Coursework Descriptions
a summary of the courses taken to meet the writing minor requirements.
Advanced Rhetoric and Writing
This course was taken in the Winter of 2017, during my freshman year at DU. It was a part of the introductory writing sequence that forms the foundation for the writing practices minor. It introduces the concept of the rhetorical situation, focusing on logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos as key manipulative tools to persuade readers. In this particular class, we used the platforms of social media, technology, and online dating to generate works. We used the idea of a discourse community to write persuasive editorials and signed up for dating websites to analyze their rhetorical effectiveness. By the end of the course, I knew how to define rhetoric and the ways in which to use it in any given situation.
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"A Different Kind of Gun Control" in Other
Honors Writing
This course satisfied the requirements for WRIT 1133/1733, also known as the freshmen research-based writing course at DU. It was taken during Spring of 2017. The goal of this course was to teach rhetorical strategies for successful research-based writing in diverse academic and nonacademic situations. Our theme for this section was happiness, culminating in a final passion project on a topic of our choosing. In the weeks leading up to the passion project, we conducted both quantitative and qualitative research and presented it in three blog posts. In this way, we produced writing that was designed for a specific audience (blog readers) and got experience with conducting our own research.
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Theories in Writing
I took this course, WRIT 2000, in the Fall of 2017, the beginning of my sophomore year at DU. This is the true “kick-start” to the writing minor, built on the foundation of WRIT 1122/1622 and WRIT 1133/1733. Its goal is to explain the theories behind writing. We began by looking at the very beginnings of language and how it developed into the written word we use today. In this course, we also analyzed what constitutes writing, whether it is always words on a page or something else entirely. We did this by crossing mediums to communicate a message and presented these projects to our peers, with them as the judges of how effective our method was. My final project was based on the writing processes of undergraduate students, analyzing how we work and the magic that goes on behind the scenes.
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"Undergraduate Majors and Writing Processes" in Other
Introduction to Creative Writing
I took Intro to Creative Writing in the Winter of 2018. As is insinuated by its title, the course forms the foundations of creative writing, from fiction to poetry to playwrights. In my section, we looked at this from a darker perspective, analyzing the gothicisms, grotesques, horrors, and strangeness of creative writing. We read books such as The Pink Institution, Dark Matter, Salamandrine, and Bleed Into Me. Each week, we had a different weekly writing exercise with a specific theme, whether it was using the necropastoral or creating a nonfiction piece. Workshops were held every Thursday so we could get feedback from our peers on the work we’d done the week prior. There was emphasis on diction, rhythm, imagery, voice, plot, and, of course, rhetoric. This satisfied the Applied Writings requirement for the minor.
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"A Distorted Reality" in Applied
"November 5th, 1919" in Revision
Memoir and Personal Writing
This course was taken in the Spring of 2018. It was a creative nonfiction course that dealt entirely with personal experience. In this course, we learned how to write memoirs and personal narratives by analyzing memories and selecting experiences that held some measure of significance in our lives. We read a variety of personal writings throughout the quarter and crafted our own based on the techniques we had observed. This course focused on creating compelling stories that maintained an aspect of truthfulness, which we coincidentally learned how to manipulate in the case of effectiveness or memory loss (such as with dialogue). We submitted weekly writings based on a variety of prompts which we then received peer and professor feedback on. We also completed two complete memoirs and a final revision of an earlier piece, with a lot of reflections built in along the way. This satisfied the second Applied Writings requirement for the minor.
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"Side Effects and Forever's" in Applied
Style and Rhetorical Grammar
I took this course in the Spring of 2019, my third spring quarter at DU. This course fits with the Theory, History, and Research in Writing requirement for the Writing Minor. It addresses the concept of “rhetorical grammar.” In other words, we reviewed the rules of grammar and analyzed them in terms of their rhetorical effects. We tried out several methods of learning language and style by reading from Martha Kolln, Nora Bacon, and Joseph Williams. We also selected a book to read outside of class that has some other method of teaching style. Through projects such as a book review, imitation, and a piece using only rhetorical figures, we learned how to best use grammatical stylistic choices to fit the rhetorical situation.
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"An Intervention in Learning" in Theory
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Writing Design and Circulation
This is the capstone for the Writing Practices minor at DU. I took it in the Spring of 2019. Its primary goal is to create the portfolio that demonstrates the learnings from the writing minor. Along the way, we looked at our own writing objectively, curating pieces for the portfolio and revising one so it crossed a genre. We also quantitively analyzed our writing over the years and presented it in an infographic, thereby diversifying the rhetorical situations we can appeal to. This website is the product of the capstone course, serving to capture all experiences with writing at DU.
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"The American Problem of Racism" in Revision
"The American Problem of Racism - Revised" in Revision
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