will not only ground you in common types of creative nonfiction like memoir, the personal essay, the lyric essay, and literary journalism, it will challenge you with hybrid CNF forms. These are forms that foreground compositional practices common to two or more CNF types—and often incorporate elements from other arts, for instance from poetry, painting, and/or photography. Why hybrid forms in an advanced CNF course? Jacqueline Kolosov answers this well in one of our course texts, Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres: “Because [hybrid forms] resist the impulse to classify, bringing them into the classroom both challenges and enlarges ways of thinking about genre and can prompt analysis and interrogation of such aspects of literary art as syntax, setting, and character, as well as more philosophical questions surrounding the nature of truth, identity, and memory.” All of this—from enlarging our thinking about genre to interrogating syntactical decisions—is critical in an advanced writing class, but I especially love the end of the quotation. As writers, we have to ask big philosophical questions all the time—and in a CNF class, we especially have to ask what constitutes ethical truth telling (in our creative and nonfiction genre), and what the self really might be—so the personal in our writing can be as truthful as possible. And that’s what this course is about at the most basic level: truth-telling, finding a way to write honestly. In this class, you will write creative nonfiction in many forms, an argument paper on a full-length CNF book, and critical reflections on aspects of CNF composition. You will also read broadly within the genre.

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.

EUROPE IN CRISIS, Dr. Damian Doyle

This course focuses on role of the European Union in Europe and how it has informed the geopolitical, economic, social and cultural landscape of our contemporary world. We will examine the overarching theme of the integration of the European Union using writings that illuminate its history, institutions, policies, politics and culture. Europe is in crisis: it has not experienced such refugees numbers since World War II; it’s monetary system is being stretched to its limits with the bailout of Greece; its immigrant populations are changing the cultural landscape and many countries are experience a pushback from ultra-nationalists groups. Europe is the United States main trading partner and in that context, is it important and expedient for us to understand the history and complexity of this relationship. The course readings consist of writings that appeal to several different discourse communities examining the emergence of the European Union, and in working with them we learn how writers adapt content and style conventions, such as tone, genre, vocabulary, and organization to respond to multiple audiences and different rhetorical situations. By reading and analyzing different types of texts---including required course readings, texts you discover through research and peer essays—you will learn more sophisticated ways of communicating knowledge, particularly how audience, purpose, and context (rhetorical situation) in a text intersect with one another to make meaning. This writing course is designed to develop your critical thinking and analytical skills, increase your awareness of the relationship between writing and how knowledge is disseminated, better understand how rhetoric works in our lives and using research to draw connections between your ideas and those of others—both scholarly and non scholarly.

NARRATIVE AND THE SELF, Dr. Sigman Byrd

When we think about the self, typically we think about beliefs we have, certain physical traits and psychological attributes that define us. We think of an identity with which we wake up each morning and go about our day. Perhaps we look in the mirror and recognize ourselves, and other people, by looking at us and interacting with us, come to know us, too. In time, we become conscious of the narrative form our lives take, the rhetorical structure that provides us with a purpose and meaning. We become familiar with the “story of our lives.” But how real is this self and how true are these stories? Is the identity we construct for ourselves reliable and stable? And what is the connection between this self and these stories?

SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE MIND, Dawn Colley

From Instagram and Facebook to Big Data and the Internet, the role of social media in the shaping of identity, of relationships, and of our minds is not only fascinating but also troubling: these media are rhetorically constructed, and users who don’t understand this fact are vulnerable to the potential for their lives to be shaped, in profound ways, by the entities (government, companies, and corporations, to name a few) who produce social media content. Of course, these entities are not working alone—they are connected not only to an individual user but also to most, if not all, of that user’s social network, which means that the user is less likely to evaluate content in their feed and more likely to accept it as truth. In a moment when “alternative facts” are offered and accepted as readily as the intake of a breath, this lack of critical engagement is a problem.

In this course, we will explore the connections between social media and our lives, the ways in which our understanding of who we is shaped by such media, and the extent to which rhetorical knowledge can allow us to begin to make choices about how we want to respond to ourselves and to the world around us. We will explore topics such as how identity is rhetorically constructed, in what ways identity is a form of power, whose identity matters, how social media influences our minds, and how this knowledge can prepare us to curate the “mind” that we want. To this end, we’ll look at a variety of “texts,” from analytical writing to calls-to-action to digital stories, and students can expect to encounter a wide range of written and creative assignments, including journaling, creative nonfiction, petition writing, and digital storytelling.  

