Writing Program - Spring 1999

All sections of Writing 1 explore the power of language to make meaning, to create identities for the writer, to shape communities, and to influence readers. All sections will give you the chance to explore writing as a means of discovery and learning as well as a means of communication. Every section will help you to analyze rhetorical situations: that is, to understand the conventions at work in various situations and the kinds of arguments and evidence that are persuasive in different contexts. And in any section of Writing 1, you will have the chance to develop your particular strengths as a writer of academic prose and work on your particular weaknesses.

All sections of Writing 1 teach writing as a process that involves strategies for generating ideas, revision, and editing. They all will encourage you to work together as readers of each other's papers. And all will require a significant amount of reading and weekly writing which may include informal writing for yourself as well as more formal essays for others.

All course descriptions are subject to change.

Enrollment Procedures:

Frosh have enrollment priority in Writing 1 courses during spring quarter. This means that they will enroll first (during their scheduled TELESLUG appointment times). On Monday, March 15, at 2:00 PM, the frosh restriction will be lifted to allow all students to enroll in the remaining open spaces on a first-come first-served basis.

Writ. 1 Sec. 1 Jeff Arnett TTH 10:00A-11:45A Soc Sci II 141

Oh, To Be A Child Again...

Working with both informal and formal essays, we will examine the role of creativity and the imagination in the development of children, as well as in our own lives. A class reader and individual research will help to focus our discussions and refine your own ideas. For the longer research paper, you will choose a topic related to children. Your final project will be the creation of an original children's book ($15-$20 "lab fee"). We will also work as writing mentors with sixth graders at Westlake School, a partnership that will include on-site visits. Imagination is more important than knowledge. -Albert Einstein

Writ. 1 Sec. 2 Jeff Arnett TTH 12:00P-1:45P Soc Sci II 141

Same as Section 1 above.

Writ. 1 Sec. 3 Charles Atkinson MWF 11:00A-12:10P Kresge 319

The Family and the Self

We'll examine the notion and dynamics of families through contemporary fiction and poetry, analytical essays, and first-hand experience. We'll try to clarify some of what occurs in American families--between males and females, between parents and children, between the dominant culture and various subcultures. And we'll speculate on what could happen in these families--if we continue our present ways, and if we try other attitudes and patterns. The goal is to look closely at an arrangement that profoundly shapes us, to think together and on paper about it, and to generate clear, persuasive prose from it. Peer-led discussion, small group writing critiques, constant revision, and a research project will be central to the course, so enroll only if you're willing to participate in all of these ways.

Writ. 1 Sec. 4 Tim Fitzmaurice MWF 12:30P-1:40P Crown 202

Writing and Nonviolent Persuasion

This class will focus on the essentials of academic writing, including the grammar, the vocabulary, the structures, the rhetoric, and the organizational strategies for effective writing at the university and in a variety of career disciplines. We will address the fundamentals, correct problems, suggest more powerful processes, and give students the opportunity to become more forceful and sophisticated writers. Thematically, the class will continue to develop responses to violence in the community and to explore the violent and the persuasive methods of rhetoric and writing itself. We will read some classical texts in argumentative rhetoric, the rhetoric of nonviolence-focusing on Cesar Chavez-as well as current writing theory. We will read various authors and write and revise four essays. We will write casual essays in journals, creative work, and find ways to publish our work.

Writ. 1 Sec. 5 Tim Fitzmaurice MWF 2:00P-3:10P Crown 202

Same as Section 4 above.

Writ. 1 Sec. 6 Tim Fitzmaurice MW 5:00P-6:45P Crown 203

Same as Section 4 above.

Writ. 1 Sec. 7 Maria Cecilia Freeman MW 5:00P-6:45P Stevenson 151

Writing and Our Environment

Through reading, writing and investigating current issues, we will consider our interaction with the environments we inhabit. We will read and write about places we remember with Living Up the Street by Gary Soto; about a fictional landscape with The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck; and about current environmental issues with essays by contemporary writers including Edward Abbey, William Cronon, Gary Snyder, Wallace Stegner and others. We will explore and write about the UCSC campus environment with research on local natural history. As we read we will critically examine the ideas, purposes, rhetorical strategies and writing styles of the authors, to inform and inspire our own writing. Writing will include informal responses to reading as well as several formal essays based on reading, research, discussion of current issues, and outdoor exploration. Coursework will emphasize strategies for drafting, revising and editing papers, with close attention to grammar and effective language use. Everyone will participate in writing group workshops and share responsibility for discussion ~all viewpoints welcome.

