| RHET 101 |
| Writing |
| An introduction to the art of expository writing, with attention to analytical reading and critical thinking in courses across the college curriculum. Assignments offer students opportunities to read and write about culture, politics, literature, science, and other subjects. Emphasis is placed on helping students to develop their individual skills. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Writing Topics: Telling Stories in the Postmodern World |
| In this course, we will look at the rhetoric of narrative, with an emphasis on narratives that cut across cultures to see how people in different places use narrative structures to construct their realities from their everyday lives, imagined lives, and the presumed lives of others. We will write our own narratives and analyze them to see how we create our reality from the essentially chaotic matter of everyday life. Readings will include prison diaries, war journals, film and television scripts, and hypertexts. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Writing Topics: Autobiography and Activism |
| A writing workshop focusing on autobiographical writing that is informed by an interest in the world at-large. We will read various writers who combine their personal stories with their political, environmental, and social activism, such as Terry Tempest Williams, Bill McKibben, and Angela Davis. Students will write their own reflective autobiographical essays. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Writing Topics: Analytical Thinking and Writing |
| This writing workshop is designed for students who would like to improve their ability to read texts in many disciplines actively and critically and to write strong, thoughtful analytical papers. Students will focus on developing strategies for discovering meaning, identifying analytical elements, and evaluating claims and evidence. Writing assignments will allow students to practice these strategies by writing critical analyses and responses to texts, current events, lectures, and films. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Writing Topic:Writing Personal Experience: Diaries, Journals, Essays & Stories We Tell Ours |
| This course will look at the ways we create and understand ourselves and our condition through our personal writing. Readings will include Woolf, Dillard, Sarton, Ozick, and others. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Topics: Women, Writing, and Rhetoric |
| We will engage orators, poets, politicians, suffragettes, queens, and slaves through their rhetoric spanning Western culture from Ancient Greece to contemporary America. Through class discussions and writing assignments, we will attempt to create a broader vision of women’s rhetorical traditions in the United States and around the world. Through this often ignored speeches, letters, essays, and excerpts students will explore how women viewed society and how they grappled with gender roles while fighting for equality and identity.
Assignments will include short analytical essays in which students grapple with the history, context, and style of the work we read. Students will combine their analytical writing with research that compares contemporaneous primary historical documents and sources to a speech about which they choose to write. We will use on campus archival resources as well as online archival resources to find relevant primary source documents.
Syllabus:
We will use An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric, edited by Joy Ritchie and Kay Ronald, and published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Writing Topics: Writing Other American Histories |
| In this course, we will explore other perspectives on American History in Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States, various works of fiction, films, and outside research. You will use reading assignments to generate unique ideas and research topics to extend the work presented to you. You will write non-graded and graded writing assignments designed to introduce you to primary and scholarly research. Analytical research and writing assignments will build upon one another to help you see writing as an extended engagement between past and future ideas. |
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1.00 units, Seminar
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Writing Topics: Language and Photography |
Emphasizing instruction and practice in writing, this course will explore the relationship between language and photography. Students will write extensively as they study photographic images and read works by John Berger, Susan Sontag, and others. The course will culminate with the publication of a collection of student photographic essays.
