2018-2019 University Catalogue 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
2018-2019 University Catalogue [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Course Descriptions


 

University Studies

  
  • UNST 350 - Interdisciplinary Methods Seminar


    A methods seminar designed to prepare students to complete interdisciplinary research. Students become familiar with how one designs and conducts research in the humanities and social sciences, learning different research methods that can be applied in multiple areas of inquiry. Beyond hands on experience in research design and methods, students will gain familiarity with key readings within the specific interdisciplinary program(s) with which the faculty instructor is associated.

    Credits: 1.00
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: No First-year
    Recommended: Students in humanities and social sciences who are preparing to conduct independent interdisciplinary research.
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • UNST 391 - Independent Study


    Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.

    Credits: variable
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • UNST 410 - Seminar: Area, Regional, and Global Study


    The University Studies research seminar in area, regional, and global studies aims to provide an interdisciplinary senior capstone experience for majors in the Africana and Latin American Studies, Asian Studies, and Middle East and Islamic Studies. Based on the style of a graduate-level seminar, this course offers students the opportunity to explore and understand a trans-regional topic selected by the instructor. The seminar also provides a senior thesis workshop that helps guide the students through the process of developing a significant work of undergraduate scholarship.

    Credits: 1.0
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Asian Studies, Middle East and Islamic Study, Africana & Latin Amer Studies Majors and Minors
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • UNST 491 - Independent Study


    Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.

    Credits: variable
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term



Women’s Studies

  
  • WMST 202 - Women’s Lives: An Introduction to Women’s Studies


    Explores gender from a variety of angles, and in tandem with race, ethnicity, class, religion, sexuality, and other markers of identity. Students develop vocabulary and tools to speak and think critically about oppression, patriarchy, social change, and common assumptions about the world and people around us. A primary goal is to explore both the forces that feed into inequality and discrimination, and ways to resist, challenge, and overcome those forces. Students explores issues ranging from bodies, work, families, identity, politics, medicine, history, and the media, as well as the ways in which feminist movements around the world have addressed these topics.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: No Senior
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WMST 205 - Queer Latina Visualities: Art, Theory, and Resistance


    An introduction to queer Latina art as a field of interdisciplinary feminist inquiry, with a focus on art by Chicana, Xicana, Indigenous, Central American, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban artists. This course examines the synergetic relation between queer Latina feminist art, theory, and resistance. Students will learn how queer Latina visualities are shaped by historical, social, and political forces - like colonialism, racism, and globalization - and how queer Latina artists, in turn, act upon and shape the social world. Students investigate queer Chicana/Latina feminist texts, asking how artists challenge existing power dynamics, embody decolonial knowledge.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WMST 291 - Independent Study


    Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.

    Credits: variable
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WMST 301 - Feminist Methodologies: Theory and Praxis


    Is there a distinct feminist method of carrying out research? How do feminist and decolonial methodologies challenge - or complement - conventional research methodologies? This course provides a framework for thinking about methods and forms of knowledge production from a feminist decolonial perspective. The course examines how feminist scholars challenge dominant theories of knowledge through a lens that recognizes multiple, interrelated axes of inequality.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: WMST 202  
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WMST 302 - Women’s Lives: Biography and Autobiography


    “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The World would split open.” So wrote the poet Muriel Rukeyser. In this seminar students read autobiography and biography in order to understand the woman and her culture. The course balances a study of the lives of prominent, exceptional women with study of the ordinary lives of ordinary people.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: No First-year
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WMST 391 - Independent Study


    Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.

    Credits: variable
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WMST 490 - Women’s Studies Senior Seminar


    The course is taught by the members of the women’s studies faculty, and the content of the course takes a different shape depending on the instructor. The content of the course is interdisciplinary; the course is rooted in and utilizes feminist theory; and, where appropriate, students engage in some form of praxis in the process of understanding the connection between the classroom and the world in which we live. Major and minor students are required to take this course in the spring semester of their senior year.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Women’s Studies Majors and Minors
    Class Restriction: Only Senior
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WMST 491 - Independent Study


    Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.

