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2021 - 2022 University Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Courses
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Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition |
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WTNG 102 - How Writing Works
Prerequisites: Placement in WTNG 102 or successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 100
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills one of the two University Core Curriculum requirements in the University Writing Program Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor.
This first-year course helps students develop a conceptual map of how writing works by building their rhetorical and writing-process knowledge and by fostering genre and discourse community awareness. Students draft a minimum of four revised essays and complete a course portfolio. Students must submit a satisfactory portfolio and earn a C- or higher in the course in order to enroll in a 200- or 300-level WTNG course.
3 credits
Fall, Spring
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WTNG 200 - Critical Writing for the Humanities and the Social Sciences
Prerequisites: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills the second of two University Core Curriculum requirements in the University Writing Program Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor
This theme-based course focuses on the production of such scholarly texts as the annotated bibliography, the literature review, the research proposal, and the extended research essay. Students learn how to develop a research problem, critically investigate that problem, and advance a well-defined argument to address the problem.
3 credits
Fall, Spring
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WTNG 210 - Critical Writing for the Sciences
Prerequisites: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 .
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills the second of two University Core Curriculum requirements in the University Writing Program
A research-based course, Critical Writing for the Sciences focuses on the production of reports expected of science professionals, namely, a research (lab) report in the IMRD format, a review of literature paper based upon a current argument, and an article for a popular journal. Students learn how to assess an experiment, negotiate professional sources, defend an argument, create an annotated bibliography and an oral presentation, and write for various audiences.
3 credits
Fall, Spring
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WTNG 220 - Critical Writing for the Professions
Prerequisites: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills the second of two University Core Curriculum requirements in the University Writing Program Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor
A research-based course, Critical Writing for the Professions focuses on the guidelines for persuasive writing commonly used in business and industry: how to write for specific audiences, choose the appropriate style, design effective document formats, and use visuals to help achieve a documents purpose. The course emphasizes the composition of such professional documents as letters, proposals, and analytical reports.
3 credits
Fall, Spring
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WTNG 225 - Writing in Professional and Public Contexts
Prerequisites: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
Delivery: Lecture
This problem-based course deepens students’ understanding of how writing works as a tool for thought and as a vehicle for communication. Moving from academic inquiry to writing in professional and public situations, students will investigate a complex, open-ended problem by researching and synthesizing a variety of sources, voices, and perspectives. Throughout their inquiry process, students will develop additional questions, propose solutions, communicate information, and produce documents aimed at informing and persuading a range of audiences. This course offers students opportunities to think like writers as they address problems that matter in academic, professional, and public contexts.
3 credits
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WTNG 230 - Rhetoric of Film: Writing about Film
Prerequisites: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
In this course, students write about film as a rhetorical art. By analyzing the relationships among purpose, audience, genre, and social context, students learn that film technique functions as rhetorical strategy. Students deepen both their rhetorical and writing process knowledge when adapting to different audiences and producing texts typical to writing about film, such as the screening report, movie review, and critical essay.
3 credits
Fall
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WTNG 235 - Technical Writing
Prerequisites: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
Students will learn how to apply fundamental concepts of effective technical writing that will prepare them for writing in industry, government and other professional contexts. Technical documents help move industry, government and the professions. The technical writer must make judgments about his or her audience, subject, and purposes that go far beyond transferring information. Students will study key principles of rhetorical theory, the idea of genre and its purposes, and the concept of professional audience. Technical documents may include feasibility studies, proposals, and policy statements.
3 credits
Spring
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WTNG 240 - Writing for Business Organizations
Prerequisites: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
This course explores the causes of the success or failure of business communications. The course takes a case-based approach. Students will study the theory and practice of business communications as a pragmatic enterprise to accomplish actual change in the world. The course includes the study of the nature of domestic and global business communication, the causes and effects of communication failures, the social, legal, and ethical nature of professional communication, and the problems in determining the professional interests of readers.
3 credits
Spring
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WTNG 245 - Writing about Health
Prerequisites: Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
Delivery: Lecture
In this course, students will further develop their rhetorical knowledge by studying and producing texts about health, nutrition, illness, and the body. Students will track how writers make informed decisions in order to present clear, user-friendly information to public and professional audiences. Students will also practice writing in a range of genres and adapting their writing for diverse rhetorical situations connected to healthcare. The course foregrounds the ethical implications of writing about bodies. A background in the health sciences is not required.
3 credits
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WTNG 250 - Advanced Composition
Prerequisites: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills the second of two University Core Curriculum requirements in the University Writing Program Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor
This course provides writers with advanced practice in drafting, revising, and editing non-fiction prose, with particular emphasis placed on questions of voice and style. Students will experiment with invention strategies and editing techniques as they plan, draft, and revise essays for a variety of purposes and audiences. In addition, they will read and respond to their own and their classmates’ writing in order to propose ideas for revision and editing.
