teaching writing // writing teaching
English Composition II: The Art of Research/ Researching Art (Online)
Georgia State University
Themes in composition courses are used to help narrow the focus of assignments and discussions, and to provide more accessible, interesting content in and out of class. This class asks you to think about visual art. Focusing on an artist or piece of visual art will allow you to develop your analytical skills, research abilities and writing muscles. Perhaps more importantly, art can be a form of escapism! My goal is that our class time will be a space to engage with beauty and perhaps find a new interest. I am not an art historian by training, and do not expect you to be. What I do expect is an open-mind and a willingness to engage.
In this class we’ll build on the skills you explored in ENGL1101. We’ll engage with a wide range of media from visual art, to articles, podcasts and other media. In the process, we’ll apply our knowledge of rhetorical strategies by creating persuasive texts of our own. Namely, an Experience Document, a Visual Analysis and a Final Research Project that will take the form of a website.
English Composition II: Rhetoric of Fashion and Style
Georgia State University
When you got dressed this morning, did you choose the outfit you are wearing to make a particular statement, to indicate belonging in or affiliation with a particular group, or to express a facet of your identity? Whether you realize it or not, what you are wearing is an argument.
In this section of English 1102, we will learn to see fashion and style for what they are: methods of embodied communication.
We will analyze the rhetoric of fashion, examining everything from the rhetorical appeals and fallacies used in advertising to the political debates surrounding fashion (probing discourses like Black Lives Matter, “Made in America,” anti-fashion, punk, climate catastrophe, etc.). We will learn to understand clothing, ads, social media accounts, and other such expressions as texts that can be rhetorically analyzed, or deconstructed to understand the arguments they are making and the techniques they’re using to make such arguments.
To do so, we’ll supplement our reading of the required course text, Guide to First Year Writing (7th edition) with a wide range of articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media. In the process, we’ll apply our knowledge of rhetorical strategies by creating persuasive texts of our own—namely, three short discussion essays and longer research project culminating in an academic research paper. Other assignments will include bi-weekly reading responses and a visual analysis partnered paper. Students are expected to come to class having read and thoughtfully considered the assigned readings and ready to discuss them in a seminar-style (dialogue-based) classroom.
English Composition II: Failure
Georgia State University
We all fail. Failure is inherent to the human condition: from personal failure to the failures of our cultural systems. In this class, we will consider what it means to fail, how failure functions and what we can learn from failure. We will write about these issues in search of understanding and to help us engage critically the world we inhabit. Primarily, you will use this focused theme as we work through the objectives of analysis and critical thinking, research, and argumentation.
We will also consider the fundamental importance of failure of writing, and how we can accept failure as a method to make us better writers, by engaging with writing as an ongoing process. As a writing course, this class builds on writing proficiencies, reading skills, and critical thinking skills developed in ENGL 1101. It incorporates several research methods in addition to persuasive and argumentative techniques.