Fall 2009 ENGL 1111 Course Offerings Available for Registration
Topics for First-Year Writing
Click on the categories, below, to find course titles, descriptions, instructors, and times.
- America and American Culture
- Education and Coming of Age
- Media and Technology
- Popular Culture
- Race/Class/Gender/Sex & Gender Identity
- Representations of the Past
- Self and Society
- Stories/Legends/Myths
- Ways of Knowing
- To Be Announced
All courses have the same basic requirements: participating in drafting and revision workshops and producing a completed portfolio consisting of four 5-to-6-page papers.
Please note that we do not offer courses in all categories every term.
How to Register for Topics Courses
Choose three courses from the list and rank them in order of preference: one being your first choice, two your second choice, three your third choice. Be sure to include the sequence and key number.
When you register using an online website or when you see your advisor during Summer Orientation, give her/him your list (with key numbers), and your advisor can tell you if there is a space for you, and if it fits your schedule. (If you are sending your course choices in using an online advising website, there is no need for you to send key numbers.) Either as part of your online advising or during summer orientation, your advisor can then register you in the course.
Do not drop the writing course that you have been placed in and try to register yourself. If the course that you want is full, you may not be able to get back into your original writing course on the particular sequence. See your advisor for help.
You can also contact Ms. Linda Collins
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America and American Culture
- Self-Evident Truths: Reading and Writing America
McGrath, James
MW 2:50-4:30, CRN # 11397 - College Writing
Riordan, Jefferson
MWR 8-9:15, CRN # 12002 - TBA
White, Max
This course will examine American culture as it is represented in movies, television shows, and literature. It will do so by way of theoretical essays included in Ways of Reading and excerpted from other academic writings. TF 9:50-11:30, CRN # 11350
TRF 11:45-12:50, CRN # 11409 - Writing the Border
Kingsley, Anne
TF 1:35-3:15, Key # 11345 -
Education and Coming of Age
Media and Technology
Popular Culture
- Media and Public Space
Musiol, Hanna
TF 9:50-11:30, CRN # 11351 - Ways of Reading
Zilleruelo, Erica
In this course, students will be asked to read several essays from the text Ways of Reading and apply those texts to a variety of outside sources including television, film, literature, essays, and many others to experence various ways of reading and understanding assorted texts.
MWR 4:35-5:40, CRN # 11413
MW 2:50-4:30, CRN # 11363 -
Race/Class/Gender/Sex & Gender Identity
- Reading Culture
Nguyen, Duyen
In this course, we will be exploring through reading and writing the ways in which culture--its images, sounds, language, etc.--have shaped our definitions of ourselves.
TF 8-9:40, CRN # 11359
TF 11:45-1;25, CRN # 11338 - Gender and Sexuality in 19th and 20th century visual culture
Peaker, Alicia
This course will begin to think through various modes of "seeing" and "looking." It will draw from art history, pop culture, and the world around us to investigate how gender and sexuality specifically (but also race and class) are constructed and challenged through representation and images.
Sequence B, CRN # 12287 - Gender and Relationships
Pilaud, Susan
TF 9:50-11:30, CRN # 11059
TF 11:45-125, CRN # 11062 -
Representations of the Past
- Reading Culture
Poudel, Arjun
In this course, we will read, reflect, and write about the ways culture works in and through our lives. We will study the images, words, and sounds that surround our daily lives and structure our experience. And we'll try to make sense of them with the help of some scholarly articles by writers like John Burger, Susan Bordo, Michael McKeon etc.
MWR 9:15-10:20, CRN # 12000
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Self and Society
- Ways of Seeing
Artiano, Emily
This class will focus on different representations of the self and the ways individuals see themselves and society.
TF 9:50-11:30, CRN # 11353
TF 11:45-1:25, CRN # 12266 - Self Writing
Dedek, Michael
In this course we will read autobiographical narratives that situate authors within historical and social contexts, in order to comment on the ways larger forces determine identity. After reading these narratives and acquiring a sense of how different authors understand and write about the intersection of self and society, we will write narratives of ourselves that attempt to mimic those we have read. The intention is that, with the help of the examples we will have read, we will situate ourselves within larger social contexts. Possible readings include W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, Richard Rodriguez's "The Achievement of Desire," Edward Said's "States," Adrienne Rich's "When We Dead Awaken," and Kwame Anthony Appiah's "The Ethics of Individuality."
