The Craft of Writing

This course develops analytical reading and composition skills while satisfying the UC 1A requirement. Analyzing how identity and community are rhetorically constructed in contemporary American social issues and culture, the course explores how acts of composition — of oneself, one’s community, and, of course, one’s writing — afford nuanced understandings of subjecthood. Furthermore, these understandings complicate the modern practice of deciding one’s label(s), affiliations, and preferences, thereby frustrating the easy and unreflected promise of social belonging that such categories and favorites proffer. Inspired by cultural artifacts including contemporary media and queer / feminist theory readings, students will produce two major papers and multiple shorter writing exercises.