[Course Descriptions]
[Course Descriptions]
Basic techniques of fiction and poetry. Students dip their toes into a number of different creative genres. To do so, students use personal experiences, as well as fictional stories. By the end of the course, students have experience in a multitude of creative writing styles, and have the tools they need to explore any genre in greater detail. As someone who has a much larger background in academic writing, this course helped me to explore the other side of writing. I feel as though the tools I gained from this course have helped me to diversify my writing and find a style that is uniquely my own.
This course introduces a number of theories of writing, providing an overview of complex issues and research into the state and status of writing and writers. It takes up such questions as these: What is writing? Where did it come from? How did it develop--and did it do so the same or differently in other cultures? How do writers develop--and what accounts for differences? What are different types of writing, different situations for writing, different tools and practices--and how do these interconnect? What does it mean to study writing? How have major figures theorized writing, and what tensions emerge among their theories? What are relationships among thought, speech, and writing--and among image, film/video, and sound? How do such theories change our notions of what texts are and what texts do? Students learn how various theorists, historians, and researchers answer these questions, and they apply that knowledge to their own projects. This course really helped me to understand writing, and what it means to me, in my life. By the end of the course, I had a greater understanding of the importance of writing to humanity.
Benefitting the course, the primary writing focus will be on producing texts for/within the topical focus, with emphasis on drafting, revision, and design. These texts are different from the nornmal academic structure. During this course I learned to write for a multitude of audiences using various writing styles. Some examples of the styles introduced in this course are, "How To's," "Features," and "Reviews." The tools acquired from this course can be utilized in a number of professional settings. Students also write responses to and analyses of assigned readings (including the work of other students).
This course provides curricular space for various subjects and foci related to theories about writing, histories of writing and its status and development, or research about writing. Examples of possible topics might include multimodality and writing, relationships between visual and verbal rhetoric, the development of specific genres over time, the relationship between academic and civic writing, the history of writing in specific schools or settings, research into the acquisition of writing skills, social policies and practices that affect writing, ethical issues in writing practices, the effects of technologies on writing, and so on. The preceding list is illustrative, not exclusive. In this course, I was able to use all three of these elements to create a well rounded proposal to help the city of Denver.
The primary goal of this capstone course for the Minor in Writing Practices is to create and present a professional electronic/web-based portfolio synthesizing university writing experiences. The portfolio showcases and offers reflective insight into a student's writings, demonstrating the writer's ability to navigate diverse rhetorical situations. Students learn theories and practices for selecting, arranging, and circulating/publishing written work, culmination in a required portfolio that synthesizes their university writing experiences. In addition to practicing principles of editing and design, students also produce a substantive revision of a previous piece of their own writing and compost a theory of writing that synthesizes analyses of their practices with published scholarship and research. The course covers design considerations and strategies and offers studio time for peer and instructor feedback. It culminates with a public showcase. This course allowed me to reflect on my past writing, while also experimenting with new technology and design.