Upcoming Classes
Spring 2023 Class Descriptions
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 1
Topic: Modern Loneliness
Instructor: Lucy Wallitsch
Meets: MW 8:30 A - 9:45 A
Description: In this composition course, we will explore the experience of loneliness through a range of genres and discourses. As a lived experience which is currently undergoing medical definition and development vis-a-vis the "loneliness epidemic," and the massive cultural shifts which have come with the COVID-19 pandemic, loneliness will provide the class with a case-study in the development of new medical terminology and treatment for experiences which have existed up unto this point as un-pathologized portions of the human condition.
In this class, loneliness will serve as an entry point into larger cultural conversations surrounding identity, embodiment, and community as written in various mediums, genres, and discourse communities. Throughout the course, you will have opportunities to hone your analytic and communication skills through writing, critical thinking, close reading, and visual analysis. You will write in many genres, including literary analysis, research articles, multimodal genres, and reflective work, and will spend significant time revising your work for inclusion in the writing portfolio.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 2
Topic: Goosebumps; or, Hearing Otherwise
Instructor: Margy Adams
Meets: MW 11:30 A - 12:45 P
Description: Goosebumps; or, Hearing Otherwise - For as much as we live in language, we are also confined by it. How, then, do we make linguistic sense of that which may appear beyond our textual reach? How may we communicate that which seems incommunicable -- the heart-wrenching finale of Tchaikovsky's Symphonie Pathétique, the ethereal harmonies of Beyonce's "Bigger," the "funny feeling" of Bo Burnham's Inside, the sound of your grandmother's voice as she tells you a story? Conversely, can we determine anything -- about us, our societies, or our histories -- from the ways things sound, and how can we translate these examinations into text?
In this course, we will explore how to do what we can with the linguistic and rhetorical tools that we have by applying our language skills to sound and music. In addition to Beyonce, Burnham, and Tchaikovsky, we will study many BIPOC, queer, and performance artists, both scholarly and popular, to analyze how they address social issues, activism, and self-definition. We will investigate media from film scores to poetry in order to practice writing effectively in multiple genres. Reflections, research papers, memoirs, audio/visual narratives, and a final portfolio make up the bulk of our coursework. By the end of the semester, our understanding of writing -- and our relationship to it -- will be enriched through learning how to critically listen.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 3
Topic: Disease and Society
Instructor: Ruxie Zhang
Meets: MW 1:00 P - 2:15 P
Description: In the time of public health crises such as the COVID pandemic, what can writing do for us? How do various representations of disease inform or even change our understanding of ourselves and society? In this course, we’re going to closely examine different works on disease across genres and think about the essential question: how do diseases (or “dis-ease”), especially epidemics, become metaphors in our cultural discourses about race, gender, sexuality, class, and ableism? Students are expected to write a close reading journal, produce an autoethnographic narrative on the relationship between selfhood and disease, adapt the narrative into a multimodal project, and generate a final portfolio. Through close reading and critical writing, we will explore how diseases in different historical contexts are closely tied with discursive construction of subjectivity and how writing on one’s own experience can speak against or offer alternatives to such taken-for-granted construction of social identities.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 4
Topic: Disease and Society
Instructor: Ruixue Zhang
Meets: MW 2:30 P - 3:45 P
Description: In the time of public health crises such as the COVID pandemic, what can writing do for us? How do various representations of disease inform or even change our understanding of ourselves and society? In this course, we’re going to closely examine different works on disease across genres and think about the essential question: how do diseases (or “dis-ease”), especially epidemics, become metaphors in our cultural discourses about race, gender, sexuality, class, and ableism? Students are expected to write a close reading journal, produce an autoethnographic narrative on the relationship between selfhood and disease, adapt the narrative into a multimodal project, and generate a final portfolio. Through close reading and critical writing, we will explore how diseases in different historical contexts are closely tied with discursive construction of subjectivity and how writing on one’s own experience can speak against or offer alternatives to such taken-for-granted construction of social identities.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 5
Topic: Science Through Its Papers
Instructor: Donna McDermott
Meets: MW 4:00 P - 5:15 P