Writ. 1 Sec. 8 Maria Cecilia Freeman TTH 4:00P-5:45P Crown 203

Same as Section 7 above.

Writ. 1 Sec. 9 Ellen Louise Hart TTH 2:00P-3:45P Cowell 223

Poetry and the News: The poet Ezra Pound has written that "Literature is news that stays news."

In this course we'll look at the ways in which two 19th century American poets--Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman--and a group of their 20th century successors (including Sandra Cisneros, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, and Adrienne Rich) record the news--about history--their personal, political, philosophical, and cultural histories. This is a good course for those who love poetry and those who fear poetry to learn even more about reading it, writing about it, and enjoying it. The research component for the course includes exploring internet sources and making use of Dickinson and Whitman web sites.

Writ. 1 Sec. 10 Susan Kimoto TTH 8:00A-9:45A Oakes 103

Through Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Glenn Tinder's Political Thinking, this course will survey a rudimentary history of economic oppression in the context of basic political thought. While this is not a history or politics course, the material provides a thought-provoking arena for students to practice the necessary analytical and referential skills required for most academic reading and writing tasks. Students should expect to complete seven (7) comparative 2-page journal entries, four (4) short 3-page essays, and a final 6-8 page research paper. Revisions for all work are built into the course timeline. Remember: The best writers aren't necessarily gifted; they're ordinary people determined to acquire healthy writing habits which work towards their written success.

Writ. 1 Sec. 11 Susan Kimoto TTH 10:00A-11:45A Oakes 103

Same as Section 10 above.

Writ. 1 Sec. 12 Patrick McKercher TTH 12:00P-1:45P Soc Sci I 149

This course will create a community of learners who will investigate community itself: What is it?

What is its value? What is your community and its significance? How is that community regarded, and what is the role of the media in its perception? Are new kinds of community possible in cyberspace? Not coincidentally, this section will afford the opportunity to do field research, as well as service-learning by mentoring Watsonville High School students. We'll do five papers, one in collaboration with WHS students, which will be anthologized in a book we will publish. One of the five papers generally dealing with criticism of film, novels, advertising and television will be researched, expanded and revised. Because of its outreach efforts, this section will meet occasionally in the computer lab and outside of normal class hours.

Writ. 1 Sec. 13 Patrick McKercher TTH 2:00P-3:45P Soc Sci II 141

Same as Section 12 above.

Writ. 1 Sec. 14 Dora Katheryn Nur MW 7:00P-8:45P Crown 203

It's About Time

The American obsession with time figures fundamentally in what we value and in our decisions about work, school, leisure, and play. How do we use and conceive of time? Analyzing essays, articles, video clips, and sociologist Robert Levine's A Geography of Time, we'll explore and write about time as others have thought about it and as we understand it. In addition to 30 journal entries, we'll write one reflective essay, three academic essays, and a research paper. (This offer good for a limited time only!)

Writ. 1 Sec. 15 Sherri Paris MWF 11:00A-12:10P Soc Sci II 141

The 1960s

This course will focus on social and political movements of the 1960s. Students will be introduced to major events, personalities, and ideas that made the decade unique. We will examine the Old Left roots of movement politics, how organizations like S.N.C.C. and S.D.S. redefined the Left's agenda, and how militant groups like the Weathermen and media-oriented groups like the Hippies changed and perhaps undermined that agenda. We will ask the questions: "What went wrong? What endured? What should the Left do differently in the Nineties?" Cultural influences will be examined through primary source material, including excerpts of tracts, novels, films, and guerrilla theater. This course continues themes which began in the Merrill Core Course regarding the Civil Rights movement and the Viet Nam War. In addition to writing several short pieces, students will be required to write and completely revise a paper of substantial range.

Writ. 1 Sec. 16 Sherri Paris MWF 12:30P-1:40P Soc Sci II 141

Same as Section 15 above.

Writ. 1 Sec. 17 Roger Bunch TTH 4:00P-5:45P Soc Sci II 167

Writing About Latin America

In this writing course, students analyze texts from a variety of genres, including fiction, poetry,

testimonios, and essays, on a wide range of topics and issues related to Latin America, including culture, politics, economics, religion, ecology, and human rights. These texts focus on Central America and Chiapas in Southern Mexico, though students interested in other regions of Latin America will be encouraged to read and write about those regions. Students will keep journals, conduct independent research, and engage response groups with the objective of learning to write clear, compelling, engaging essays.