    Credits: variable
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WMST 499 - Honors in Women’s Studies


    Students pursuing honors research enroll in this course.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term



Writing and Rhetoric

  
  • WRIT 102 - Introduction to Rhetoric in the Liberal Arts Tradition


    Artes liberales–the liberal arts–those arts that are proper for a free citizen, according to Cicero. These arts numbered seven in the medieval curriculum, the language arts–grammar, logic, and rhetoric–constituting the first three or trivium. While the trivium has all but disappeared in today’s college curriculum, increasingly scholars across the disciplines are discovering the integral role rhetoric plays in equipping citizens for effective participation in a democracy. Drawing upon the liberal arts tradition, the aim is to cultivate students’ capacity for eloquence through inquiry. To foster this human impulse to inquire, students will engage in a number of inquiry projects that will ask them to reflect on their personal experiences, to analyze the forces that shaped those experiences, and to look critically at the way that social and cultural identity is formed. In conjunction with the three inquiry projects, students engage in an intense amount of work on rhetorical invention (the discovery of ideas for writing), composing a workable draft, reading and revising the draft, and rereading and editing it for fluency in grammar, punctuation, and style. The course fulfills the writing requirement.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 103 - Rhetoric and Writing


    Teaches the basic elements of college writing, strategies for reading and effective note-taking, the discovery and development of ideas, thesis development, organization and coherence, and editing skills. This course meets the writing requirement.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior, Sophomore
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 105 - Colgate Talk


    Consider those who write for Colgate. A number of students, and many more professionals, hold jobs here that require speaking and writing on behalf of Colgate University. This course samples these writings as both theme and organizing principle, forming a textbook of practical rhetoric. It trains students in the analysis of texts through traditional rhetorical questions: What intellectual claims are made? What values are attributed to Colgate? What audiences are addressed? In writing their own texts about Colgate’s current issues, students learn important speaking, writing, and reading strategies. In a sequence of expository essays, students develop new powers of persuasion by studying the interaction of language, point of view, and local cultural knowledge. The course meets the writing requirement.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: Only First-year
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 110 - Academic Persuasions: An Introduction to Rhetoric, Research, and the Academic Essay


    By taking a rhetorical approach to academic writing, this course asks students to cultivate sustained and reasoned understandings of the relations between writer, audience, subject/text, and disciplinary contexts. Students engage in analytic essays and research projects within the discipline of rhetoric, developing facility with analytic habits of mind, discursive moves typical in academic writing, and the construction of clear, complex, and logical arguments about civic discourse. The course focuses on several essential elements of college writing and research: strategies for active analytic reading and effective note taking; compiling and critical reading of research sources; the discovery and development of a strong thesis supported by persuasive evidence; the skills of summary, definition, analysis, interpretation, and synthesis; organization and coherence; revision processes; and editing skills. This course meets the writing requirement.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior, Sophomore
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 203 - Argumentation


    Students in this course learn critical techniques for argumentation by analyzing the arguments of other writers and applying these techniques to their own writing. Both academic and popular sources are analyzed for their use of evidence, the presence of logical appeals, and their use of rhetorical devices. Special attention is paid to problems arising from more complex critical analysis, such as appropriate ways to treat conflicting sources, detecting the biases in both primary and secondary source material, and examining the biases of the student’s own arguments.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 205 - Writers and Readers


    Focuses on one of the most important characteristics of a successful writer: the ability to, first, imagine a reader’s point of view, and second, to establish an imaginary dialogue with that reader. The more the imagined reader anticipates the response of a real reader, the more power the writer can command. Students consider the following topics in depth: the split in the writer’s self - creator and editor; automatic language - the clichéd medium of conscious life; the practice of self-paraphrase to get beyond the automatic; the development of the writer’s potential voices; control over real readers; the imagined reader in the writer’s head; and alienation and authority in college-level writing. To accomplish the goal of developing awareness and control of the relationship between writer and reader, students establish a writing community that works primarily with rough drafts in a workshop format. Principles of helpful feedback/response are taught explicitly, and learning to be a supportive but critical reader improves the students’ editing skills at the same time that it models the realities of a reader’s difficulties in the hands of an unskilled but developing writer.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 210 - The Rhetoric of Style


