Course Description 

“Writing is really a way of thinking – not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic, or just sweet.”

“Language alone is meditation.”

-Toni Morrison

This semester, we will seek to engage and embody the above quotes through our writing and critical thinking processes. In our modern social media world, communication has become constantly accessible but also chaotic, the influx of information both illuminating and confusing. I will ask you, in our time together, to slow down and take a deep breath, to dive into the texts we explore through a rhetorical lens in order to examine the author’s choices: to not only explain what a given piece of writing says (or appears to say), but to look beneath the surface for how, why, and for whom it speaks. Through the essay assignments, we will learn to become more mindful as we compose our works and our words, to ensure that we use our speech consciously as an improvement upon silence and with the impact that we intend it to have. I hope this course will help each of you begin to make peace with and develop your own personal writing practice, acquire a greater fluidity and understanding when encountering the perspectives of others, and encourage you to carry this spirit of inquiry with you throughout your college career and out into the world.

Required Text

This is a Zero Textbook Cost course. There are links to reading assignments that live online, and I will upload assigned articles in portable document format (.pdf).