Description: Why do scientific papers look the way they do? In this class, we’ll discuss how these papers work. We’ll practice the accepted conventions of writing in scientific journals while also questioning how those conventions could or should be changed. To aid in this exploration, you’ll practice a wide range of communication skills: writing analytical questions, reimagining data visualizations, creating games that illustrate science topics, and presenting your interpretation of the papers we read. By the end of the course, you will have written your own scientific paper based on a data set we cultivate together.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 6
Topic: Hot Commodities (and Their Colonial Lives)
Instructor: Julian Currents
Meets: MW 1:00 P - 2:15 P
Description: Every day in the United States, we consume commodities: we pour sugar in our coffee, sprinkle salt over our vegetables, toss a banana in our backpacks before leaving the house. But where do these edible staples of our culture come from? How did they become part of our daily lives? In this class, students will explore writings about some of our most beloved contemporary commodities—like bananas—as well as some that have faded from daily use (think Captain Ahab!). Considering the historical context of most global commodities, the way we choose to think and write about these items can raise a variety of questions about ethics, identity, class, gender, race, and empire. In this first-year writing course, we will examine the variety of ways in which commodities have been rendered in media and will explore what these renderings might suggest about the way we consume. Students will practice writing as a recursive process while developing the skills necessary to compose in multiple genres through a series of creative and analytic assignments. This course has a postcolonial focus and will address fiction and nonfiction, film and photography, as well as contemporary critical discourses concerning commodity culture. Authors will include Merle Collins, Herman Melville, Pablo Neruda, and Jamaica Kincaid, among others.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 7
Topic: Struggles for Social Justice
Instructor: Nesar Uddin
Meets: TuTh 8:30 A - 9:45 A
Description: This course will introduce learners to rhetorical situations and appeals to develop the skills necessary for the analysis and production of academic writing. In this class, learners will critically read a number of multilingual writers’ literacy narratives depicting their challenges for literacy development and acceptance in the dominant culture. Learners will also read to analyze the rhetorical traditions that African American writers use in their arguments to persuade their audience. Learners will write their own literacy narratives and recognize how rhetoric functions by analyzing rhetorical arguments and developing their own researched-based arguments. In keeping with the current ubiquity of digital platforms, learners will transition from textual researched arguments to multimodal forms through the process writing approach. Major assignments include literacy narrative, rhetorical analysis, researched argument, new media presentation, revision paper, and portfolio.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 8
Topic: Struggles for Social Justice
Instructor: Nesar Uddin
Meets: TuTh 10:00 A - 11:15 A
Description: This course will introduce learners to rhetorical situations and appeals to develop the skills necessary for the analysis and production of academic writing. In this class, learners will critically read a number of multilingual writers’ literacy narratives depicting their challenges for literacy development and acceptance in the dominant culture. Learners will also read to analyze the rhetorical traditions that African American writers use in their arguments to persuade their audience. Learners will write their own literacy narratives and recognize how rhetoric functions by analyzing rhetorical arguments and developing their own researched-based arguments. In keeping with the current ubiquity of digital platforms, learners will transition from textual researched arguments to multimodal forms through the process writing approach. Major assignments include literacy narrative, rhetorical analysis, researched argument, new media presentation, revision paper, and portfolio.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 9
Topic: Struggles for Social Justice
Instructor: Nesar Uddin
Meets: TuTh 11:30 A - 12:45 P
Description: This course will introduce learners to rhetorical situations and appeals to develop the skills necessary for the analysis and production of academic writing. In this class, learners will critically read a number of multilingual writers’ literacy narratives depicting their challenges for literacy development and acceptance in the dominant culture. Learners will also read to analyze the rhetorical traditions that African American writers use in their arguments to persuade their audience. Learners will write their own literacy narratives and recognize how rhetoric functions by analyzing rhetorical arguments and developing their own researched-based arguments. In keeping with the current ubiquity of digital platforms, learners will transition from textual researched arguments to multimodal forms through the process writing approach. Major assignments include literacy narrative, rhetorical analysis, researched argument, new media presentation, revision paper, and portfolio.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 10