WRITING ABOUT SPACE, Laurie Gries

This course will examine the ethics and rhetorics at play in historical and contemporary

arguments about space exploration. From survival of the human species to mining for commercial benefit, arguments for space exploration are always motivated by various political, social, and economic interests. This class will examine such motivations from a rhetorical perspective in order to help you develop a critical eye about the space industry’s ethical, political, economic, and cultural dimensions. As a writing course, this class also aims to help you use such critical awareness to craft your own well-researched, persuasive arguments 

about a space exploration topic of interest to you. Whether you choose to write about issues such as terraformation, space waste, contamination, or space tourism, your goal will be to write a compelling argument that confronts the complexities of space exploration in the 21st century. 

WRTG 3030: WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCIENCE, POLICY, AND ETHICS, Dr. Lev Szentkirályi

This interdisciplinary course teaches conventions of scientific research and writing by examining current domestic and global public and environmental health hazards—which challenge students to engage difficult texts in the health sciences, environmental policy, environmental law, and social justice. Some of the issue-areas we will explore include pesticides in foods, Bisphenol A (BPA) in plastics, growth hormones (rGBH) in dairy products, infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance, and leaking underground storage tanks. Through diverse course readings, independent research, and formative writing assignments, students will critically evaluate contemporary scholarship on these issue-areas in order to learn to identify, critique, and apply different conventions of research, analysis, and writing that define the scholarship in their particular majors. Finally, in having students apply lessons of rhetorical analysis learned in the classroom to real-world complex policy problems, this course strives to motivate students to think critically about the limitations of scientific research, the role that science should have in creating health policy, the influence of corporate special interests on the decision-making process, and the responsibilities we have to protect the public against potential environmental health hazards.

HOW SCIENCE PERSUADES, Petger Schaberg, M.A.

“How Science Persuades” is a rhetorically based WRTG 3030 Writing Seminar that examines the relationship between science & society in shaping our contemporary world.  The discipline of Rhetoric and Composition is particularly well suited for this inquiry in that it gives students the sophisticated rhetorical perspectives that will allow them to utilize a toolkit of strategies for the purpose of creating persuasive scientific writing for a range of important contemporary audiences.

WRITING ON SCIENCE & SOCIETY, Dr. Lonni Pearce 

This course is a rhetorically informed introduction to science writing that hones communication skills as we examine the relationships among science, engineering, and society, and the manner in which scientific and technical information moves across different rhetorical contexts and becomes relevant to a variety of audiences. The course is intended for upper-division students in Engineering and for students in Arts and Sciences majoring in the sciences. Taught as a writing seminar emphasizing critical thinking, revision, and oral presentation skills, the course focuses on helping students draw on their technical expertise while engaging audiences beyond their own disciplines. The course draws on broad rhetorical principles for cogent writing and speaking and applies them to the demands of communicating in the fields of science and engineering and in the work environments of organizations.

WRTG 1150: FIRST-YEAR WRITING AND RHETORIC

Rhetorically informed introduction to college writing. Focuses on critical analysis, argument, inquiry, and information literacy. Taught as a writing workshop, the course places a premium on invention, drafting, and thoughtful revision. For placement criteria, see the Arts and Sciences advising office. Meets MAPS requirement for English. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: written communication.

1st YEAR WRITING AND RHETORIC, Seth Myers

1st YEAR WRITING AND RHETORIC, Yukai Chen

WRTG 3020: TOPICS IN WRITING 

ESSAY TO BLOG, Dr. Sarah Massey-Warren

In this course, we’ll explore the protean, creative form of the essay and its Internet version, the blog, 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 D2L and online. What is an essay or a blog? 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, political, and cultural 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 and bloggers can influence your own forays into critical and creative writing and thinking. You will write a series of essays (including a blog) of different lengths to experiment with different kinds of essays for different audiences. Your essays will constitute a substantial part of class reading.

NARRATIVE AND THE SELF, Andrew Wilson

When we think about the self, typically we think about beliefs we have, certain physical traits and psychological attributes that define us. We think of an identity with which we wake up each morning and go about our day. Perhaps we look in the mirror and recognize ourselves, and other people, by looking at us and interacting with us, come to know us, too. In time, we become conscious of the narrative form our lives take, the rhetorical structure that provides us with a purpose and meaning.  We become familiar with the “story of our lives.” But how real is this self and how true are these stories? Is the identity we construct for ourselves reliable and stable? And what is the connection between this self and these stories? 