TF 1:35-3:15, CRN # 10860 - What do you want from me? Defining Personal Identity in a Global Community
Richard, Suzanne
MWR 1:35-2:40, CRN # 12208 - Perceptions, Stories and Histories
Spilecki, Susan
TF 11:45-1:25, CRN # 11339 - Unlikely Journeys in Prison: A Multi-Genre Approach to Identity Search
Stone, Trudy
The course covers the search for identity, both on a personal and historical level, by exploring three readings dealing with "prison" - in a literal and metaphorical sense: "The Rings of Saturn" "Our Time": "Panopticism". We will look at supplemental materials [such as poetry and films] that deal with the question of identity and the process of finding one's "self" through escape and confrontation.
MWR 9:15-10:20, CRN # 11412
MWR 1:35-2:40, CRN # 11418 - In Search of the Best of All Possible Worlds
Ziemian, Carol
In this section, we will read and write about a group of texts, films, and other media that represent Utopias and their opposites, Dystopias, in order to explore the notion of, as Voltaire puts it, “the best of all possible worlds.” The focus is on political “worlds”—our own American social systems, as well as alternatives to such systems. We will explore whether or not democracy is the best of all political systems? We will examine how individuals can shape their world. We will explore the arguments made for and against democracy? (A key question: What is freedom?) How do education and literacy function either to uphold the status quo and or to critique it? (And what is the status quo?) Anchor readings include Kwame Anthony Appiah's "The Ethics of Individuality," Paulo Freire's "The 'Banking' Concept of Education," and Susan Griffin's "Our Secret." Other readings that we may include are eclectic, and range from popular music (think John Lennon's "Imagine" and Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise," and the thread of radical social consciousness that runs through rap) to Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, “Harrison Bergeron” and Yehuda Amichai's poem "The Diameter of a Bomb," as well as to excerpts from Ayn Rand’s Anthem. We will see Steven Spielberg's documentary film The Last Days and excerpts from The War Photographer, Dead Poets Society, and Slaughterhouse Five.
TF 1:35-3;15, CRN # 11347 - Individuals and Institutions
Zilleruelo, Art
This course will require students to consider how educational institutions may function as sites for the perpetuation and / or resistance of dominant cultural ideologies and values. To this end, we will be reading and discussing essays that approach this subject matter from widely different perspectives. Students will also be required to formulate their own reactions to this subject matter in carefully considered and conscientiously written essays of their own. We will also devote a significant amount of time to discussing and theorizing the role of stylistic and rhetorical choices in the act of writing, and to considering the role of writing in regulating and challenging the orthodoxies of intellectual activity within the academy.
MWR 4:35-5:40, CRN # 12264 Stories/Myths/Legends
- Knowing Ourselves through Story
Bindas, Gwen
MWR 4:35-5:40, CRN # 11414 -
Ways of Knowing
- Individuality and Culture: Ways of Knowing, Thinking and Writing
Garner, Shannon
In this course we will be exploring the role of the individual through academic writing. The goal of the course is to gain the confidence and critical thinking skills to join rich academic conversations through new ways of writing, thinking, and knowing. We will be opening a dialogue with a number of essays collected in David Bartholomae and Daniel Petrosky's book Ways of Seeing, as well as discussing film, literature, and popular culture.
MWR 9:15-10:20, CRN # 10896
MWR 10:30-11:35, CRN # 11421 - Self and Society (Reproductions of Power)
Giaimo, Genie
This course will examine how cultural critics Edward Said, John Berger, and Michel Foucault envision power and its relation to identity. We will use such items as photographs and paintings to explore these essays.
