UCWR 110.003: Writing Responsibly Spring 2018

Course Description—“Writing in the Contemporary”: UCWR 110 is a rhetorically oriented reading and writing course in which you will analyze, evaluate, and produce both written and visual texts. This course builds on your preexisting writing and rhetorical skills—academic and otherwise—helping you become a critical reader and adept communicator. The writing and critical thinking skills honed during class are practiced in service of your time in and beyond Loyola. In addition to cultivating a sense of the conventions of academic writing, this class will focus on writing “in” our contemporary moment, considering how writing responds to, is disseminated in, and produces (“writes in”) the present. Towards this end, the course assignments, reading, and your writing will engage with critical, ongoing conversations about the present.

Class Blog: In addition to traditional paper assignments, you will help curate our class blog. Beyond the five major assignments, you will contribute short (8-10 sentences) thoughtful responses to an assigned reading four (4) times throughout the semester. These responses should critically engage with some aspect of the assigned reading: an idea from the article, a quote you select, or a question you pose to the text. Your writing should demonstrate a familiarity with the entire reading and provide more than summary. Your response should be posted on out blog no later than 9pm the night before class. In order to facilitate both on and offline conversations, you are also required to respond to at least two other students’ posts each time you post, hopefully responding to everyone in the class. These responses can be shorter, but should remain substantial and engage with your peers’ writing—pose a question, suggest a route for further analysis or discussion, discuss something related you found in the reading. Often, we’ll begin class by discussing what students wrote and what others responded to. You can find an in-depth write up of the blogging assignment on Sakai.
Note: This may be obvious, but be sure never to post private information-where you live, phone numbers, etc.-on the class blog. It’s (1) not relevant to the course, and (2) is a safety concern.