Not open to seniors. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Writing Topics: Literature and Film |
| Emphasizing instruction and practice in writing, this course will explore the nature of narrative in literature and film. Where do stories come from? How and why do they get told? What kind of culture produces a particular work? To search for answers to these questions, students will examine a series of paired works of fiction and creative films. |
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1.00 units, Seminar
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Topics: Thoughts of Peace and War |
| This class is a writing workshop, focusing on writing and revising academic essays. The readings will involve issues of peace and war, and will lead us into the following sorts of questions: Why do countries go to war? What are the effects of war on people? How have people worked for peace, and how can they/we continue to do so? What role does gender play in war? Readings include personal stories like Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone as well as writings by philosophers, psychologists, and others about the causes and effects of war and peace. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Writing Topics: The Rhetoric of Humor and Satire |
| What makes us laugh? How does humor work? This writing workshop will examine the rhetorical underpinnings of humor and satire and consider humor and satire as political and cultural commentary. Readings will include classic satirical essays by writers such as Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain as well as work by modern humorists. The class will also analyze contemporary media sources in popular culture, including the Internet, stand-up comedy, Saturday Night Live, and films or television programs chosen by students. |
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1.00 units, Seminar
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| RHET 103 |
| Special Writing Topics: Telling Stories in the Postmodern World |
| A writing workshop on storytelling, with an emphasis on naratives that cut across cultures to see how people in different places construct their realities from their everyday lives, imagined lives and the presumed lives of others. We will write our own narratives and analyze them to see how we create our reality from the essentially chaotic matter of everyday life. Readings will include prison diaries, war journals, film and television scripts, and hypertexts. |
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1.00 units, Seminar
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| RHET 202 |
| Expository Writing Workshop |
| This intermediate workshop is designed for students who have achieved mastery in introductory-level college writing and who want to refine their writing abilities. Students will focus on developing stylistic strategies and techniques when writing for numerous purposes and audiences. Students will choose from these writing forms: interview, travel article, op-ed piece, memoir, sports article, criticism, humor, and science and technology article. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 208 |
| Argument and Research Writing |
| A writing workshop emphasizing the development of argumentation and research skills. Students learn how to read and evaluate logical arguments, formulate research questions, explore print and electronic resources, and frame persuasive arguments in papers of substantial length. Frequent practice in writing and revising. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 225 |
| Writing Broad Street Stories |
| This course combines community learning and writing as a means of discovering how we define others and ourselves through journals, diaries, essays, and stories. Students explore Broad Street as a social and cultural metaphor, with a wide variety of readings depicting “the other” and reflecting the voices of members of underprivileged and privileged classes throughout history. Students perform community service as a part of course activities. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 226 |
| The Spirit of Place |
| In this course we will write about "place," and explore how writers render ideas of location, nature, and the environment, ranging from wilderness to city streets. We will move from simple descriptions to an exploration of the larger issues that arise in the interactions between people and places. Readings will include Gretel Erlich and Barry Lopez, among others, who have artfully evoked the spirit of place. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 297 |
| Writing the Public Sphere: Theory and Practice |
| This course will examine the way written language works in the public sphere. Students will read and write about the following sorts of questions: In what ways can writing best promote public dialogue and deliberation? How is the digital landscape changing our conception of writing? Is the opinion essay as a form dying? As books evolve, what happens to the habits of contemplation and reflection fostered by the sustained, quiet reading of traditional texts? How do the changing ways that people acquire news affect the process by which public opinion is formed? In addition to a focus on theories of the public sphere, the class will also be a workshop for student writing. Students will write, revise, and engage with classmates’ writing in various genres aimed at asserting their views on public issues, from traditional essays and op-eds to blogs and multimedia forms. |
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1.00 units, Seminar
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| RHET 300 |
| The Art of the Essay |
| An advanced writing workshop intended to help students find their own subjects and styles as essayists. We will read and write personal essays that express authors’ unique responses to ideas and experiences in deeply reflective ways. Our study will include essays by Seneca, Montaigne, Woolf, Dillard, and others from various historical periods that have explored their responses to the world in engaging and complex detail. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 302 |
| Writing Theory and Practice |
| A study of the art of discourse, with special emphasis on the dynamics of contemporary composition and argumentation. This course examines rhetorical theory from the Classical period to the New Rhetoric, as well as provides students with frequent practice in varied techniques of composing and evaluating expository prose. A wide selection of primary readings across the curriculum will include some controversial ideas about writing from Plato’s Phaedrus, the heart of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and examples of the best writing in the arts and sciences. By invitation only. For students admitted to the Writing Associates Program. |
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1.00 units, Lecture
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| RHET 399 |
| Independent Study |
| Submission of the special registration form, available in the Registrar’s Office, and the approval of the instructor and Writing Center director are required for enrollment. |
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0.50 units min / 1.00 units max, Independent Study
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| RHET 466 |
| Teaching Assistant |
| Students may assist professors as teaching assistants, performing a variety of duties usually involving assisting students in conceiving or revising papers; reading and helping to evaluate papers, quizzes, and exams; and other duties as determined by the student and instructor. See instructor of specific course for more information. Submission of the special registration form, available in the Registrar’s Office and the approval of the instructor and chairperson are required for enrollment. |
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0.50 units min / 1.00 units max, Independent Study
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