Spring '08 Graduate Courses
WRT 645: Beyond First-Year Writing
Professor Libby Miles
Thursday, 4:00 – 6:45
Beyond the first-year writing course, there are vast and fascinating fields of study within Rhetoric & Composition – this seminar invites you to experience some of them. We are most readily identified as the folks who brought you first-year composition, but the intellectual discipline of Rhetoric & Composition has burgeoned in the past 40 years, particularly at Land Grant institutions like URI. On the other hand, there are still pockets of the country, particularly in small colleges, where the field has had little impact at all. This course grew from a study conducted in one such college: a setting in which there is no first-year writing per se, yet an environment utterly infused with writing nonetheless. In 2005-6, Professor Miles conducted naturalistic research of undergraduate students in a writing-saturated, maritime-focused, living-learning community. Her basic research question, “what happens to student writing in this educational environment?” yielded more questions than answers … questions that will be examined – and perhaps answered by you – during this seminar.
Themes explored will be:
- self-sponsored, extra-curricular, and underlife student writing
- genre theory, particularly appropriated and subversive genres
- “embodied rhetorics” and the physicality of writing practice
- the materiality of writing
- place studies in rhetoric and eco-composition
- research on skills transfer
- histories of the function of disciplines in the university
- economies of writing instruction
- institutional conditions and critique
- histories and theories of WAC and WID (writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines)
- histories and theories of functions for rhetorical education
This will be a course making connections: historical, interdisciplinary, geographic, extracurricular, environmental, physical. At the same time, it will be an opportunity to pursue connections not yet made, paths not yet explored.
Highly recommended pre-requisite: WRT 512
WRT 647: Seminar in Research Methods: Rhetoric and Composition Studies
Professor Mike Pennell
Wednesday, 4-6:45
This course serves as an introduction to reading and practicing research in the field of rhetoric and composition. By reviewing a variety of research methodologies, we will investigate the ways in which knowledge is created, reported, and validated in the field. The course positions research questions and design, as well as the theories that drive them, as fundamental to understanding a field of knowledge.
The course is intended for doctoral students in rhetoric and composition, considering a large-scale research project. Therefore, we will focus on issues pertinent to novice researchers: the development of research questions, the variety of research methodologies and methods available to researchers, institutional regulations on research, and the design of a research study.
We will not cover every possible research method; rather, we will focus on research methods appropriate to novice researchers and central to the field, such as case studies, archival research, true and quasi-experiments, and meta-analyses. By reading a variety of research, we will become more comfortable recognizing and analyzing types of scholarship, as well as designing research projects. Ultimately, students will use the course as a site to design a research proposal.
Fall '07 Graduate Courses
The College Writing Program will be offering the following graduate courses in the fall.
Course description for WRT 512, Studies in Rhetorical Theory
Fall 2007, Jeremiah Dyehouse
Wednesdays, 4:00-6:45
Designed as an introduction to problems in rhetorical theory and written discourse, this seminar will include readings from classical and later rhetorical traditions, but it will not survey the history of rhetoric. Instead, as a group, we will investigate questions like "Does rhetorical theory articulate perspectives on language, epistemology, and subjectivity distinct from those offered by contemporary critical theory?"; "What purposes have rhetorical theories served?"; and "How is rhetorical theory changing today?"
Many academics treat rhetorical theory as a branch of critical theory. Others—so-called "rhetorical imperialists"—colonize disparate intellectual traditions, arguing, "it's all rhetoric." In this seminar, we will seek to understand another position on rhetoric and theory. We will ask: is thinking about rhetoric a distinct intellectual activity, separate from critical theory and also from rhetoric itself?
Readings will be drawn from many sources, including some available only as library reserves. Writing assignments will include response papers, reviews, and a final seminar paper.
Histories and Theories of Teaching Composition: WRT/EDC 524
Professor Libby Miles
Mondays, 4:00 – 6:45
[Catalog description: Traces the origins and influences on current writing instruction, beginning with the composition treatises of the 19th century and concluding with an analysis of contemporary practices. May include archival research.]
This course will function as an introduction to the field of rhetoric & composition, as seen and experienced through different educational contexts. In a slight departure from the course description, we will explore writing theories and pedagogies by moving back and forth between different historical contexts and our current educational practices.
Along the way, we will read about the exigence of the GI Bill and Open Admissions in shaping the field into what it is today. We will go back in time to rural classrooms, to institutions serving historically under-represented populations, to the elite colleges, and to the legacy of the Land Grant. We will pause for a while in the 1980s, grappling with the different iterations of the “process movement,” and then we will move into the present to discern what “post-process” has brought to the conversation. We will look at specific activist rhetorics and community literacy programs, each inscribed in particular historical and social moments.
Your written projects in this class will include designing assignment sequences, analyzing educational artifacts, presenting materials during class discussions, composing exploratory short papers from materials found in the National Archives of Composition & Rhetoric, and writing a seminar-length paper at the culmination of the term.
Teaching experience, although not necessary, will be helpful. Learning experience, however, is a must.
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