Writ. 1 Sec. 18 Dan Scripture MWF 2:00P-3:10P Eight 242

In this course, we will read a book called The Other Side of Heaven, edited by Wayne Karlin, Le Minh Khu, and Truong Vu, which offers many different perspectives on the experience of war and its aftermath. We will also read a short book of poetry, Renny Christophers's Vietnam & California, and a book by Arnold Isaacs, Vietnam Shadows, which is meant as general background, and as an information resource. It has an excellent bibliography and a good index, among other things. It is not a history of the war, but a history of the cultural aftermath of the war. These three books raise a number of issues: the history and politics of the War, the stress on families, the mystery of the recent past, the political conflict surrounding the War, personal and political healing, the present state of things in Viet Nam, and many other issues. Overall, we will be examining how the Viet Nam War has entered literary, political, and cultural memory. As a Composition & Rhetoric course, the focus is learning to write capably, fluently, and well. Writing and research in the course will address the issues above, and will explore a number of different forms, including a final project or research paper. We will explore the writing process, including freewriting, planning, peer feedback, revision, and research.

Writ. 1 Sec. 19 Dan Scripture MWF 3:30P-4:40P Eight 242

Same as Section 18 above.

Writ. 1 Sec. 20 Jude Todd TTH 10:00A-11:45A Porter 249

Earth Dwelling: Exploring the Human Place in Nature

How might humans live in physical, mental, and spiritual harmony with the rest of nature? Buddhist, Jain, and Native American conceptions of the human place in nature, Western scientific ecology, and contemporary nature writers of sundry stripes will inform our developing understanding of what it means to dwell on the Earth. What fundamental assumptions about the nature of nature hamper our capacity to live harmoniously within it? What's the relationship between our own bodies and that of the Earth, and what do our attitudes toward one imply about our conceptions of the other? Do language limitations impede articulation of crucial insights that could help heal ecological distress? What light can we, as a group and individually, bring to the question: How can humans appropriately take our place (and give our share) within nature?

Students will enhance writing skills through composing and revising essays that explore such questions. The final research project allows students to delve deeply into a course-related topic of their choice. Required texts, all non-fictional, include a reader and Rule for Writers, by Diana Hacker.

Additionally, students will select one other volume of their choice from a list of supplementary texts. For this list or other information, e-mail todd@cats.

Note: Due to my multiple-chemical sensitivity, I need to have a scent-free classroom. I ask that people not wear perfume, scented hair or body products, or clothing smelling of tobacco smoke, fabric softeners, etc., to class. Thank you.

Writ. 1 Sec. 21 Jude Todd TTH 4:00P-5:45P Porter 249

Same as Section 20 above.

Writ. 1 Sec. 22 James Wilson TTH 10:00A-11:45A Stevenson 152

20th Century Italy

This course will explore fiction and film on several themes (in reverse chronological order): post-modernism, political activism, neo-realism, and women authors during Mussolini's regime. Students can expect to write five papers (plus two revisions), and to participate in small group discussions and draft workshops. Authors and directors include Calvino, Fo, Negri, Tartufari, Wertmuller, Fellini, and de Sica.

Writ. 1 Sec. 23 James Wilson TTH 12:00P-1:45P Cowell 223

France Since WWII

This course will explore fiction and film on several themes: pre-war "gentility," existentialism, feminism, and post-modernism. Students can expect to write five papers (plus two revisions), and to participate in small group discussion and draft workshops. Authors and directors include Colette, Camus, Duras, Redonnet, Renoir, Rohmer, and Klapish.

Writ. 1 Sec. 24 Kate Kordich MWF 9:30A-10:40A Porter 249

Writing and California

This class will look at a variety of California narratives in an effort to locate effective writing strategies. Readings will include essays, poetry, and short fiction by authors such as John Steinbeck, Joan Didion, Mike Davis, Gary Soto, and Hisaye Yamamoto. Students will be asked to identify what conventions and strategies are and are not effective in selected texts as a means to clarify and strengthen their own writing. Topics to analyze and discuss include the ways in which the changing social landscape of California is registered by immigrant authors of early statehood through today; how cultural critics describe the L.A. Riots/Uprising; how authors narrate California's natural environment, in both its quietly lovely (coastline, the Sierra Nevada, the desert) and infamously threatening (earthquake, fire, flood, drought) manifestations. Students will write several formal essays and shorter essays, keep a reading journal, and participate in peer editing groups. All writing assignments focus on methods for planning, drafting, revising and researching.

