Rhetoric and Inquiry

Happiness in Modern Society

Does money make us happy?  Can meditation improve our state of mind?  Is nature essential to our well-being? In this section of Writing 2 we will discuss these questions and many others relating to the topic of happiness.  The readings for this course are drawn from a number of different disciplines and traditions: psychology, philosophy, sociology, self-help, and Buddhism.  These readings explore not only the personal choices and conditions that contribute to our individual well-being, but also the social norms and expectations that affect all of us in American society today.  Through a thoughtful engagement with these ideas, you will be encouraged to think critically and write papers that you really care about. All students will engage in class discussions, participate in collaborative group work, write compositions in different genres, submit some type of writing before most class sessions, and complete the course with a multi-stage research project.

Cyberspace and the Biosphere

In this composition course, we will explore two interrelated and profoundly relevant realms, cyberspace and the biosphere. How does the increasing amount of time we spend inhabiting cyberspace affect our identity and relationships? Do our digital devices offer enhancement, distraction, or addiction? Has our immersion in cyberspace cut us off from a deep connection to the biosphere? We will then turn to the question of creating a sustainable future for the planet. We will explore political, economic, and spiritual solutions to the threat of catastrophic climate change. We will finish the quarter by studying the psychology of happiness and mindfulness. How can we live satisfied, meaningful lives in the midst of so much distraction and tumultuous change? You do not need a scientific background for this course, but only a willingness to explore through writing your personal future and the future of the planet. You will compose an essay on the place you call home, reflect on our increasing immersion in the digital world, research your own future occupation, and persuade others on pressing issues of environmental concern. Through sharing our writing online and through participation in small group and class discussions, we will create a classroom community that improves our ability to write and leads to academic success at the university.

Writing and the Critique of Everyday Life

This class is about questioning what is otherwise unquestioned: everyday life. While everyday life is sometimes thought to be boring, uneventful, or insignificant, it is also filled with complexities and mysteries that are overlooked, unrecognizable, or taken for granted. Our goal throughout the quarter will be to explore different ways in which our daily experience can provide us with the critical questions, inspiration, and raw material for writing and research – in university courses and other rhetorical contexts. We will study writing as a practice, requiring a set of habits and strategies for critical thought and inquiry with which to understand, challenge, and transform elements of our everyday life.

Our readings take up the concept of writing as a practice of everyday life through a variety of genres, ranging from essays, journalism, critical theory and scholarly research to memoirs, diaries, poems and manifestoes. We examine everyday life through questions of race, gender, labor, history, psychology, spatial and temporal experience, embodiment, technology, and more. Moving forward, students investigate aspects of daily life, develop research skills, and design projects through stages of inquiry, drafting, and revision. This project culminates in a final portfolio submission at the end of the quarter.

How to Create Knowledge

Students and faculty are knowledge workers, and the University is our workshop. In this course, you will learn how to develop and refine writing and research practices that you can transfer to a variety of writing situations across social, professional, and academic contexts. Through an inquiry-based approach into how experts and novices create new knowledge, we will explore key concepts about rhetoric and inquiry, and you will learn how to identify and practice these concepts for a variety of knowledge producing situations, including those you are likely encounter at a research university. Projects will invite you to develop multidisciplinary practices in research-based writing and to sustain inquiry in a topic of your choice by composing in multiple genres and media.

The Story

Writing Against the Silence

So many silences are created by societies, by societies’ need to obscure their operational power. And as a writer you dwell in silences. You dwell in what’s not being said, you dwell in what’s not being discussed, you dwell in what’s being erased. And from my point of view, no matter what [you] write about, it has a way of working against, cutting across the grain of a society that wants you to forget and not to see.

--Pulitzer Prize Winner Junot Diaz, Smithsonian interview  “In His Own Words”

What does it mean to dwell in the silences created by society? To enter into ongoing conversations and assess what perspectives are being left out, what narratives need to be developed, challenged, advanced? What does it mean to speak out of these silences, to write against, as Junot Diaz says, “the grain of a society that wants you to forget and not to see?” And, how do we most effectively write against these silences? In this course, we will analyze texts in a variety of genres and medias about suppressed groups (racial, ethnic, cultural) in the Americas in order to help answer these questions and to explore effective and diverse techniques for writing.

We will focus on the significance of rhetorical situations (including context, audience, and purpose) and will sequentially and recursively build academic writing skills (summary, citation, synthesis, analysis, argument). As a research project, students will be asked to dwell in some aspect of silence and write to address that silence. Topics may be chosen from our course texts, from the “text” of your life, or from our current society. A cumulative portfolio project will be due at the end of the course.

