Rhetoric, Composition, and Language Courses Spring 2025
ENGL 362: Foundations of Technical Writing
Instructor: Sean Kamperman
46760 | APPT ONLNE CRSE - ONLINC JAN-21/MAR-14
46773 | APPT ONLNE CRSE - ONLINC MAR-24/MAY-16
This course is designed to give you an introduction to the fundamentals of technical writing. Technical writing has many uses and is a common form of communication for many jobs across many fields. In this class you will learn about the rhetoric and ethics of technical communication, with particular attention paid to accessibility. We will discuss readings and real-world applications and scenarios together via Canvas, and will practice several common tech writing genres. Through reading and writing these genres, you will not only receive practice that will aid you in your future coursework and career, but you will be learning broader skills of rhetorical flexibility and audience awareness that can be applied to any writing situation.
ENGL 382: Composing Cultures
Instructor: Mary Jo Reiff
55665 | TuTh 11:00 - 12:15 PM | WES 4076 - LAWRENCE
In this course, we will explore how texts are culturally situated and will carry out our own investigations of a culture/subculture, community, group, or organization. Through analysis of the rhetorical and sociocultural situations that motivate writing and ethnographic investigation of a culture's discursive interactions, we will explore how a group's purposes and actions are shaped by cultural contexts for writing, with a focus on cultural affordances and constraints. We will complete a range of related writing projects (an observation of a place/setting for a culture's interactions; an analysis of a culture's language or cultural artifacts; interviews with participants in a culture or oral histories), culminating in a descriptive and analytical account of a culture or subculture. We will also critically read and respond to multiple interdisciplinary texts and genres, including ethnographies and overviews of ethnographic research methods and other related methods, such as critical participatory action research, community-engaged research, and feminist activist methods. As we explore the cultural embeddedness of writing through our own research, we will focus, in particular, on the positioning of the researcher and the ethics of conducting cultural research.
