Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Writing and Rhetoric II - Spring (Matt Vetter)/Course description

Course description
Welcome to Writing & Rhetoric II. While its primary aim is centered on writing and persuasion, this course contextualizes that aim within the technological milieu of the 21st century. Accordingly, writing assignments are situated in online spaces in order to maximize rhetorical constituents and situations (especially purpose and audience). Furthermore, while this course seeks to improve writing skills, there's also a focus on writing studies, and the theoretical advancements of the second half of the twentieth-century that characterize the discipline. To this end, the course emphasizes three specific content areas: 1) texts as dynamic rhetorical constructs, created and given meaning by multiple authors and readers who bring multiple subjectivities or viewpoints to the act of interpretation and composition; as well as the various misconceptions many of us hold about what writing is; 2) the existence of multiple "literacies" rather than a single conception of literacy, and the various social, economic, and technological forces that influence those literacies; and 3) discourse communities and the effect of social forces on the interpretation and composition of language/texts, the idea that the policies and activities of social groups determine or govern language use, reading, and writing. Investigation of these core concepts will inform student writing and class content, providing opportunities to practice traditional academic writing skills within a writing-studies specific context.

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