Topic: Food Writing and Media
Instructor: Mitchell Murray
Meets: TuTh 10:00 A - 11:15 A
Description: Food and gastronomy are at the center of collective identity formation, colonial conquest, and political upheaval. Many cuisines we now celebrate have their roots in the Colombian Exchange and the rise of global capitalism; they were invented by the poor, working-class, colonized, and enslaved. When we eat, we participate in these legacies of violence and expropriation. Yet, at the same time, cooking and eating are vital acts of creativity and community-building. In this first-year writing course, students will grapple with the fraught histories of food, enter the ever-expanding world of food writing, and answer questions like: What does food tell us about consumerism? What can delicacies like nutmeg tell us about capitalism and colonialism? What does foodie culture have to do with white supremacy? What are the consequences of culinary industrialization? How does climate change affect food production? Can we eat ethically and sustainably in an unethical and unsustainable system? Can we build the political will to feed everyone on Earth? Finally, we'll take advantage of our location to explore the foodscape of Atlanta. Readings will include genres and modalities like food journalism, foodoirs, TV, and digital and social media. Assignments may include rhetorical analyses of cookbooks, review essays, and actual cooking for public genres like foodoirs and TikToks.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 11
Topic: Food Writing and Media
Instructor: Mitchell Murray
Meets: TuTh 11:30 A - 12:45 P
Description: Food and gastronomy are at the center of collective identity formation, colonial conquest, and political upheaval. Many cuisines we now celebrate have their roots in the Colombian Exchange and the rise of global capitalism; they were invented by the poor, working-class, colonized, and enslaved. When we eat, we participate in these legacies of violence and expropriation. Yet, at the same time, cooking and eating are vital acts of creativity and community-building. In this first-year writing course, students will grapple with the fraught histories of food, enter the ever-expanding world of food writing, and answer questions like: What does food tell us about consumerism? What can delicacies like nutmeg tell us about capitalism and colonialism? What does foodie culture have to do with white supremacy? What are the consequences of culinary industrialization? How does climate change affect food production? Can we eat ethically and sustainably in an unethical and unsustainable system? Can we build the political will to feed everyone on Earth? Finally, we'll take advantage of our location to explore the foodscape of Atlanta. Readings will include genres and modalities like food journalism, foodoirs, TV, and digital and social media. Assignments may include rhetorical analyses of cookbooks, review essays, and actual cooking for public genres like foodoirs and TikToks.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 12
Topic: Property; Its Problems, Politics, and Possibilities
Instructor: Bernard Krumm
Meets: TuTh 1:00 P - 2:15 P
Description: This course provides students with an introduction to rhetorical analysis and expository writing by focusing on issues of property and ownership. We will read and analyze texts from a variety of genres that take up the matter of property from philosophical, historical, legal, political, and literary perspectives. We will consider foundational narratives about the origins of property and the normative basis of acquisition, the different kinds of property arrangements, the relation of property to justice, and the connection between political rights and property rights. We will then take up contemporary problems regarding property. Topics may include the following: the centrality of home ownership to the American dream and the impact of housing discrimination; how the legacies of colonialism and slavery have shaped our understanding of ownership; intellectual property and copyright law in the digital age; open-access and public domain; taxes on property, estates, and wealth; affordable housing and homelessness; the rise of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs; and the connection between property and social justice issues, including the push for reparations, restitution, and land acknowledgment.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 15
Topic: Property; Its Problems, Politics, and Possibilities
Instructor: Bernard Krumm
Meets: TuTh 4:00 P - 5:15 P
Description: This course provides students with an introduction to rhetorical analysis and expository writing by focusing on issues of property and ownership. We will read and analyze texts from a variety of genres that take up the matter of property from philosophical, historical, legal, political, and literary perspectives. We will consider foundational narratives about the origins of property and the normative basis of acquisition, the different kinds of property arrangements, the relation of property to justice, and the connection between political rights and property rights. We will then take up contemporary problems regarding property. Topics may include the following: the centrality of home ownership to the American dream and the impact of housing discrimination; how the legacies of colonialism and slavery have shaped our understanding of ownership; intellectual property and copyright law in the digital age; open-access and public domain; taxes on property, estates, and wealth; affordable housing and homelessness; the rise of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs; and the connection between property and social justice issues, including the push for reparations, restitution, and land acknowledgment.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 16
