(Winter 2018) ENGL 282 A - Representation through Writing
Course Description:
This is a multimodal composition course, so our focus is learning how to produce various types of texts that employ multiple modes of communication strategically (e.g. layering together sounds, words, images, gestures, etc. for rhetorical effect). In this class, we will explore how writing can be a form of representation for communities, individuals, experiences, and identities. To do this work, you will be working toward a showcase project in which you author texts of your choice about a community that you research. We will be working towards this showcase project by gathering research through ethnographic or auto-ethnographic methods and then learning design techniques for presenting that research to others through a text of our choice, like an ethnography, documentary, personal narrative, short story, podcast, music, poetry, etc. Therefore, in this class, you will learn multimodal research methods—to conduct observations, interview, and focus groups—and multimodal composition strategies, designing texts strategically given your purpose, audience, and situation. The texts that you author in this class should matter to you personally, but also to those outside of the classroom in which we produce them. Most of all, I hope that your research, the texts you produce and share with each other, and the readings we discuss together will broaden our understanding of writing—and how it represents people, communities, experiences, and identities.
(Winter 2017) - ENGL 282 A - Intermediate Multimodal Composition
Course Description:
In English 282, we will explore how multiple modes —linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, and spatial—allow us to compose about and for selected communities. The course design and topic accommodate a broad range of disciplinary approaches to community and multimodality. We will analyze elements of effective multimodal work, discuss the affordances of discrete modes, and produce our own multimodal texts, both individually and in groups. Research informs course projects, broadening student’s understanding of community histories and needs. Your work will thus integrate data and assets gleaned from books, census reports, newspapers, photographs, podcasts, videos, maps, web sites and interviews.
While students will use online platforms, software and hardware to complete coursework, technical savvy is not a course prerequisite. Students will receive instruction in all technical tools used in the classroom. Although 282 has no formal prerequisite, it is an intermediate composition course, and instructors expect entering students to know how to formulate claims, integrate evidence, demonstrate awareness of audience, and structure coherent sentences, paragraphs and essays.