Writing the Emerging Africa: beyond the four D’s

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, an award-winning American journalist who worked in Johannesburg, South Africa for NPR and CNN, stated in an interview for her book New News out of Africa that Americans “aren’t getting the information they need to understand Africa. Reporting [in the US] is dominated by the four d’s ... death, disease, disaster and despair. ... If all you hear about is hunger, drought, disease and conflict, people conclude that Africa’s problems are intractable and that nothing in Africa ever changes.” In this course, we will examine two common American notions of Africa as a lost continent: first, that Africa is lost from our view, or as in Hunter-Gault’s criticism of American media, only partially—and usually negatively—viewed; second, that Africa is somehow hopelessly lost due to “the four d’s. ... death, disease, disaster and despair.” In this research and composition course, we will examine these four d’s, but we will also discover, through research, critical reading, and analytical writing, other, more complex and balanced visions of an Africa emerging into our view. We will research popular and scholarly texts to find a new set of “d’s” of our own, with the intention of composing original, informative, and elegantly written responses. Goals of this course include helping you become a stronger reader, a more incisive thinker, and a more effective writer. The course will encourage you to create new strategies for generating and supporting ideas, improve your skill and confidence as a researcher and writer, and expand your understanding of the writing process through active revision—all while you articulate your own emerging knowledge of Africa.

Curiosity, Engagement, Persistence, and Reflection

What is writing if not an attempt to make visible one’s own thoughts and interpretations of the worlds in which they live? What is the value of one’s own thoughts if they do not come from a place of sincere curiosity, an engagement with and an exploration of these worlds? How could strong writing be created without practice and persistence? How could compelling writing be created without a writer’s delight in the puzzle of word choice, syntax, and arrangement of ideas so that a reader might also participate in the writer’s ideas? How could a writer hope to become a stronger writer without an awareness of choices and reflection on past decisions?

Students in this course will practice becoming curious, engaged, persistent, reflective writers. The work in this course will require you to choose one topic to examine, research, and write about for the entire quarter. As in other Writing 2 courses, expect to compose in multiple genres and transfer knowledge about writing to new contexts.

Writing the Future

The Climate Change Debate

Concerned about climate change? Or wondering if concerns are a little overblown? Climate change discussions generate a lot of heat (pun intended), so this writing class will use material from multiple genres (book chapters, scientific articles, popular press articles, policy reviews, speeches, blogs, films, etc) to investigate the different “sides” of this debate, as well as the reasons why tempers flare and resistance to change is strong in both camps. As in other W2 courses, you yourself will learn to write in multiple genres for different audiences and strengthen your arguments, organization, research skills, and rhetorical techniques.  But this course will also spend some time on affective writing (emotional appeals), and on techniques you can be aware of as a reader, and use as a writer, that go beyond the “create logical arguments/use strong evidence” approach that most writing texts teach.

Writing our Relationship to Animals

In this composition course, we will read and write various genres to explore human attitudes toward and treatment of other animals. The messages we give and get about animals in human society come to us in many forms, and can shape our views and behavior if they are composed with rhetorical awareness. Understanding who your audience is and what message you want to convey to them will help you figure out which rhetorical strategies to use yourself. Through research, you will have the opportunity to investigate an animal-related issue that interests you and write about it in a various genres. The habits and strategies you practice in thinking and writing rhetorically about animals should serve you beyond this class and topic.

Joining Conversations in a Changing World

We live in turbulent times, and often we may feel that our ideas get lost in the many opinions that divide people rather than prompting them to simply listen to others’ voices.  So what can we do? We can write. In this class we will look at the ways that writing can play a part in social change. In a variety of formats we will examine the many perspectives that enter into the conversations and the controversies that affect the many people whose voices might not be heard in the turmoil. And then we will use writing to join that social conversation.  Students will write about self-chosen topics that truly matter to them, and in the process examine the many genres that can allow for multiple perspectives to be heard. Research work will run throughout the quarter, in a different form for each type of writing we practice. Social justice, equality, and passion for the transformations possible in this society will center our work as writers in a changing world.

What’s in the New Yorker This Week?

Adventures in Journalistic Genres: Writing the Profile

Rhetoric & Bullshit

Is bullshit the excess of our collective bowel, or the force that keeps it “regular”?

The stench of bullshit is near and clear, and yet it lingers -- why? In this online course, we will explore the role bullshit plays in a “democratic society” by analyzing its relationship to rhetoric; to do this, we will write, read, critique, reflect, and interact with a variety of “texts” that explore a myriad of rhetorical situations and discursive formations -- ancient and modern, political and popular, fabricated and factual -- as a means for studying the excrement of our society. In short, this class will interrogate the shit that stains our collective un/conscious. Note: this is an online course, which means you will need a functional device(s) and stable internet access.

Fun, Food and Fantasy: Contemporary Narratives of Health, Nutrition and Well Being

How does culture and mass media shape perceptions of food, nutrition, and body image? In this class we will negotiate several genres of criticism about the ways that mass media and other channels of social communication promote messages about health and well being. Students will have the opportunity to examine how their own perspectives about health and well being have been influenced--for better or worse--by culture.  Assignments will include class discussions, peer group workshops, several analytical writing assignments, and a research essay.

Choices and Apologies

This course is fundamentally a project-based course, which means that rather than working on a smaller series of papers (such as 5-6 papers or weekly responses), all class activities - such as readings, smaller writings, and the like - are geared toward three larger projects.

