Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Bridging Libraries And Classrooms: Co-Teaching For Student Success, Joy Urbina, Isabel Baca

Librarian Conference Presentations

An instructional librarian and writing professor describe their collaborative approach to co-teaching. Learn how integrating information literacy with writing instruction strengthens students' critical thinking and research skills and discover practical strategies from this successful cross-disciplinary partnership.

Eng 110 Rhetorical Situation Worksheet, Catrina E. Vininski, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This rhetorical situation worksheet asks students to analyze a text based on the rhetorical situation. Students must identify the significance of the context for which the text was published, the author of the text, the genre, the audience, the purpose, the argument, and the evidence that the author uses to support their claims. This can be used for course readings, films, or other types of texts that you assign over the course of the semester.

Freshman Comp Ii Eng 24xx, Joao M. Da Silva

Open Educational Resources

This course uses a memoir to elicit themes related to addiction, family and interpersonal relationships. Additionally, it invites students to develop their own voices as they engage with academic discourse in the disciplines of psychology and addiction studies.

Eng 110 Language And Literacy Narrative And Rhetorical Analysis, Catrina E. Vininski, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

The assignment gives students the option to either write a narrative based on their own experience with language and literacy, utilizing aspects of the rhetorical situation, or write a rhetorical analysis based on a text of their choice while applying the rhetorical situation. Both options include an overview of the assignment, along with requirements and a rubric. This is intended to be taught in the middle of the semester, after the instructor has already thoroughly explained the rhetorical situation and students have been given the opportunity to apply their learning.

Not Plato's Closet: The Dialectic Of Embodied Counterstory Through Fashion On The Us/Mexico Border, Brita M. Arrington

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is best understood as a journey about identity that took place over more than eight years. The journey was an exploration that began in one frame of mind and ended in a very different place. I fully anticipated this research to reflect the racial tensions surrounding my participants who are predominantly Latine students at UTEP, a "Hispanic serving" institution on the US/Mexico border, but we ended up a place more deeply personal to them. From a sample of 2000 FYC students and their instructors, 65 participants engaged in taking a survey about their dress practices, and 4 of …

Writing Guide With Handbook, Regina St. John

ATU Faculty OER Book Reviews

Review of OER Composition textbook by Michelle Bachelor Robinson, Toby Fullwiller, and Maria Jerkey, available at https://openstax.org/details/books/writing-guide

Writing Rhetorically: Framing First-Year Writing, Regina St. John

ATU Faculty OER Book Reviews

Review of OER Rhetoric and Composition textbook by Kirk Fontenot, Shelly Rodrique, and Wanda M. Waller, available at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/1345

How Arguments Work: A Guide To Writing And Analyzing Texts In College, Regina St. John

ATU Faculty OER Book Reviews

Review of OER Composition textbook by Anna Mills, available at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/how-arguments-work-a-guide-to-writing-and-analyzing-texts-in-college

Persuasive Essay Assignment For Freshman Composition, Danny Katch

Open Educational Resources

A persuasive essay is a piece of writing that aims to get people to agree with your point of view. Your task for this assignment is to write an essay of 500-750 words that aims to convince others to change a policy or take an action around an issue related to the politics of language.

Understanding Barriers To Participation In Digital And Hybrid Education: A Grounded Meta-Analysis Of Higher Education And The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jarett Dello Buono

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This thesis project overlaps rhetorical approaches to digital communication with emerging data on higher education pedagogies in order to identify barriers to participation and engagement. A grounded theory meta-analysis is utilized to interpret data presented from literature published after the shift to emergency remote learning (ERL) as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The data is presented thematically to deconstruct the infrastructural and pedagogical relationships that emerged from the literature on hybrid and remote pedagogies. This project identifies core categories and principles that aid in identifying future areas of inquiry for research on engagement as it relates to broader questions …

When Would You Feel Like A Writer? Exploring Writing With Newcomer Students, Sinélia Peixoto, Thea Williamson

English Faculty Publications

The authors share a story of a middle school writer's experience navigating across languages in an English for Speakers of Other Languages support classroom.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Eng 2100t (Writing I), Andrija Matic

Open Educational Resources

On a practical level, this course will introduce you to the conventions of academic writing. You will learn how to compose an academic essay, using a variety of techniques such as pre-writing, outlining, drafting and revising/editing. The course will also enable you to write an annotated bibliography, compose a literacy narrative, conduct a critical analysis and develop a research-based argument. In addition, you will learn how to cite your sources and present ideas to a wider audience. Each of your assignments will be preceded by a detailed class discussion that will help you generate ideas.