Topic: The Mountains Are Calling: Nature & Environmental Writing
Instructor: Christopher Merwin
Meets: TuTh 4:00 P - 5:15 P
Description: This intensive writing course focuses on nature and environmental writing with readings from classical (especially American) nature writers and conservationists, contemporary academic articles, and public policy about the environment. We'll focus on thinking about environment philosophically (through writers like Emerson, Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold) and translating that into environmental ethics, advocacy, and activism. Throughout the course we will hone our writing skills through multimodal reflections on/in nature and environmentally focused papers, narratives, and projects.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 17
Topic: Plant People: Bodies and Botany in the Colonial Imagination
Instructor: Apala Bhowmick
Meets: MW 10:00 A - 11:15 A
Description: If you’ve ever wondered how humans and herbs might be culturally connected, this is the class where we learn about it! The objective of this composition course is to make us curious observers, brave critical thinkers, and sharp writers who can express their thoughts with coherence, clarity, and sophistication. We’ll discuss how the various colonial forces throughout history (French, British, Dutch, and Portuguese) have imposed their presence in their geographical colonies by altering the botanical elements native to these lands, why some orchids look more uncanny than others, and how a can of pineapples at the grocery store doesn’t have as innocent a past as it might appear at first glance! Assignments will include a film review, an ekphrastic essay, and a creative non-fiction piece. Readings will examine how plants and people have travelled across continents throughout history, the politics behind the concept of botanical gardens, the role of cuisine in colonialism, and how human bodies and botanical beings have remained discursively connected in the colonial imagination. Working with images (vintage ads, films), narratives (novels, short stories, ethnographic reports), poetry, and archival documents, we will cultivate our own writing abilities by connecting research with practical observation. Readings will include works by H. G. Wells, Jamaica Kincaid, John Berger, Sumana Roy, Jim Endersby, and Londa Schiebinger.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 18
Topic: Perspectives on Disability & Divergence
Instructor: Jareka Dellenbaugh-Dempsey
Meets: MW 5:30 P - 6:45 P
Description: This composition course will explore the ways that people have written about disabled bodyminds in the United States since before its founding. In this class we will center the perspectives of disabled writers as we examine life-writing, fiction, poetry, academic scholarship, and multi-modal compositions. We will practice techniques for reading and decoding these different genres, and create our own writing that interprets, reimagines, or reflects on themes from the texts. We will explore how disability intersects with other categories of embodiment and identity, including race, gender, and sexuality, and how these intersections affect the rhetoric we use to construct disability in the cultural imagination. Students will compose in multiple genres, including traditional essays and non-textual media like podcasts, and have ample time to reflect on and revise their writing to build familiarity with rhetorical terms and techniques for interpreting the many genres encountered in college.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 19
Topic: The Secret Language of Comics
Instructor: David Morgen
Meets: MW 2:30 P - 3:45 P
Description: In this class we'll read powerful contemporary comics, including nonfiction memoir comics, superhero comics, & other genres in the comics medium. You'll write with both words & images in order to develop your critical thinking and communication skills. There are weekly "low-stakes" sketch assignments along with larger analytical writing assignments spanning a variety of formal and informal genres & multiple modes of communication. No preexisting drawing talent or expertise is required.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading
Section: 21
Topic: The Mountains Are Calling: Nature & Environmental Writing
Instructor: Christopher Merwin
Meets: TuTh 5:30 P - 6:45 P
Description: This intensive writing course focuses on nature and environmental writing with readings from classical (especially American) nature writers and conservationists, contemporary academic articles, and public policy about the environment. We'll focus on thinking about environment philosophically (through writers like Emerson, Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold) and translating that into environmental ethics, advocacy, and activism. Throughout the course we will hone our writing skills through multimodal reflections on/in nature and environmentally focused papers, narratives, and projects.
