Course Description

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

This semester, we will explore contemporary non-fiction writing about animals–a category that, itself, includes a range of genres and hybrids. Some of the questions we’ll consider: why do humans write about other animals? What are the dominant paradigms for telling animals’ stories? What alternatives exist? To what extent are animal stories really human stories?

Learning Outcomes

Successfully completing this course means that you will be able to:

  • Identify, explore, and analyze common representations of animals and their relationships with us.
  • Identify and employ a range of strategies for discovering, developing, organizing, revising, editing and proofreading ideas.
  • Focus your writing on a specific purpose.
  • Identify and respond to the needs of different audiences and rhetorical situations commonly encountered in writing about animals.
  • Integrate your ideas with those of others.
  • Apply technologies commonly used to discover, research, and communicate ideas within non-fiction writing about animals.