Courses

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition Courses

WTNG 100 – INTRODUCTION TO ACADEMIC WRITING
Focusing on the connection between reading and writing, this first-year course emphasizes the understanding and production of academic arguments.  In a series of increasingly complex assignments, students cultivate rhetorical and writing process knowledge as well as an understanding of the general expectations of the academic discourse community.  Assignments focus on summary and analysis of academically oriented texts.  Students must write a series of compositions, submit a satisfactory portfolio, and earn a C- or higher in the course to enroll in WTNG 102.

WTNG 102 – HOW WRITING WORKS
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 200 or 300-level writing courses.

WTNG 225 – Writing in Professional and Public Contexts
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Fulfills the second of two University General Education requirements in the University Writing Program
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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.

WTNG 230 – Rhetoric of Film: Writing about Film
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Fulfills the second of two University General Education requirements in the University Writing Program
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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.

WTNG 235 – Technical Writing
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Fulfills the second of two University General Education requirements in the University Writing Program
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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) 

WTNG 240 – Writing for Business Organizations
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Fulfills the second of two University General Education requirements in the University Writing Program
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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)

WTNG 245 – Writing About Health
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Fulfills the second of two University General Education requirements in the University Writing Program
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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. 

WTNG 250 – Advanced Composition
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Fulfills the second of two University General Education 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)  

WTNG 270 – Travel Writing
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Fulfills the second of two University General Education requirements in the University Writing Program
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

This course familiarizes students with the rhetorical issues of purpose, genre, and audience unique to the field of travel writing.  Students will adopt the curious, open-minded, and adventurous ethos of a travel writer as they write to inform, persuade, and reflect.  They will learn to incorporate key features common to travel writing, such as first-person narration; the quest-as-frame; and cultural, historical, literary, art and architectural references.  They will also learn to uphold the expectations for effective communication travel writers share, including authentic and accurate descriptions; unbiased representation of people and place; and precise, evocative word choice. (3 credits)  

WTNG 299 – Special Topics in Writing
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102
Fulfills the second of two University General Education 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)  

WTNG 300 – Rhetoric in a Global Context
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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)  

WTNG 301 – The Rhetoric of Narrative
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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)  

WTNG 302 – Art of Writing: Forms of the Essay
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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)  

WTNG 303 – Environmental Rhetoric
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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)  

WTNG 304 –Feminist Rhetorics
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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.

WTNG 305 – Writing the City
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

In this course, students analyze the city as text—a complex, multilayered environment that includes densely textured landscapes, platforms for creativity and innovation, and sites of systemic injustice and political struggle. This course prompts students to explore—physically, emotionally, and rhetorically—the discourse communities of the city; the situatedness of knowledge; the relationships between design, identity, and power; questions of location, representation, and globalization; and the creation of publics and counterpublics.  (3 credits)  

WTNG 310 – Rhetoric of Science
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

This course examines the rhetoric of science, or how scientists persuade one another and the public regarding what is known about the natural world, how we go about knowing it, and, based on what we know, how we should act.  Students will apply the rhetoric of science to analyze and engage in scientific discourse, science writing for non-scientific audiences, and debates around science in the public sphere. (3 credits)

WTNG 321 – Multimodal Writing in Public Spheres
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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)  

WTNG 322 – Advancing Public Argument
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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)  

WTNG 340 - Advanced Topics in Workplace Writing
Prerequisite: Successful completion (C- or higher) of WTNG 102 and a 200-level WTNG Course
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

In this variable topics course, students will examine how writing plays a central role in the workplace. Students will draw from case studies in order to learn how to transfer advanced rhetorical concepts to future contexts, especially at the workplace. This inquiry will support students as they practice planning, writing, and revising high-quality documents. The course focuses on writing ethically, document design, collaborative writing, persuasion, writing with data, language diversity, and/or related areas in print and digital texts. Course topics may include professional editing, professional writing in a global context, corporate language and writing, and writing related to different fields. The course but not the topic may be repeated for credit.  The course but not the topic may be repeated for credit. (3 credits)

WTNG 400 – Writing for Social Change
Prerequisite: Successful completion of a 200 or 300 Level WTNG course (or higher) and at least Junior Standing
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)  

WTNG 405 – Grants and Proposals
Prerequisite: Successful completion of a 200 or 300 Level WTNG course (or higher) and at least Junior Standing
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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.

WTNG 430 – Special Topics
Prerequisite: Successful completion of a 200 or 300 Level WTNG course (or higher) and at least Junior Standing
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)  

WTNG 460 – Writing Studies Internship
Prerequisite: Successful completion of a 200 or 300 Level WTNG course (or higher) and at least Junior Standing
Fulfills a course requirement in the Professional and Public Writing Core Concentration and Minor

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)  

WTNG 470 – The Writing Thesis/Portfolio
Prerequisite: Successful completion of two Writing courses at the 300-level or above. At least junior standing or consent of instructor. 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)