Course: ENGRD 101 - Rhetorical Comp/Critical Reading–ELL
Section: 20
Topic: Communication, Comprehension, and Culture
Instructor: Levin Arnsperger
Meets: MW 10:00 A - 11:15 A
Description: In this first-year writing course for English language learners, we will engage with key strategies to communicate effectively, develop greater self-awareness when we write and speak, and become critical learners, readers, and researchers. Students will work on several major assignments over the course of the semester, employing a recursive writing process and familiarizing themselves with essential rhetorical terminology. Together we want to follow and even rethink Emory’s strategic priorities, which begin with the following sentences: “We push our students to learn how to think critically, weigh conflicting evidence, and ask questions that challenge existing orthodoxy. We expect them to communicate with clarity and collaborate within diverse communities.”
We will talk about language learning and cross-cultural communication, about different modes of writing and speaking, and about the biases and prejudices that shape our interactions with others and our view of the world. We will also discuss the dominance of English in parts of the globe, and the concepts of World Englishes and English as an international language. What ensures or impedes understanding as we communicate and translate across identities, countries, and cultures?
Course: ENGRD 123R – Communicative Grammar
Section: 1
Instructor: Jane O’Connor
Meets: W 11:30 A - 12:45 P
Description: ENGRD 123R is an intensive grammar course designed specifically to prepare students for whom English is an additional language for the communicative expectations and challenges they may encounter over the course their academic careers. This course will focus on researching, analyzing and practicing English grammar in order to develop students' knowledge of form, meaning and usage, while providing continuous and responsive feedback. Through a variety of activities and texts we will study, practice and refine grammatical accuracy for the purpose of expressing clear and precise meanings. At times I will use lecture and focused activities to introduce specific grammar points that are important for additional language learners; in other lessons, students will discover the nuances of grammar usage by reading texts or using corpus linguistics; additionally, students will have ample opportunity to practice and apply what they have learned to revise and refine their own academic writing. We will look at both more serious global concerns that can affect a reader's general comprehension of the work (such as verb tense) and less serious local concerns that can result in an impreciseness of meaning (such as verb form). What are the choices we make as we construct meaning and how can different choices affect meaning?
Enrollment by permission only from Jane O'Connor. Class to be taken with ENGRD 101. Other students may request the class.
Course: ENGRD 123R – Communicative Grammar
Section: 2
Instructor: Jane O’Connor
Meets: W 1:00 P - 2:15 P
Description: ENGRD 123R is an intensive grammar course designed specifically to prepare students for whom English is an additional language for the communicative expectations and challenges they may encounter over the course their academic careers. This course will focus on researching, analyzing and practicing English grammar in order to develop students' knowledge of form, meaning and usage, while providing continuous and responsive feedback. Through a variety of activities and texts we will study, practice and refine grammatical accuracy for the purpose of expressing clear and precise meanings. At times I will use lecture and focused activities to introduce specific grammar points that are important for additional language learners; in other lessons, students will discover the nuances of grammar usage by reading texts or using corpus linguistics; additionally, students will have ample opportunity to practice and apply what they have learned to revise and refine their own academic writing. We will look at both more serious global concerns that can affect a reader's general comprehension of the work (such as verb tense) and less serious local concerns that can result in an impreciseness of meaning (such as verb form). What are the choices we make as we construct meaning and how can different choices affect meaning?
Enrollment by permission only from Jane O'Connor. Class to be taken with ENGRD 101. Other students may request the class.