Writ. 1 Sec. 25 Charla Ogaz TTH 2:00P-3:45P Kresge 319

Re-Reading America, Re-Writing Ourselves and Our Cultures

America is always in the process of being remade, reread and rewritten, and we are all active participants in these revisions. Using the anthology, "Re-Reading America," we will critically examine current debates about family values, education, and equality and freedom (among others). Students will engage these debates and contribute to them by critically examining dominant cultural forces alongside their own assumptions, ideas and values. There will be five writing assignments: a personal narrative; an expository essay connecting experience with reading; an expository essay which applies critical analysis to a text; a research essay; and an argumentative essay. Students will complete two drafts of each essay as well as many informal in-class and at home writing assignments. The goal for each writer will be to explore the stages of writing (pre-writing, drafting, and revising) in order to develop organized, clear, and compelling prose.

Writ. 1 Sec. 26 Catriona R. Esquibel TTH 6:00P-7:45P Porter 249

Writing for the Internet and the Real World

In this writing class, we will study writing on, for, and about the internet. Approaching the internet critically, we will conduct research at the library and on World Wide Web, participate in e-mail discussions, and study popular representations of the internet (including episodes of The X-Files). Writing assignments will include reviews of web pages, reading journals, informal papers, and formal essays based on reading and research, with emphasis on drafting, revising, and editing. Students will participate in writing groups in cyberspace and in the classroom. Internet beginners are welcome. Additional information about this course is available at <http://www2.ucsc.edu/people/ktrion/writing1.html>

Writ. 1 Sec. 27 Jeremy Rubenstein TTH 8:00A-9:45A Kresge 194

There's No Place Like Home

In this course we will be examining, discussing, and (most importantly) writing about the literal and the metaphorical notion of the "home." We will be exploring our own ideas and experiences of "home" as well as the formations and functions of this unique space in Western literary traditions. From this thematic base we will focus on the essentials of academic and descriptive writing, including organizational strategies, grammar, rhetoric, structure and revision. Readings for the course include selections from a corpus of classical fairy tales, several non-fiction pieces, and novels by Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros and Franz Kafka. In addition to several short essays and one longer research paper, students will conduct personal interviews and write several informal (creative) papers.

Writ. 1 Sec. 28 Robin Baldridge TTH 6:00P-7:45P Soc Sci II 159

Writing Out of Mysteries: Detective Fictions and Writing as Knowing

In this course we will investigate various forms of detective fictions in popular culture--novels, short stories, film noir, television--in order to uncover their narrative strategies, rhetorical styles, and epistemological methods. In discussions and writing, we will interrogate the modes of this genre and our own detecting proclivities. Readings will include works by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Arthur Conan Doyle as well as a course reader and A Writer's Reference. Writing assignments will include regular informal pieces as well as drafts of four argumentative essays, including a research project.

Writ. 1 Sec. 29 Nouma Issa TTH 4:00P-5:45P Oakes 106

"Bad Girls" of the Twentieth Century

How does a woman become a "bad girl"? In this course, we will examine the lives and works of women who violated American conventions of gendered behavior such as Angela Davis, Georgia O'Keefe, Margaret Mead, Billie Holiday, Grace Metalious and Madonna. We will ask what the dominant scripts for American women have been and how they have changed in the last ninety-odd years. We will also be investigating how these changes relate to overall changes in American society. Towards the end of the course, students will try to predict which battles a new generation of "bad girls" will be fighting in the future.

To develop our rhetorical skills, we will examine visual arts, films, autobiography, music, fiction, history and cultural criticism. You should expect to participate actively in class and on paper. Writing assignments will include regular informal pieces, essays in a variety of styles and a longer research project. Readings may include selections from Angela Davis's Women, Race and Class, Margaret Mead's Blackberry Winter, Billie Holiday's Lady Sings the Blues, Grace Metalious's Peyton Place, Georgia O'Keefe's Art and Letters, and Matthew Rettenmund's Encyclopedia Madonnica.

Writ. 1 Sec. 30 Candace Calsoyas TTH 12:00P-1:45P Porter 249

Portraits of Place: Water, desert, mountains

How do we develop a sense of place? We will read natural history essays and visit campus sites to determine how we locate and situate ourselves in the environment. A sequence of essays from Words From the Land and Natural State will provide the framework to analyze how authors such as Peter Matthiessen, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, and John McPhee interpret the geographical, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of place. Your own writing will include essays exploring how environment has shaped and brought about an intellectual and spiritual sense of self. Reading will be relatively light but intense, framed by "close readings" and critical analysis of stylistic devices used by authors to give meaning to place. Analysis will include the role of "unobtrusive observer," the language of fact and reverie, and the process of "dialoguing" with place.