TF 9:50-11:30, CRN # 11342
TF 1:35-3:15, CRN # 11361 - The Individual: Being and Knowing Self and Place
Griffin, Brent
This version of College Composition aims to raise students' awareness of the connections between reading, writing, and knowing by focusing on the theme of individuality and the individual's place in history as well as family and nation and environment. We read works by Walker Percy, Susan Griffin, and Kwame Anthony Appiah among others and students write a variety of essays and responses, practicing the use of writing for understand as well as communication
MW 2:50-4:30, CRN # 11398 - Ways of Seeing, Knowing and Representing
Moss, Edward
When we say, "I see," we mean that we "understand," or we "get it," or we "know." But how do we know? What do we know? How do we come to learn something, to feel that we know something, know a person, or a place, or an idea? What is the relationship between seeing and knowing? How do our ways of seeing affect our ways of knowing and representing what we think we know? How do we represent (or fail to represent) experiences, knowledges, and ourselves or other people, in images and in language, in concepts or metaphors? What do images represent? What does language represent? What are the possibilities for knowing and representing for readers and writers? And what are the limits of such knowing and representing for readers and writers? Whose visions, knowledges and representations count, and in what ways? In this course, we will ask these and other questions. We’ll read essays that allow us to develop a vocabulary for talking about how we, as readers and writers, see, know, and represent. We'll start with “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body” from Susan Bordo’s The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (1999). Other readings include Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (1873), and Richard Rodriquez's "The Achievement of Desire" from Hunger of Memory. Readings will be supplemented with other texts such as photographs, commercials/advertisements, and films.
TF 1:35-3:15, CRN # 11346 - The Individual: Being and Knowing Self and Place
Freeman, Kimberly
This version of College Composition aims to raise students' awareness of the connections between reading, writing, and knowing by focusing on the theme of individuality and the individual's place in history as well as family and nation and environment. We read works by Walker Percy, Susan Griffin, and Kwame Anthony Appiah among others and students write a variety of essays and responses, practicing the use of writing for understand as well as communication.
TF 11:45-1:25, CRN # 11063 - Inside/Outside: Writing in the Contact Zone
Nardone, Laurie
This semester, we will look at and write about a variety of texts (essays, film, and artwork, among others) and discuss how we make meaning of these texts. The theme of this class invokes Mary Louise Pratt’s notion of the Contact Zone: “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power” (Ways of Reading 501). The selected readings / viewings will function as frames through which you will be asked to look at and write about other texts, including our own experiences of contact zones and our interaction with them.
TF 9:50-11:30, CRN # 11356
TF 9:50-11:30, CRN # 11336 - TBA
Nelson, Jessica
TRF11:45-12:50, CRN # 11408 - Education for All?
Noonan, Matthew
MWR 10:30-11:35, CRN # 11424 - Language, Image and Literacy
Sirois, Carolyn
This course considers both visual work and written texts to prompt critical reading, writing and thinking. In opening up these lines of inquiry, we will reflect on our ways of seeing and knowing.
TF 11:45-1:25, CRN # 12225 - TBA
Benson, Joshua
TF 8-9:40, CRN # 11358 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Blakeslee, Lauren
MWR 9:15-10:20, CRN # 10861 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Hopwood, Elizabeth
MWR 9:15-10:20, CRN # 10897 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Kapica, Steven
MWR 9:15-10:20, CRN # 11060 - TBA
Kenlon, Tabitha
TF 1:35-3:15, CRN # 11344 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Kiang, Shun
MWR 9:15-10:20, CRN # 11066 - TBA
Martin, Jennifer
TF 9:50-11:30, CRN # 11065 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Minana, Alexis
MWR 10:30-11:35, CRN # 11064 - TBA
Ober, David
MWR 1:35-2:40, CRN # 11416 - TBA
Richie, James
MWR 4:35-5:40, CRN # 11057 - TBA
Riddle, Maureen
TF 9:50-11:30, CRN # 11352 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Runyan, Amanda
TRF 11:45-12:50, CRN # 11408 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Saban, Abraham
MWR 9:15-10:20, CRN # 10863 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Sciuto, Jenna
MWR 8-9:05, CRN # 11061 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Simpkins, Patricia
MWR 1:35-2;40, CRN # 11419 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Stanfill, James
MWR 9:15-10:20, CRN #10862 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Tua'one, Nataliea
MWR 8-9:15, CRN # 11999 - Ways of Knowing, Seeing and Representing
Whittet, Ethan
MWR 8-9:15, CRN # 10895 To Be Announced
- TBA
Sullivan, Patricia
MWR 10:30-11:35, CRN # 11423 - TBA
Zuch, Gregory
TF 11:45-1:25, CRN # 11999
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