However, since the course theme …

Preparing Humanities Students For Employment: Reimagining Career Exploration And Education Through Ignatian Spirituality And Discernment, Elizabeth L. Angeli, Serina Jamison, Susan E. Jones-Landwer

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Graduate students in the humanities are hungry for career exploration as they face limited academic career options and feel called to work beyond the academy. Career preparation is typically left to graduate advisors, and then, the focus tends to be on academic career preparation. This article details how a required, introductory graduate class was reimagined to integrate career exploration using a framework at the heart of Ignatian spirituality and education: discernment. The authors outline the course and two assignments that can be adapted and applied to any graduate course. The authors share reflections on how the class has impacted their …

Defining And Transferring Digital Literacies: What Does This Mean For High School And College Educators?, Jocelyn Spoor

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis aims to create a digital literacies transfer framework through a discussion regarding current conversations on transfer and digital literacies in the English field, including synthesizing the two ideas to think about the transfer of digital literacies as a concept. This digital literacies framework is made up of five components: the functional skills, critical skills, and rhetorical skills found in digital literacies scholarship and the genre awareness and meta-cognitive ideas found in transfer literature. This digital literacies transfer framework is then used to analyze information gleaned from four college and five high school English educators. The key findings from …

Engl 200: Writing About Writing (The Problem Of The University), Flora De Tournay

Open Educational Resources

"The Problem of the University" is a (largely) open education syllabus that marries a criticality of/with the university as a site and space of knowledge making and knowledge suppression with a metacognitive writing approach for undergraduate students. The syllabus' contents include texts from bell hooks, Paolo Freire, Derrida, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, among others.

Complete and updated syllabus available at https://waboutw.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

Doing The Work -- Collectively Pursuing Anti-Racist And Equitable Teaching: One High School English Department’S Journey, Sharon Murchie, Anthony Andrus, Pat Brennan, Gina Farnelli, Shelby Fletcher, Dawn Reed, Emily Solomon, Benjamin K. Woodcock

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Our district has long been heralded as a beacon school, one that delivers exceptional education in an exceptional community. Peeling back the layers, however, revealed a district that lurched towards the traditional, even with the hiring of DEI faculty and the step away from an historical indigenous mascot. In a time where teachers are exhausted and afraid of community backlash, our

English department dared to tear off the scabs of old wounds and united to push toward what is best for our changing community and students. Hard conversations, difficult topics, and months of legwork at last successfully provided the impetus …

This Ain't Yo' Mama's Composition Class: Addressing Anti-Blackness By Implementing Anti-Racist Pedagogy, Sharanna B. Brown

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Kyoko Kishimoto writes that those who practice anti-racist pedagogical practices are not only required to teach about race, but instead "teach about race and racism in a way that fosters critical analytical skills, which reveal the power relations behind racism and how race has been institutionalized in U.S. society to create and justify inequalities" (541). This is the work. And I have chosen to do it.

Steeped in anti-racist pedagogy “This Ain’t Yo’ Mama’s Composition Course” aims to explore the ways that writing classrooms can affirm students’ autonomy while simultaneously equipping them with skills that equate to “cultural capital.” Anti-racist …

Kennesaw State University English Majors At Work: Careers In Unexpected Places Description Of The Problem, Pearl Harris

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This thesis examines the careers of three graduates of Kennesaw State University’s Bachelor of Arts in English program. Through a semi-structured interview process which relied on the memory of participants, information was gained about skills employers sought for specific positions, skills interview participants utilized in those positions, and skills participants learned in the Bachelor of Arts in English program at Kennesaw State University. The goal of the study was to learn and connect the skills and abilities of the English majors to their job titles and responsibilities.

Eng 201a: Writing Across The Disciplines Textbook, Steven Bookman

Open Educational Resources

This textbook is part of an OER Grant for Prof. Bookman's ENG 201A Writing in the Disciplines class in 2019. The emphasis of this class is to have students work on different types of writing with different audiences. Multimodal writing is incorporated into each assignment. The topics for each assignment focus on current news, social media, and personal branding.

Creating And Using Open Educational Resources (Oer) In Reading And Writing Classes, Christine E. Hutchins

Publications and Research

Creating her own assignments using openly licensed course materials allows this professor and her students to be more creative and to take greater advantage of digital resources.