In completing these projects, we’ll focus on rhetorics of choice and rhetorics of apology. (I recognize that “choice” is often limited to discussions of abortion, but that is NOT our narrow focus.) We’ll ask: What does it mean to choose one thing over another? (Are we really so empowered in most areas of our lives?) In the digital age, what choices do we make and what choices are made for us? (Or, what did I search for to make Google keep trying to sell me this ugly sleeping bag?) When is choice an illusion, as there are few choices available? (Do people “choose” to be homeless, for example?) To focus our discussion, we’ll also consider choices made in apologizing, particularly in public apologies (for sexual harassment, among other things).

At each step, students will reflect on what they are learning and why, as research reveals that such reflection increases student learning. Students are encouraged to be in touch about their specific learning needs, including disability accommodations, before the course begins so I can design a course that works for all students.

Confronting the Blank Page: Writing through and about fear

In this Writing 2 course, we will consider fear from the individual level up to the societal level. The theme of “fear” will inform both what we write about in this class and how we write. Our writing will address what “fear,” as both psychological and cultural phenomena, means in US society today, as well as our own fears about writing. We will re-imagine what it means to start writing (“confronting the blank page”) and what it means to revise. Over the course of the quarter, our assignments will build from short, informal writing exercises that help you develop confidence in your own writing, to research-based writing in both academic and non-academic genres. You will leave this course with a range of tools you can use to write confidently in future university courses and beyond.

Utopia or Dystopia? ‘Black Mirror’, Technology, and Writing about the Future. 

“I like technology, but 'Black Mirror' is more [about] what the consequences are and it doesn't tend to be about technology itself: it tends to be how we use or misuse it. We've not really thought through the consequences of it.”  

-‘Black Mirror’ creator Charlie Brooker

Technology permeates so many aspects of our daily lives (our homes, our workplace, our bodies, etc) that it is difficult to imagine an area that remains untouched by it.  But what impact does our use and reliance on technology have on modern society? What effect does it have on our own psyche and well-being?  What does it say about our tendencies (both good and bad) as humans? Charlie Brooker’s anthology series ‘Black Mirror’ often depicts a troubled future where technological advances bring out the ugly side of humanity, yet sometimes it demonstrates that hope and love can overcome some difficult obstacles.  

Using several episodes of ‘Black Mirror’ (as well as key writings from a variety of genres) as objects of analysis and inquiry, this writing course will reflect deeply on the questions raised by our reliance on technology and the consequences that may have for the future of humanity.  In this course, students will continue to build their academic writing skills by focusing specifically on writing in multiple contexts, for disparate audiences, and with distinct rhetorical purposes; as the mastery of these concepts will help students write more effectively and persuasively throughout their respective academic disciplines and beyond.  Through several assignments (reflection papers, annotated bibliography, research paper, and a final multimodal project), students will pursue more in-depth research proficiency and writing agility.  Finally, in this course, we will think profoundly about a variety of technology-related themes and question whether we consider these advances for the detriment or betterment of humanity. 

Mindfulness of the Creative Experience

In this course we explore how mindfulness, and paying attention to the process of our creative experiences, makes us stronger writers as we move through different writing genres that prepare us for our professional, personal, and academic lives. Through mindfulness writing practice, we begin to realize that creativity is paradoxical. It requires expertise and hard work yet involves freedom and spontaneity. The creative process brings joy and delight yet is fraught with fear, frustration, and even terror. How do we prepare ourselves to be open and responsive to whatever writing challenge awaits us? Be it drafting a cover letter to a potential employer, writing a eulogy for a loved one’s funeral, or completing a lengthy investigative research paper. As writers in this course, we engage critically with readings that examine creativity and mindfulness in both theory and practice. We also explore the questions: How do we learn to ignite awareness and compassion for ourselves as writers and for the subjects of our writing? Once this awareness and compassion ignites, how do we use rhetoric and inquiry to help us sustain our passion? Lastly, as writers, for whom do we create? Is our audience professional, personal, and academic as stated above? Or do we sometimes create for a more wilder divine that points to something more unspeakable and unknown? As a way of promoting good will towards ourselves and our writing practice, this course will include mindfulness based stress reduction writing and meditation practices. 

Who Tells Your Story: Writing About Hamilton: An American Musical

When it was first staged in 2015, no one expected much from a musical about Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first Treasury Secretary and the face of the $10 bill. Yet somehow, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical became a cultural and critical sensation. Hamilton arrived in New York as an orphaned Caribbean immigrant. However, by the time he was shot and killed by Vice President Aaron Burr, Hamilton had aided George Washington, helped to ratify the Constitution, and established the United States’ economic system. He even starred in the new nation’s first sex scandal. How did he achieve so much? He was a great writer.

Writing as a Revolutionary Act

This class is about the revolution that writing can create when we step out of our social and intellectual circle to interact with an audience who is politically in charge of our country. Expect to write a lot, expect to write about national topics that are controversial NOW, expect to explore the meaning of protest art and to create multimodal texts. Your main task for this class will be to find a way to create a dialogic between you and those who oppose your points of view so that logical, practical solutions can be created and social / political change can happen. To achieve this goal, you will use social media, write respectfully about other points of view, create fact sheets and posters, and organize multimodal presentations.