    In ancient Greece and Rome, teachers of rhetoric taught style (elocutio) as one of five essential canons, or rules, for effective and persuasive communication. By this rule, an effective communicator reaches an audience not just through the content of speech, but also through its artful expression. This course studies how writers’ stylistic choices can profoundly influence the reception and interpretation of texts. With the goal of practicing new stylistic techniques in their own writing, students closely analyze published authors’ diction, sentence structure, punctuation, and figures of speech. Readings for the course include short sample pieces from a variety of genres, written by a variety of authors, as models. Because an understanding of prescriptive English grammar is essential to experiments in style, students review the parts of speech and study the parts of sentences, principles of syntax, and punctuation conventions. This course does not meet the writing requirement.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 215 - Public Speaking


    Since the origins of western democracy, rhetoricians have taught the study and practice of public speaking as an essential art of public life and civic responsibility. This course fuses theory to praxis in introducing students to basic public speaking skills, including researching, organization, and writing effective oral presentations; developing skills of critical listening and audience analysis; surveying key examples of public address; and providing students the opportunity to work in different speech situations. Students develop poise and self-confidence in public speaking as they deepen their understanding of the evolving aesthetics of public discourse in the context of new media and global cultures. This course does not meet the writing requirement.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None
    Formerly: WRIT 115


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  • WRIT 225 - Visual Rhetorics


    Approaches the study of rhetoric by foregrounding the dynamic relationship of text and image. How does a writer’s combination of verbal and visual elements communicate different arguments when circulated among different audiences? How do verbal/visual texts imitate, represent, and/or constitute cultural identities, norms, values, or practices? With the goal of becoming effective rhetorical critics, as well as incisive consumers and producers of visual culture, students in this course study a variety of visual texts in print and electronic form and examine these texts’ complex powers of persuasion. The primary work is to develop and strengthen fluency in rhetorical discourse and visual literacy, as students work to perceive and analyze, as well as design and create, verbal-visual texts.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None
    Formerly: WRIT 340


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 231 - Ethos and the Personal Essay


    By exploring the boundary between private and public writing, students examine how personal reflection intersects with critical analysis to develop a disciplined expository essay. Drawing on examples from a variety of publications, it develops skills in autobiographical and biographical essay writing, journal writing, and expository writing, and then shows how these skills can enrich the expository essay without sacrificing its academic tone and structure.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 242 - Stand and Speak: Feminist Rhetorics and Social Change


    As an introduction to rhetoric, rhetorical history and criticism, and feminist rhetorics, this course fore-grounds the study of how 19th-century women used both pen and voice with rhetorical precision to “stand and speak” to issues that marked their personal lives and their times. By studying women who composed and embodied what is now understood as the early years of the first wave of U.S. feminism, students access a genealogy of women rhectors who serve as exemplars - and cautions - for later waves and for their own contemporary visions of social change. By positioning the study of rhetoric as the study of language as it constitutes social relations, power, and knowledge, students become more acutely aware of and fluent in the composition, circulation, and criticism of private and public discourses, the verbal material through which they construct social worlds. The work for this course requires close reading and active discussion of course texts through a rhetorical lens and through the category of gender. This course does not meet the writing requirement.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 250 - Kairos: The Art of Rhetoric from Ancient to Modern Times


    Rhetoric–the effective use of language to persuade a given audience–is as old as human speech itself. Yet attuned as they were to “kairos,” the opportune time of a fledgling democracy in Athens, the ancient Greeks were perhaps the first to codify rhetorical practice as an art. This is a course about time, about the art of rhetoric as a most effective medium of change at the right time. Students see this when rhetoric served as a vehicle for change in 5th-century Greece, when it equipped individuals to write and preach to effect change in the so-called dark ages, and when it gave women and former slaves the voice to change attitudes and institutions in the 19th and 20th centuries. Students survey the entire history of western rhetoric from the earliest treatises to the most recent theories. In addition to examining this history through a close reading of canonical texts, students come to know the rhetorical tradition through experience, by engaging in the very practices (e.g., medieval preaching and letter writing, and 18th-century exercises in elocution) associated with rhetoric in a particular historical period. The many rhetorical terms, concepts, principles, and practices covered in the course provide students the proper background for further study in the more specialized areas of rhetoric.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 260 - Biblical Rhetoric