Inquiry And Problem Solving In English Composition: Belonging, Exile And Migration [Composition], Phyllis E. Vanslyck

Open Educational Resources

In the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Meanings of War and its Aftermaths Seminar, offered to LaGuardia Faculty in the 2018-19 academic year, we examined numerous critical essays and literary texts, as well as photographs and documentaries, to gain a more nuanced understanding of the ways war continues to inhabit peoples’ lives. When I began participating in this Seminar, I had already planned a first-semester English Composition course based on the theme, Belonging, Exile, and Migration. Thinking about connections between our readings for the NEH Seminar and my course, I was particularly interested in the ways stories of displacement …

Writing For The Humanities And Arts, Shamecca A. Harris

Open Educational Resources

This dynamic English Composition course asks students to both create and engage with texts, in a variety of forms, that demonstrate how culture and personal experience inform a writer’s work. In this class, students will read and write voraciously about social, political, economic and cultural issues that influence their lived experiences and use the conventions of multiple genres to both reflect and respond to the times in which they live. Moreover, they will also consciously consider what it means to write academically at the college level through regular self-reflection and revision. In doing so, students will strengthen their rhetorical knowledge …

Yellow Fever: Asian Representation In Western Pornography, Chye Shoong Chin

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research project seeks to explore the various implications porn films make on Asians Orientalism. Generally, Asians in pornography are composed of multiple negative archetypes, all based on the underlining purpose of servitude. Characters are portrayed through stereotypes including the use of colonial language to misrepresent Asian men and women in both straight and gay porn videos. Referred to as Orientalism, this ideology exploits Asian characters to privilege the White, male viewer. My research project investigates the following question: How are Asians represented in gay and straight pornographic films and pornographic scenes?

I will be applying scholarly arguments to various …

A Literary Argument Developed With Scholarly Research For Eng102 [Composition], Robin Bromley

Open Educational Resources

This assignment was developed in the context of CTL sponsored Learning Matters Mini-grant awarded to the English Department. The primary purpose was to assist full-time and part-time faculty in the Department with revising ENG 102 course materials to align with the Inquiry and Problem Solving (IPS) Core Competency and Written ability. This goal was achieved through several workshops, a programmatic benchmark reading, and a departmental review process that prepared assignments to be submitted for the CTL Assignment Library. The assignment underwent a two-phase review process. In the first round, the grant leader, Dr. Anita Baksh, suggested feedback for revision. Then, …

Critical Research Paper: Using Literature To Explore Deindustrialization In The American Rust Belt [Composition], Jacqueline Jones

Open Educational Resources

This ENG 102 assignment was developed in the context of CTL sponsored Learning Matters Mini-grant awarded to the English Department. The primary purpose was to assist full-time and part-time faculty in the Department with revising ENG 102 course materials to align with the Inquiry and Problem Solving (IPS) Core Competency and Written Communication Ability. This goal was achieved through several workshops, a programmatic benchmark reading, and a two-phase departmental review process that prepared assignments to be submitted to the Learning Matters Assignment Library. The mini-grant has been invaluable in helping to bring both full-time and adjunct faculty into departmental conversations …

City College English 11000, Thomas Collins

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus for a zero-textbook-cost section of City College's English 11000, a first-year composition course.

Write A Manifesto [Composition], Caron Knauer

Open Educational Resources

This integrative learning writing assignment encourages students to develop a mission statement as they think about how we can all come together to make the world better. It asks them to research an issue to provide background, history, and contextual information; outline strategies and solutions for social change and/or justice; and organize a call to action. The focus of the assignment is interdisciplinary learning as well as for students to collaboratively reflect on how initiatives for change can directly affect their lives but to also be aware of resistance and potential obstacles in delivering change. This assignment was revised in …

Learning From And Reflecting On Marjane Satrapi’S Persepolis Ii: The Story Of A Return [Composition], Ece Aykol

Open Educational Resources

This staged Composition I - ENG 101 assignment in its entirety was completed over the course of approximately six weeks. Students were allowed to revise and re-submit their work along the way and the grade they earned from this module constituted 30% of their final grade for the course.

In addition to being aligned with the integrative learning core competency and written ability, the assignment emphasizes advancing the students’ abilities to closely read primary and secondary sources, synthesize their understanding of these texts in their writing, and reflect on their work and learning in all the parts outlined below.

While …

Content Matters--Teaching "The Case For Reparations," 9-12, Tamara Jaffe-Notier, Carol Friedman

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

We offer specific materials and plans for teaching the structure and content of Ta-Nehisi Coates' persuasive essay, "The Case for Reparations," and building trustworthy relationships with and among students. By participating in this interactive session, you will practice teaching five specific high school appropriate lessons addressing requisite knowledge and skills for studying this essay, from real estate redlining to building academic vocabulary for rhetorical analysis.

Infusing The Arts Into Science And The Sciences Into The Arts: An Argument For Interdisciplinary Steam In Higher Education Pathways, Christopher W. Thurley

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This article presents an argument for the integration of science into English courses in order to emphasize the usefulness of a Science, Technology, Education, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) education. The idea for this approach arose after the implementation of a divisional initiative to create learning communities with a STEM cohort of students called Student Persistence and Retention via Curricula, Cohorts, and Centralization (SPARC³). The author’s involvement in teaching a science-infused English course for this program inspired the argument that follows, which outlines why/how the sciences should learn from the humanities and why/how the humanities should learn from the sciences. The …