Courses

Accruing knowledge is not enough to succeed in college. When rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke tells us that “belonging is...rhetorical,” he means that we must not only learn about ideas, we must learn how ideas are shared in distinct contexts. In other words, in order to write a strong lab report for one class or a literary analysis for another, you need to discover what readers of each genre value and the purposes they believe a lab report or literary analysis should serve. Learning to read and write your way into different academic genres—those types of writing defined by specific textual characteristics—will help you succeed in college and beyond. Deborah McCutchen and other educational psychologists demonstrate that when any writer is encountering a new genre, those unfamiliar genre features become a barrier to reading texts critically. In other words, readers’ comprehension drops. This course is designed to make genres something we can all read and write our way into. By learning transferrable methods to read for genre, audience, and rhetorical situations, we will learn methods to approach all kind of writing tasks in different settings, both within academia and beyond.

Over the course of three modules—genre analysis, research proposal, and public speech—we will emphasize the connection between reading, writing, speech and critical thinking. By way of metacognitive practices (thinking about thinking, and writing about writing), we will demystify the notion that writing and public speaking are inborn talents and, instead, see them as learned skills. We will read model texts for core characteristics that distinguish one genre from another, and we will learn to write in each. Together, we will undertake writing as a process of continual refinement of ideas that requires collaboration and revision. By the end of this course, you will be able to use rhetorical terminology to describe writing, interpret texts written for academic audiences, use academic writing conventions in your own writing, and peer workshop etiquette for collaborative writing.

The course includes weekly “lab sessions” in which we will spend half of a class period per week working on your assignments in the classroom with the additional support of a writing consultant from the Writing Center in 310 Philosophy. We will treat this time as our chance to experiment and test out strategies that prepare you to write and speak in different contexts.

*Enrollment requires instructor’s permission.