Course Description

Writing Genres introduces you to the expectations and purposes of a particular written genre and offers intensive practice composing texts that function within the conventions and boundaries of this genre. You will compose multiple texts in drafts, participate in workshops and discussions, and produce critical analyses and reviews.

Each semester the course focuses on a different genre. Our focus this semester is the essay, with particular emphasis on exploring possibilities for the essay genre in the digital age.   What is an essay? How has it been defined at different historical moments?  What possibilities and opportunities for essay writing are emerging in the digital environments currently available to us as 21st-century writers?  We’ll read a range of essays from early to contemporary examples of the genre.   Writing projects will include a podcast and a digital essay on topics chosen by students, as well as shorter assignments responding to the reading and our class discussion.

Course Outcomes

This course

  • provides an introduction to the conventions of  “the essay”
  • examines emerging possibilities for “the essay” in our  digital culture
  • offers practice composing a variety of print and digital texts that explore and remediate conventions of “the essay”

Student Learning Outcomes

After this class, you should be able to

  • identify, explore, and analyze some common conventions of “the essay”
  • ask new questions about the purpose and place of writing in our digital culture
  • better shape your writing to identify and respond to the needs of different audiences and rhetorical situations
  • confidently integrate your ideas with the ideas of others
  • read digital texts with a better understanding of how they work
  • work comfortably with WordPress, Audacity and InDesign