Course: ENGRD 220W – Rhetorical Studies
Section: 1
Instructor: Christopher Merwin
Meets: TuTh 2:30 P - 3:45 P
Description: Have you ever imagined yourself giving eloquent speeches? Or writing elegant and moving prose encouraging others to act as their better selves? In this writing intensive course, we explore the history of rhetoric, starting with the ancient Greeks and Romans and practicing the art of (academic) persuasiveness. We’ll look at the ethics and social issues around rhetoric, learn to think, write, and give speeches like a rhetor, and analyze how these ancient techniques are still employed today.
Course: ENGRD 221RW - Advanced Writing Workshop - ELL
Section: 1
Topic: Race, Language, and Culture
Instructor: Mahmuda Sharmin
Meets: MW 10:00 A - 11:15 A
Description: In this course, we will discuss how race, language, and culture affect our communication. Immigrant people often face preconceived notions about their language proficiency because of how they use language and how they racially and ethnically look. Ethnic accent bullying and linguistic stereotyping are two common dimensions of linguicism, which refers to beliefs or ideologies that discriminate against human beings based on language. In this course, we will read a variety of texts, stories, and articles written by writers from diverse cultures to discuss racial equalities, identities, forms of justice and injustice, bias and oppression, and human rights. Through a variety of tasks and assignments, students will have the opportunity to improve their writing and communication skills.
This is an English Language Learner (ELL) course. Contact Jane O'Connor (jcoconn@emory.edu) for permission to enroll.
Course: ENGRD 223 – Rhetorical Grammar
Section: 1
Instructor: Mahmuda Sharmin
Meets: Does not meet. This is an online asynchronous class.
Description: Through a study and analysis of grammar's impact on rhetorical effectiveness, students work with their own writing as they learn to make and adapt grammatical choices to fit audience, purpose, constraints, exigencies, and timing. The notion of good grammar makes most of us think of getting it right or being correct. However, Grammar is all about choices, and these choices are made to forward your argument, help you find an audience, and make a difference with your writing. Grammatical choices are part of the writer's toolkit, helping the writer make meaning in collaboration with a reader. This class is fully online and asynchronous.
Course: ENGRD 223 – Rhetorical Grammar
Section: 2
Instructor: Mahmuda Sharmin
Meets: Does not meet. This is an online asynchronous class.
Description: Through a study and analysis of grammar's impact on rhetorical effectiveness, students work with their own writing as they learn to make and adapt grammatical choices to fit audience, purpose, constraints, exigencies, and timing. The notion of good grammar makes most of us think of getting it right or being correct. However, Grammar is all about choices, and these choices are made to forward your argument, help you find an audience, and make a difference with your writing. Grammatical choices are part of the writer's toolkit, helping the writer make meaning in collaboration with a reader. This class is fully online and asynchronous.
Course: ENGRD 223 – Rhetorical Grammar
Section: 3
Instructor: Mahmuda Sharmin
Meets: Does not meet. This is an online asynchronous class.
Description: Through a study and analysis of grammar's impact on rhetorical effectiveness, students work with their own writing as they learn to make and adapt grammatical choices to fit audience, purpose, constraints, exigencies, and timing. The notion of good grammar makes most of us think of getting it right or being correct. However, Grammar is all about choices, and these choices are made to forward your argument, help you find an audience, and make a difference with your writing. Grammatical choices are part of the writer's toolkit, helping the writer make meaning in collaboration with a reader. This class is fully online and asynchronous.
Course: ENGRD 223 – Rhetorical Grammar
Section: 4
Instructor: Mahmuda Sharmin
Meets: Does not meet. This is an online asynchronous class.
Description: Through a study and analysis of grammar's impact on rhetorical effectiveness, students work with their own writing as they learn to make and adapt grammatical choices to fit audience, purpose, constraints, exigencies, and timing. The notion of good grammar makes most of us think of getting it right or being correct. However, Grammar is all about choices, and these choices are made to forward your argument, help you find an audience, and make a difference with your writing. Grammatical choices are part of the writer's toolkit, helping the writer make meaning in collaboration with a reader. This class is fully online and asynchronous.