    Examines the various ways that writers and speakers draw on the Bible for rhetorical force. Many of the works that call on the Bible for inspiration are not of a religious nature at all, raising questions about the nature of biblical style. Readings range from the Venerable Bede and Queen Elizabeth I to Bob Marley and Douglas Rushkoff, in addition to source material from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. No previous knowledge of the Bible is needed.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 270 - The Rhetoric of Comics


    Focuses on the ways that comics - often defined as the interplay of words and images - convey specific messages, whether instructional, narrative, persuasive, or other. Close analyses draw on principles of visual rhetoric, comics scholarship, photography, and related disciplines. Readings cover the theory, history, terminology, and genres of graphic narratives.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 280 - Rhetorical “Borderlands”: Introduction to Comparative Intercultural Rhetoric


    By taking a transnational comparative perspective, this course introduces students to several key questions in comparative and intercultural rhetoric, from the most basic question of “How does culture shape language, and how does language, in turn, shape culture?” to more complicated questions: How do cross-border and cross-cultural engagements constrain and influence rhetorical practices and interactions? How do cultural logics, values, and assumptions hierarchically govern different geo-political spaces? In what ways have individuals and groups both conformed to and resisted discursive structures of power and privilege? And finally, in what ways can comparative and intercultural study sharpen our own critical insights about and rhetorical agency within such dominant structures? This course will address these questions and others as students work to develop and strengthen skills in critical analysis, research, and reflective practices through the lens of transnational comparative intercultural rhetoric.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 291 - Independent Study


    Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.

    Credits: variable
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 303 - The Rhetoric of Data Visualization & Infographics


    Our world is increasingly visual; more and more of the information we consume and produce is presented in images. This course focuses on the visual presentation of numerical information - everything from box-and-whisker plots to flashy infographics - and specifically how such information can effectively persuade its readers. Emphasis will be on both analyzing and making visualizations; there will be no attention to data collection or analysis. Students can expect to improve their visual literacy skills; no facility with statistics or software packages is required.

    Credits: 1.00
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 315 - Public Address


    The study of public address has long been considered the cornerstone of a liberal arts education - meant to prepare graduates for success in public life as citizens, community members, and professionals. Students will examine public discourse on a relevant theme while familiarizing themselves with key debates regarding the theory and criticism of public address. Following that, students will engage in their own rhetorical criticism, as well as participating in speech and dialogue exercises that draw on rhetorical principles. As students immerse themselves in the history, criticism, and performance of public address, they will also consider how rhetorical dynamics inform issues of democracy and citizenship, especially as those issues relate to differences of ethnicity, race, class, and gender.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 325 - The Narrative in New Media


    Students will explore the ways in which innovations in media have changed the shape of narrative and textuality. People often assume that new media is a 20th-century development, but this course will be a more historicized view; the printing press, after all, changed media more fundamentally than anything since. Starting with a foundation of media theory and narrative theory, the course will then work through the ages: printing; newspapers; color printing; radio; television; electronic fiction; fan fiction; hypertext; remix aesthetics; and videogames.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None
    Formerly: WRIT 222


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 342 - Rhetoric in Black and White: Communication and Culture in Conflict


    In the nearly 400-year history of social relations between Blacks and Whites in America, rhetoric has often failed. Civil war, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and Black Power were all actions or movements that ensued largely because words fell short of persuading persons of good will to submit to reasoned arguments. Arguably a pillar of American democracy (as in the freedom to speak and to dissent), why has rhetoric been so seemingly ineffective in securing mutual respect and understanding between America’s Black and White citizens? This course seeks to answer this question by closely examining the styles of communication that historically have shaped the cultural identities and public personas of the two groups. From slave speech to the languages of protest in the 1960s to verbal expression in rap music and social media today, the course considers why communication or dialogue involving race is often doomed to fail.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 345 - Crafting Bodies: Movement, Gender, and Performance