3 credits
Spring
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WTNG 299 - Special Topics in Writing
Prerequisites: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills the second of two University Core Curriculum requirements in the University Writing Program Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor
Special topics are initiated by student demand, interest of the instructor, or timeliness of offering. Readings and written assignments are appropriate to the Special Topic designation. This course may be repeated for credit, but students may study a single topic only once.
3 credits
Special Offering
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WTNG 300 - Rhetoric in a Global Context
Prerequisites: Successful Completion of a 200-level WTNG course.
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
In this variable topics course, students will analyze, evaluate, and synthesize how public arguments are framed globally. Topics may include the rhetorics of decolonization, antiracism, gender and sexuality, sustainability, and public health, among others relevant to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion on a global scale. Applying classical and contemporary rhetorical theories to ongoing conversations about the topic, students will produce texts that consider audiences beyond the academy. The course emphasizes inquiry-based research, engagement with multiple sources, and deep reflection about rhetorical choices. This is a variable topics course. The course, but not the topic, may be repeated for credit.
3 credits
Fall
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WTNG 301 - The Rhetoric of Narrative
Prerequisites: Successful Completion of a 200-level WTNG course.
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
This course explores storytelling as a rhetorical act that functions to persuade others, build knowledge, fashion identities, and create audiences. Students learn to use rhetorical concepts like ethos and identification to interpret a variety of narratives - such as fables, fairy tales, and parables; white papers, constitutions, and other claims to political autonomy; testimony taken from war crimes trials, tribunals, and truth commissions; literacy narratives; and their own family stories. Throughout this course of study, students have opportunities to critically reflect upon and write about narratives that have shaped their own identities and/or moved them to action.
3 credits
Spring
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WTNG 302 - Art of Writing: Forms of the Essay
Prerequisites: Successful Completion of a 200-level WTNG course.
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
This course broadens students’ understanding of the essay as a genre, with emphasis on analyzing and writing the personal essay. Through a socio-cultural perspective, students investigate why the personal essay is persuasive discourse that parallels pathos in argument. Readings proceed from the historical to the contemporary in the arts and sciences.
3 credits
Fall
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WTNG 303 - Environmental Rhetoric
Prerequisites: Successful Completion of a 200-level WTNG course.
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
This course will examine important writers and thinkers from Henry David Thoreau to William McKibben for ways in which arguments about human/nature relationships have evolved. The tensions in these relationships, this course argues, have forged environmentalism into a counter-hegemonic discourse that challenges fundamental assumptions about the centrality of man, the role and value of “progress,” and the utility of nature.
3 credits
Fall
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WTNG 304 - Feminist Rhetorics
Prerequisites: Successful Completion of a 200-level WTNG course
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
Delivery: Lecture
Feminist. A polarizing word, people understand it in very different ways. In this course we will analyze various definitions of feminism by exploring how scholars of feminist rhetorics have recovered the transgressive ways women use their writing, speaking, and silence to intervene in the world. We will focus on the methods and methodologies by which these scholars examine feminist rhetorics. As we investigate the ways feminists (of all genders) have used their writing, speaking, and silence to speak back to power and to challenge implicit rules about who gets to speak (or write) in a given situation, we will consider how these feminist rhetorical theories and practices might inform our own discursive interventions in the world.
3 credits
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WTNG 321 - Multimodal Writing in Public Spheres
Prerequisites: Successful Completion of a 200-level WTNG course.
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
This course explores the theory and practice of writing that serves public interests. As writing in public spheres is produced across a variety of media - from blogs to tweets to visual images to print-based texts - students will produce and analyze multimodal compositions meant to accomplish a specific outcome for a particular audience. Students will explore the theoretical, rhetorical, and ethical considerations of writing in public spheres, and produce a variety of multimodal genres. Note: previous experience with digital or multimodal composing not required.
3 credits
Fall
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WTNG 322 - Advancing Public Argument
Prerequisites: Successful Completion of a 200-level WTNG course.
Requirement Fulfillment: Minor, Core Concentration
Equality. Knowledge. Happiness. Freedom. The public sphere is where the meaning and implications of these words are constantly defined, contested and renegotiated. Beginning with readings that offer definitions of rhetoric role in the public sphere itself, students read a wide range of historical and contemporary public discourses that have sought to advance persuasive arguments to the American citizenry. By analyzing a variety of public genres (letters, photographs, speeches, film, statistics, art installations) with attention to the ways authors deploy the rhetorical appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos, students gain fluency as critically engaged citizens, able to participate in the reading, writing, and resisting of on-going public arguments. Writing projects privilege student interest but emphasize the development of visual, cultural, and quantitative rhetoric’s.