Course: ENGRD 223 – Rhetorical Grammar
Section: 5
Instructor: Robert Birdwell
Meets: Does not meet. This is an online asynchronous class.
Description: Through a study and analysis of grammar's impact on rhetorical effectiveness, students work with their own writing as they learn to make and adapt grammatical choices to fit audience, purpose, constraints, exigencies, and timing. The notion of good grammar makes most of us think of getting it right or being correct. However, Grammar is all about choices, and these choices are made to forward your argument, help you find an audience, and make a difference with your writing. Grammatical choices are part of the writer's toolkit, helping the writer make meaning in collaboration with a reader. This class is fully online and asynchronous.
Course: ENGRD 224R – English for ETSI Students
Section: 1
Instructor: Jane O’Connor
Meets: TuTh 11:30 A - 12:45 P
Description: This three-credit hour class is to be repeated over four semesters for the two-year duration that you attend Emory. The class is designed specifically to support you in developing your academic and informal/social English language proficiency through authentic materials. You will develop and practice your English language skills by reading, listening to, and interpreting diverse texts, engaging in discussions and performing various other activities both inside and outside of the classroom. In addition, it will introduce you to life in America and American culture, history, and traditions through expert guest speakers. Each of you will also be paired with a writing center tutor and conversation partner for extra practice outside of the classroom.
This is an English Language Learner (ELL) course. Contact Jane O'Connor (jcoconn@emory.edu) for permission to enroll.
Course: ENGRD 302W – Technical Writing
Section: 1
Instructor: Greg Palermo
Meets: TuTh 4:00 P - 5:15 P
Description: In this writing-intensive course, we will practice the effective and ethical communication of specialized technical knowledge and quantitative information. We will introduce rhetorical analysis as a method for understanding how quantitative information can be interpreted and conveyed for a variety of audiences that range from professional researchers to the lay public. Guided by this knowledge, you will exercise strategies for communicating via text, speech, and visuals that are integral to preparing genres like research reports, informative and persuasive infographics, technical instructions, translations, and user-selected or user-generated data sets. While adapting these genres and their conventions for our course goals, we will emphasize what methodological questions to ask, how, and where when analyzing and writing about data. As you gain comfort with thinking of writing and analysis as intertwined and exploratory pursuits, we will develop your facility with practices that center collaboration, transparency, and reproducibility. We will focus especially on how data are rhetorical and how these practices shape the impacts of our data-driven narratives.
Students should complete one of the following forms for an enrollment permission number: https://tinyurl.com/ux3yj3ev
Course: ENGRD 316W – Rhetorics of Resistance
Section: 1
Instructor: Kathleen Leuschen
Meets: MW 10:00 A - 11:15 A
Description: History is rife with warnings, prohibitions, and laws that have prevented various groups of people from full access to the practices of reading and writing. Consider this, why were African slaves forbidden to learn to read and write in the United States? Why did Victorian doctors link women's independent reading to physical maladies like insanity and infertility? This class investigates literacy practices as rhetorical endeavors of resistance to power structures that attempted to control and deprive certain populations from the pleasure and agency of meaning-making. Through informal, formal, and multimodal assignments, students will develop a strong foundational knowledge of rhetorical theory through a thematic study of the literacy practices of figures like Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Paulo Freire, Malala Yousafzai, Mary Daly, and others.
Course: ENGRD 380W – Topics in Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy
Section: 1
Topic: Writing Atlanta
Instructor: Ben Miller
Meets: MW 1:00 P - 2:15 P
Description: In connection with Atlanta Studies, an open access peer-reviewed journal, this course explores writing in relation to the city and the challenges of writing about place. By considering the special case of Atlanta, and writing as an invention emerging from the practice of many disciplines, we will consider how the past, present, future, and planning of a city is represented. In additional to reading great writing and practicing our own writing, production, and fieldwork, we will consider the challenges of managing a publication by contributing to the nuts and bolts work of producing the Atlanta Studies Journal.