POLITICS OF DRUGS, Roberto Mónico

This class is designed to analyze and evaluate the use of rhetoric through a drug war context. The writing and rhetorical knowledge skills that you learned in First-Year writing will be applied in this course. The class will ask you to critically engage with the course materials and develop an understanding of how certain populations have been affected by anti-drug policies. We will examine the role of the media, law enforcement, and stakeholders who have characterized nonwhite communities as drug pushers. We will also examine scholars who refute these false narratives. The use of language can be used as a powerful tool when criminalizing communities. Thus, in this class, we will explore how language and rhetoric have been deployed to racially criminalize people historically and currently. Students will have the opportunity to deconstruct these misrepresentations by interrogating the use of language. This class will help improve your writing by analyzing complex rhetorical strategies.

WRTG 3030: WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

RADICAL SCIENCE WRITING, Danny Long, M.A

As a future professional in the sciences or engineering, you will be expected to write and speak clearly and convincingly to audiences not only in but also, and especially, outside your field. The purpose of this course is to provide you the opportunity to practice techniques for communicating analytically and persuasively, to further develop your creative- and critical thinking skills, and to consider how your field relates to other fields and to the civic arena. One way you will pursue these objectives is through a service-learning project, for which you will tutor local high school students for a total of eight hours in math, the sciences, or a variety of other subjects. You will use this experience to examine the relationship among doing, teaching, and learning a field; the sociological, political, and institutional factors shaping education in math and the sciences; and the various rhetorical norms involved in scientific pedagogy and practice. Of course, you will do more than the service-learning project this semester. Most of the material you will work with in class will be produced by you, discipuliextraordinaria. You will collaborate with one another, write with one another, teach one another. Count on staying busy each and every class period. Together, we will analyze the characteristics of persuasive writing about and in the sciences and education. The course will include brief units on logic and visual rhetoric. At various points in the semester we will discuss the craft of writing—e.g., writing strong, beautiful sentences that capture audiences, filling them with awe and admiration and wonder. You will complete a number of informal writing assignments. You will write two professional career documents: a personal statement and an exit message, both addressed to your service-learning partners. In groups you will write children’s books for local first graders, fallacious dialogues, and posters that teach the CU campus community about Shakespearean-era science. And you will put together an annotated bibliography that will prepare you for your final project: a piece of writing that uses book arts to share research in math or the sciences with a public audience.

WRITING ON SCIENCE & SOCIETY, Dr. Christine Macdonald

In this course we will examine the rhetoric of science and how it circulates in the general news media.  Students will produce a variety of assignments aimed at different audiences as we examine and practice strategies for conveying specialized knowledge to non-specialized audiences. We will focus on communication strategies in a variety of formats, including oral presentation skills and multimodal work.  The course includes a unit on visual rhetoric and how to communicate your professional autobiography to potential employers.

WRTG 1150: FIRST-YEAR WRITING AND RHETORIC

Rhetorically informed introduction to college writing. Focuses on critical analysis, argument, inquiry, and information literacy. Taught as a writing workshop, the course places a premium on invention, drafting, and thoughtful revision. For placement criteria, see the Arts and Sciences advising office. Meets MAPS requirement for English. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: written communication.

1st YEAR WRITING AND RHETORIC, Alexis de Coning

WRTG 3020: TOPICS IN WRITING 

THE DOCUMENTARY, Dr. Anthony Abiragi

Offered as WRTG 3020. The documentary has long been a potent vehicle in the production and dissemination of knowledge. It has also, more narrowly, proved potent in the political-charged revelation of “inconvenient” truths. This course will examine the rhetorical means whereby documentary film acts as an agent of persuasion, and this with respect to six politically-charged scenes of truth-telling:

• Political and cultural propaganda campaigns
• The concentrationary system, the Holocaust, and collective memory
• Testimony and the black intellectual tradition
• Epistemic injustice, citizen science, and public health
• Spectacle and the everyday
• Global warming, the scientific attitude, and denialism

As befits our work in the PWR, we will be attuned to the formal and intellectual mechanisms whereby documentary produces knowledge and, inseparably, aims at ethical persuasion. Combining these two strands (knowledge production and rhetorical communication), we arrive at the central question of our course: How do scenes of contentious and critical truth-telling – propaganda, collective memory, historical understanding, intellectual testimony, epistemic injustice, and the scientific attitude – become the occasion for reflecting on the truth-telling capacities of documentary itself? This course, it follows, is not a narrow history of documentary cinema. It is an examination of argument and persuasion through the vehicle – through the specific cinematic procedures – of the documentary form. No prerequisite knowledge of the documentary or, more broadly, of cinema is required.

