Syllabus

Jim Brown
Office: 5057 Woodward, 10-410.2
Office Hours: T/Th, 3pm-5pm (or by appointment)
Class Location: State Hall, Room 337
Class Time: Tuesday, 6-9pm

Course Goals

  • Develop skills to analyze and synthesize scholarly arguments
  • Understand the theoretical underpinnings of contemporary debates in rhetorical theory and composition studies
  • Complete a draft of a publication or conference presentation
  • Experiment with a pedagogical approach for new media writing



    Required Texts:
    Acts of Enjoyment, Thomas Rickert
    Rhetoric, Poetics, Cultures, Jim Berlin
    The Future of Invention, John Muckelbauer
    Heuretics, Greg Ulmer
    Internet Invention, Greg Ulmer
    Phaedrus, Plato (If you don't already own a copy, consider the Nehemas and Woodruff translation)

    Course Work
    You will be evaluated on the following work:

    1) You will lead a forum discussion once during this semester. This will involve writing an initial post, posing questions to the group, facilitating discussion, and beginning that week's class with a one-page recap of the discussion. Your one-page recap will be distributed to the class.

    2) One of two options:

    • Academic Conference Paper: You will write a conference paper (no more than 2,000 words, double-spaced) with a particular conference in mind.

    • Online Syllabus: Develop a course that you would teach online. You'll develop course materials that take into account the unique rhetorical situation of an online course, and you'll explain how your course addresses that situation. The format will follow that of the "Course Designs" section of the journal Composition Studies. (Also see Jenny Edbauer's CWRL Whitepaper about annotated syllabi).

    3) Wide Site: While reading Gregory Ulmer’s Internet Invention (and related texts) during the final portion of the class, you will create what Ulmer calls a “wide site”—a website that attempts to document your own learning, reading, writing, and thinking styles. During this project, you will be asked to tinker with at least one new media technology with which you have no experience.

    4) Class Participation

    Each day you will prepare and hand in "talking points" (no more than 1 page) for the day's readings, and you will be expected to participate in class discussions.

    Student Disabilities Services
    If you feel that you may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability, please feel free to contact me privately to discuss your specific needs. Additionally, the Student Disabilities Services Office coordinates reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities. The Office is located in 1600 David Adamany Undergraduate Library, phone: 313-577-1851/577-3365 (TTY). http://studentdisability.wayne.edu

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