Course: ENGRD 380W – Topics in Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy
Section: 2
Topic: Digital Rhetoric Amid Disinformation
Instructor: Gregory Palermo
Meets: TuTh 10:00 A - 11:15 A
Description: While we might think of doom scrolling as a passive activity, it also involves sorting through information of dubious accuracy and influence. Our information feeds are served to us based on data-driven assumptions about us, our values, and what we think is true—a fact that even conspiracy theorists leap at the chance to point out when provided expert recommendations. Threads and comment sections draw contrarians and trolls who gleefully tag (incorrect) logical fallacies, carefully equivocate, and shamelessly lie with statistics. Nefarious actors exploit the logics of digital platforms to gaslight and harass members of vulnerable online communities with brigades of sock puppets, while maintaining plausible deniability. Where are we to turn, as readers and writers, when faced with these erosions of expertise and civility? In this course, we will turn to rhetoric, which is not solely the study of persuasion, but also of how we negotiate cultural information and the power of language to affect social action. We will examine how authority is conferred in digital spaces and consider the tactics that undermine it, exercising methods to recognize and counter disinformation rather than recirculate it.
Course: ENGRD 380W – Topics in Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy
Section: 3
Topic: Bird by Bird: Writing with Animals
Instructor: Melissa Yang
Meets: TuTh 1:00 P - 2:15 P
Description: For centuries, writing with animals was the only way humans knew how to write; we penned tales with quills plucked from geese on calf-skin vellum and bound our books in leather. In the years since, our writing technologies and relationships with animals have both evolved. This writing-intensive seminar invites students to investigate intertwined histories and narratives of writing and animals through critical and creative writing and multimodal composing.
Course: ENGRD 380W – Topics in Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy
Section: 4
Topic: Science Writing for Scientific Audiences
Instructor: Donna McDermott
Meets: TuTh 4:00 P - 5:15 P
Description: In this course, students will practice clear, analytical writing about science for professional and academic settings. Students will review and write scientific papers, visualize data, present research talks, and facilitate scientific conversations. This class is designed for students who have completed at least introductory level courses in some of the natural sciences.
Course: ENGRD 397R – Advanced Writing Lab
Section: 1
Instructor: Ben Miller
Meets: Tu 8:30 A – 9:45 A
Description: Students curate and defend a portfolio of revised work developed in the RWID Minor. Each portfolio will be introduced by a reflective essay that situates student work within the theoretical perspectives learned in the program. Prerequisite: Senior standing.
Course: ENGRD 397R – Advanced Writing Lab
Section: 2
Instructor: Ben Miller
Meets: Th 8:30 A – 9:45 A
Description: Students curate and defend a portfolio of revised work developed in the RWID Minor. Each portfolio will be introduced by a reflective essay that situates student work within the theoretical perspectives learned in the program. Prerequisite: Senior standing.
Course: ENGRD 411RW – History & Theory in Rhetoric/Writing/Literacy
Section: 1
Topic: The History and Theory of Rhetoric
Instructor: Kathleen Leuschen
Meets: MW 2:30 P - 3:45 P
Description: In this course you will be continuing to learn what it means to be a rhetor and to imagine your role as a rhetor in the future. You will consider your options for post-graduation study and work using your rhetorical skills. You will learn of the great variety of uses and theories of rhetoric by important people both in the past and in more recent times. Most important, you will join a conversation that has been going on for a couple of thousand years. My hope is that you will enjoy our pilgrimage into the history and theory of a vibrant and time-tested field while we share the stories, dreams, and hopes of many people.
Course: ENGRD 415 – Capstone in RWID
Section: 1
Instructor: David Morgen
Meets: M 1:00 P - 2:15 P
Description: Students curate and defend a portfolio of revised work developed in the RWID Minor. Each portfolio will be introduced by a reflective essay that situates student work within the theoretical perspectives learned in the program. Prerequisite: Senior standing.