NEW MEDIA AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, Hunter Thompson

TWITTER. FACEBOOK. INSTAGRAM. YOUTUBE. TIK-TOK.These participatory media platforms have entered our lexicons as places where rhetoric crafts public sentiment. We live in an atmosphere where people are struggling to keep up with the impact of digital platforms. Even those familiar with digital platforms often navigate them mindlessly, like zombies: meta-cognitively unaware of how platforms work and impact broader media ecologies. Search engines and trending topics are treated as neutral, making it so we often fail to recognize the complex relationships the digital brings together to articulate collective life. As digital platforms grow, we can no longer afford to use them mindlessly, nor can we rely on simplistic narratives to explain their impacts on culture and democracy. In an age increasingly defined by digital platforms, this class puts you in the driver's seat to learn to write effectively for digital platforms by—well—actually writing for digital platforms. Throughout the course, you will compose assignments in various digital genres and modes: ranging from tweets to memes. Simultaneously, you will be writing about digital platforms, influencers, and a pressing societal exigency. We will quickly discover effective digital writing requires rigorous consideration of social contexts, symbolic forms, and programmable infrastructures. With writing quickly moving from page to screen, this class will be of interest to those wanting to explore how digital platforms might open new pathways for persuasion and social change. No prerequisite knowledge or skills pertaining to new media is required.

WRTG 3030: WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Dr. Justin Atwell

This course aims to help us better understand what happens when communities with different beliefs and values regarding science and other cultural issues come into contact with one another. Grounded in rhetorical and sociological theory, the course is structured as a discussion-based interdisciplinary exploration of writing and communicating STEM-based information for various audiences and purposes. Students will complete analyses of the communication that happens in their own disciplinary discourses, draft proposal documents, and collaborate to complete research that explores social issues in their respective disciplines. Through multimodal means of writing production, this course will interrogate the possibilities of what it can mean to write in the sciences.

WRTG 3020: TOPICS IN WRITING 

POLITICS OF DRUGS, Dr. Tracy Ferrell 

Writing 3020 satisfies upper-division core requirements in the College of Arts & Sciences by extending student rhetorical knowledge and writing skills, engaging theoretical perspectives and addressing specialized disciplinary communities. This course is meant to build upon the knowledge you gained in WRTG 1150 and will help you to improve your writing by introducing you to more complex analytical reading skills as well as a variety of rhetorical strategies. Readings and in-class discussions are meant to arouse curiosity and allow for the practice of critical thinking and analysis. In order to have a common area of reading, discussion and research, I have selected the theme of the "politics of drugs" for our focus this semester. Through selected readings, videos and research we will look at the history of drugs (both worldwide and in the U.S), the debate over marijuana legalization and the politics of the drug war both domestically and internationally. The class will ask such questions as: What is a drug? Why are some drugs illegal and others accepted and legal? Is there a basic human need for drugs? What is the relationship between the war on drugs and other U.S. policy (both domestic and international)? For the final paper, you will be able to research and explore areas of your own interest such as: drugs and music, addiction, caffeine as a drug, prescription drug abuse, law enforcement, etc.

WRITING ON MUSIC, Alexander Fobes

What is the relation between music and language? What does it mean to approach music, not just lyrics, as a text—one that is authored, conveys a message, and one whose message is in part constructed by its audience and context? This course invites you to explore music as a way of knowing and communicating. Drawing on listenings and readings from a broad range of musical and literary genres, students will analyze, share, critique, and create musical texts, select and pursue lines of inquiry related to their areas of interest, and apply their round knowledge of sound, sense, form, and perspective to refine their communicative skills and style.

WRTG 3030: WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

THE RHETORIC OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION, Dr. Andrea Feldman

As a future scientist, engineer, or researcher, you will be expected to write and speak clearly to people outside your field. The purpose of this course is to teach you techniques for writing analytical and argumentative essays, to develop critical thinking skills, and to examine ethical issues in science and to conduct oral presentations. To this end, the final project for this course is to create a document related to your field that can stand on its own in the real world.

WRITING ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, Dr. Rolf Norgaard

WRTG 3030 “Writing on Science and Society” is a rhetorically informed introduction to science writing that hones communication skills as we examine the relationships among science, engineering, and society, and the manner in which scientific and technical information moves across different rhetorical contexts and becomes relevant to a variety of audiences.  The course is intended for upper-division students in Engineering and for students in Arts and Sciences majoring in the sciences.  Taught as a writing seminar emphasizing critical thinking, revision, and oral presentation skills, the course focuses on helping students draw on their technical expertise while engaging audiences beyond their own disciplines. The course draws on broad rhetorical principles for cogent writing and speaking, and applies them to the demands of communicating in the fields of science and engineering and in the work environments of organizations.