    The primary focus will be the body as viewed through the rhetorical lens of techné, defined by Aristotle as crafted knowledge and application. It engages with recent developments in the field of rhetoric, which has expanded to consider how persuasion and meaning making are impacted by movement, gender, and performance. To this end, the course will center on theories for studying bodies, introducing students to the dominant conversations within rhetoric and related fields. Students will apply these frameworks to texts from popular, political, and artistic performances to better understand how dominant narratives about the body constrain or enable certain types of behavior and what they signify. Through this theoretical and practical study, students will become critically aware of the intersections of bodies and their representations and how these intersections influence our capacity for engaged deliberation and social action.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 346 - Hip Hop: Race, Sex, and the Struggle in Urban America


    Examines the ways in which language has reinforced racial and ethnic identities and divisions in post-civil rights America. It explores the conceptual origins of race, ethnicity, and other categories of difference, particularly those produced through legal, political, socioeconomic, and humanistic discourses. Recognizing that the United States is not just a multicultural society but a multilingual one, the course investigates how urban American youth have “talked back” to power and seized the power to name. It focuses in particular on uses of the Hip Hop vernacular by urban Latin Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and white Americans to give voice to their reality and the urban struggle. The course also traces the causes and consequences of historical silences, as suggested by Martin Luther King’s dictum: “A riot is the language of the unheard.”

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 347 - Language and Gender


    Explores the intersection of linguistic theory and feminist theory, defining gender as essentially cultural, but without assuming beforehand that women and men do, in fact, use different language. Students consider the following questions in depth: To what extent does English have a sexist, or patriarchal bias? Do women and men speak differently in our culture? Do they think differently? What is the difference between gender and sexuality in language use? To what extent should writing avoid gender-specific forms, and to what extent should classrooms honor gender differences in language use? What is “political correctness” in language and what is its value? Students look at English from theoretical, political, and social viewpoints, with readings taken from a wide range of fields, but with a particular focus on linguistics and feminist theory.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 348 - Discourses of Whiteness


    Claims that whiteness–white racial identity–is more about language than biology. Whiteness is a rhetorical construct that exists only in discourse, yet its concrete effects impact societies all over the globe. Drawing on texts from around the world, students trace the evolution of this construct from its inception up to the present day, examining the rhetorical strategies whereby whiteness is both hidden and revealed in a variety of genres: personal memoirs, philosophical essays, scientific investigations, political writings, legal documents, critical analyses, historical essays, and such mass media as television, film, newspapers, and magazines. By engaging in the rhetorical analysis of these texts, students examine how the discourses of whiteness continue to frame reality and mediate power relations. A required evening film series accompanying the class has students viewing, discussing, and analyzing feature films, documentary films, and television shows.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: WRIT 348L  
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  
  • WRIT 350 - Rhetoric & Citizenship


    To engage students in both the analysis and production of public discourse through examining the rhetoric of citizenship. It is through the language and symbols of citizenship that individuals come to understand themselves as political subjectivities and engage with others as democratic agents. Students will examine how the meaning of citizenship is shaped and contested through public discourse. Students will analyze debates over citizenship, mainly in the context of immigration debates in the US and in other parts of the world.

    Credits: 1.00
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 354 - Dialogue and Deliberation in Democratic Life


    Public communication is a vital part of democratic life. It is through the circulation and exchange of public speech that citizens shape the contours of public life, build community, and determine their core civic values. More importantly, it is through the work of democratic dialogue that citizens struggle with their inevitable differences and seek to find ways of working together despite those differences. The purpose of this class is to examine both the theory and practice of deliberative democracy, with the aim of better understanding how communities might use dialogue and deliberation to effectively engage across different perspectives. Students are asked to think critically about the possibilities and challenges of democratic dialogue. Students are also trained in facilitation techniques, with the major project for this class providing students an opportunity to facilitate an open forum on a campus-related issue.

    Credits: 1.00
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


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  • WRIT 391 - Independent Study


    Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.

    Credits: variable
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


  
  • WRIT 491 - Independent Study


    Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.

    Credits: variable
    Corequisite: None
    Prerequisites: None
    Major/Minor Restrictions: None
    Class Restriction: None
    Area of Inquiry: None
    Liberal Arts CORE: None


    Click here for Course Offerings by term


 

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