3 credits
Spring
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WTNG 400 - Writing for Social Change
Prerequisites: Successful completion of a 200 or 300 Level WTNG course (C- or higher) and at least Junior Standing
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor
After forming a partnership with a local, non-profit social service agency, participants in this course will determine which of the agency’s goals can be met by collaborating on research and writing projects. The writing projects will vary, depending on the objectives of the agency and the needs of the people it serves. The purpose of the texts produced will range from raising public awareness of agency-specific problems and issues to securing resources for the organization. On-going reading and class discussions will center on the potency of texts, the role of the writer in bringing about social change, and the value of civic engagement.
3 credits
Spring Alternate Years
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WTNG 405 - Writing Grants and Proposals
Prerequisites: Successful completion of a 200- or 300- level WTNG course and at least junior standing.
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills a requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Minor and Core Concentration.
Delivery: Lecture
This course gives students an introduction to grants and proposals from a rhetorical perspective. Non-profit, corporate, and government organizations offer many opportunities to fund projects; and clear, persuasive writing is a key part of securing this funding. Students will learn about the grant application process-from researching opportunities to submitting final drafts-and the basics of writing strong proposals. Throughout the course, students will study genre conventions such as the letter of transmittal, abstract, problem statement, timeline, and budget. Ultimately, the course aims to help students understand how to make thoughtful rhetorical decisions in order to produce effective, persuasive arguments about their projects and research plans.
3 credits
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WTNG 410 - Writing Independent Study
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WTNG 430 - Special Topics
Prerequisites: Successful completion of a 200 or 300 Level WTNG course (C- or higher) and at least Junior Standing
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor
This course offers an in-depth study of an aspect of writing theory or practice. The specific focus varies from semester to semester and may include such topics as composition pedagogy; advanced argument; rhetorical analysis of modern culture; civil discourse; community-based writing; and argument in advanced writing for the sciences or for the professions. As topics vary, the course may be repeated for credit.
3 credits
Fall, Spring
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WTNG 439 - Rhetorical Theory
Prerequisites: Successful completion of a 200 or 300 Level WTNG course (C- or higher) and at least Junior Standing
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration
This course traces the rhetorical tradition from the pre-modern period to the present, surveying representational, epistemic, performative, and constitutive theories of language while highlighting ways that verbal rhetorical theory may be used to interpret and craft rhetorical performances. Students explore a variety of theoretical concepts-such as the five canons of rhetoric, the stases, copia, kairos, sprezzatura, deduction and induction, dissociation, the Burkian pentad, ideographs, and interpellation-and learn to employ these concepts as tools for understanding how texts function persuasively and for composing persuasive texts of their own. Course readings are organized around a common theme, and, at the end of the semester, students work collaboratively to develop a colloquium on the course theme.
3 credits
Alternate Fall
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WTNG 450 - Composition Theory
Prerequisites: Successful completion of a 200 or 300 Level WTNG course (C- or higher) and at least Junior Standing
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration
This course familiarizes writing students with the history of Composition as an academic discipline, conveys the major theoretical approaches that have helped to shape the field, and examines connections between composition theory and practice. Likely topics include criticisms of current-traditionalist approached, tensions between expressivist and social constructionist theories, and the emergence of critical pedagogies influenced by postmodernists, cultural studies, and feminist theorists.
3 credits
Spring Alternate Years
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WTNG 460 - Writing Studies Internship
Prerequisites: Successful completion of a 200 or 300 Level WTNG course (C- or higher) and at least Junior Standing
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration
This internship will grant academic credit to students who work on a part-time basis with the Writing Studies Department on specially prepared projects. Projects may include professional, disciplinary, or technical writing situations; advanced or capstone projects, courses, or work experiences; or a deeper understanding of college-level composition and the research required for the field. Students must have completed at least 3 of the 5 writing courses required for a Writing Studies Core Concentration and have maintained a 3.0 GPA in those courses.
3 credits
Fall, Spring
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WTNG 470 - The Writing Thesis/Portfolio
Prerequisites: Successful completion of two Writing courses at the 300-level or above. Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 . At least junior standing or consent of instructor
Requirement Fulfillment: Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor
This course offers students the opportunity to concentrate on one of two genres - the thesis or the portfolio. If students choose the thesis option, they will select a topic of inquiry related to theory, history, pedagogy, or practice of rhetoric and/or composition. The portfolio option entails assembling, analyzing, and evaluating a body of original work that demonstrates the students’ ability to apply their knowledge of writing to a variety of professional, academic, and public contexts.
3 credits
Special Offering
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