Writ. 1 Sec. 31 Valerie Forman MW 5:00P-6:45P Soc Sci II 141

Criminal Confessions:

This is a course in critical thinking, reading, and writing. This course is workshop-oriented, and revision is one of its crucial components. The readings for this course will help us to think about how we read and how we represent ourselves in our writing--both the processes and the perspectives we employ. Many of the readings and class discussions will challenge our common-sense assumptions. I hope that by thinking hard about them we will become more careful readers, writers, and thinkers.

To this end, we will read criminal confessions, but we will read them critically to ask how different cultures define criminality and, thus, legitimate behavior. We will explore how those accused of crimes retell their own stories and how they understand their relationship to a social order that has excluded them. The texts for the course include: Herculine Barbin, the autobiography of a French hermaphrodite, which we will compare with the medical and legal documents that tried to determine his/her "true" sex; the film "Kiss of the Spider Woman"; Natialie Zemon Davis' Fiction in the Archives, an analysis of pardon cases in Sixteenth Century France, and Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference.

Writi. 1 Sec. 32 Adrielle Mitchell MWF 3:30P-4:40P Soc Sci II 141

Rhetorical strategies are powerful tools as well as powerful weapons. Writings as wide-ranging as scholarly treatises and credit card agreements, cereal advertisements and love letters, all employ techniques which reveal and conceal information, quietly promote hidden agendas, presume knowledge/attitudes/opinions on the part of a targeted audience and overtly and covertly seek to influence readers. In this section of Writing 1, we will engage in two practices: reading diverse materials in order to unearth these strategies and writing in order to employ them in sophisticated and beneficial ways. Through practice and analysis, you will become a stronger communicator as well as a more savvy consumer of information.

Writ. 1 Sec. 33 Ellen Newberry MWF 12:30P-1:40P Oakes 106

Writing and Identity

People have often used writing as a tool for exploring their own identity or for presenting their sense of self to the rest of the world. In this section of Writing 1 we will read fictional and autobiographical works which focus on the search for self. In particular, we will examine the ways that race, class, gender and sexual identity affect this process of exploration, and we will discuss why people might use writing as a way to assist in their processes of discovery. We will read books by such authors as Toni Morrison, Julia Alvarez, Daphne Scholinski and others, and mix films and music into our examination of this complex process of self-discovery. We will use the writing process as both a challenge to think critically about the world around us and an opportunity to examine our own lives more thoroughly. There will be four essays, each of which moves from discussion and planning through drafts, peer response and revision. One essay will be based on research and will allow you to investigate a topic of your choice that centers on an issue connected with the search for identity.

Writ. 1 Sec. 34 Roxanne P. Hamilton TTH 8:00P-9:45P Kresge 319

Writing Sexuality

Our focus will be on the ways in which sexualities have been influenced or even invented by the narratives that describe them. We'll begin by studying writers who have defined the way we talk about sex and sexuality in this century: Ellis, Freud, Kinsey, and Foucault. Contemporary sexuality debates we'll address include safe sex practices, pornography, and sex/gender constructions (masculinity, femininity, butch/femme, and transsexuality). Students will write four essays and revisions (including a reflective essay, an observation essay, a position paper, and a synthesis paper) plus a longer research paper. Topics include: "life plots" (such as the marriage plot and the parenting subplot) that are available to people of different sexual cultures; how writing about sexuality always involves writing about something other than sexuality; and how people with different sexual identities (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or transsexual) are affected by current sexual morality, civil rights, and healthcare debates. We'll view films and read essays drawn from such texts as Writing AIDS, Sexuality and its Discontents, Gender Outlaw, and The Invention of Heterosexuality.

Instructor: Charles Atkinson

We'll examine the notion and dynamics of families through contemporary fiction and poetry, analytical essays, and first-hand experience. We'll try to clarify some of what occurs in American families--between males and females, between parents and children, between the dominant culture and various subcultures. And we'll speculate on what could happen in these families--if we continue our present ways, and if we try other attitudes and patterns. The goal is to look closely at an arrangement that profoundly shapes us, to think together and on paper about it, and to generate clear, persuasive prose from it. Peer-led discussion, small group writing critiques, constant revision, and a research project will be central to the course, so enroll only if you're willing to participate in all of these ways.

Hart, Spring 1999

How might humans live in physical, mental, and spiritual harmony with the rest of nature? Buddhist, Jain, and Native American conceptions of the human place in nature, Western scientific ecology, and contemporary nature writers of sundry stripes will inform our developing understanding of what it means to dwell on the Earth. What fundamental assumptions about the nature of nature hamper our capacity to live harmoniously within it? What's the relationship between our own bodies and that of the Earth, and what do our attitudes toward one imply about our conceptions of the other? Do language limitations impede articulation of crucial insights that could help heal ecological distress? What light can we, as a group and individually, bring to the question: How can humans appropriately take our place (and give our share) within nature?

Students will enhance writing skills through composing and revising essays that explore such questions. The final research project allows students to delve deeply into a course-related topic of their choice.

Required texts, all non-fictional, include a reader and

_Rules for Writers_, by Diana Hacker.

Additionally, students will select one other volume of their choice from a list of supplementary texts. For this list or other information, email todd@cats.

Note: Due to my multiple-chemical sensitivity, I need to have a scent-free classroom. I ask that people not wear perfume, scented hair or body products, or clothing smelling of tobacco smoke, fabric softeners, etc., to class. Thank you.

Writing 101: Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Rhetoric

Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:00 - 5:45pm,
Location: Oakes 222

Satisfies the W (Writing-Intenstive) Requirement

Instructor: Carol Freeman
Location: 210 Cowell
Phone: 9-2989
E-Mail: freeman@ucsc.edu

 "Those who are not students of rhetoric are victims of rhetoric."

 - Ancient Greek Graffito

A combination of informal lectures and discussion, Writing 101 provides an introduction to the history of the origins of Western rhetoric in Greece and to the central issues of rhetoric as they are articulated in Aristotle's RHETORIC and Plato's PHAEDRUS and as they reappear in current discussions of communication, culture, advocacy, democracy, advertising, ethics, law, politics, religion, science, education -- and so on. Students need have no special background in history, politics, or philosophy, but they do need to be willing to grapple with both the theory of rhetoric and the nuts and bolts of rhetorical practice.

Texts include Plato's PHAEDRUS, Aristotle's RHETORIC, and a Reader consisting of essays from a wide variety of contemporary writers on rhetoric.

Assisgnments include 3 essays, each written in 2 drafts, and a take-home final exam. Participation in class discussions is an important part of the course. Essay assignments include:

1. 4-5 pages of speculation and observation on persuasion. What does it mean to persuade or be persuaded? Use whatever ideas from readings and discussions that seem useful, but ground your comments in your own thinking and experience.

2. A 6-8 page argument, an attempt to persuade the rest of us to consider seriously a position or idea we might not agree with or might never have considered.

3. A 6-8 page rhetorical analysis of a piece of prose non-fiction of your choice -- a speech or article, a chapter of a book, some writing from your major field, etc. Making selective use of material we have studied, analyze how your piece responds to its rhetorical situation and works as rhetoric.

Final Exam: I will ask you to analyze a short essay according to the rhetorical theories of Aristotle and four other theorists of your choice.

Some topics and questions that we will discuss in Writing 101:

Different definitions of rhetoric and what's at stake in these definitions.

The Sophists and probability.

Rhetoric and the good, rhetoric and the true, courtship vs seduction, the rhetorician as spellbinder.

The ethics of advocacy.

Heuristics: the art of discovering arguments about any subject whatsoever. (We'll use Aristotle to generate legal arguments.)

Ethos: the appeal of a rhetorician's character.

Pathos: the appeal to an audience's emotions.

Do audiences create their rhetoricians or rhetoricians their audiences?

Can an appeal to emotion be rational?

Rhetorical reasoning: Aristotle on enthymemes and fallacies, Toulmin on the layout of arguments. The nature of rhetorical "proof."

Metaphor and tropes: do we make them or do they make us?

Metaphors in writing in the sciences and social sciences.

Critiques of and alternatives to Aristotelian rhetoric.

Kenneth Burke, Michel Foucault.

Female and male modes of rhetoric.

Eros and Logos, rhetoric and eudcation, rhetoric and democracy, rhetoric and cynicism, rhetoric and social change.

On-line Rhetoric: characteristics, implications.

"Rhetoric is the state of Babel after the fall."

Kenneth Burke

Revised 8/3/04.