Fall 2024 WRT courses

Linked course titles have extended descriptions. Syllabi provided where available.

Course	Title	Day	Time	Instructor	Room	Syllabus	Description
WRT 114	Writing Culture	Various	Various	Multiple Instructors			Nonacademic writing; creative nonfiction, memoir, the essay. Students write texts experimenting with style, genre, and subject; read contemporary nonfiction texts by varied authors; attend lectures/readings of visiting writers.
WRT 115	Writing, Rhetoric, and the Environment	TTh	9:30 - 10:50	Robin McCrary			Rhetorical study and practice of critical, research-based writing in response to environmental issues and their material and discursive contexts. Emphasizes audience and genre-awareness to produce persuasive, culturally situated interventions in environmental debates.
WRT 116	Writing, Rhetoric, and Social Action	TTh	12:30 - 1:50	Melanie Haas			Examination of persuasive strategies of written arguments and genres intended to support and promote social action.
WRT 255	Activist Rhetoric	MW	3:45 - 5:05	Joe Wilson			In this class, we will analyze the writing of ACT UP and other HIV/AIDS activist organizations transnationally. Many activists during the 1980s viewed persuasive writing as an urgent task; they often had only a few years or months to live. We will ask, what can we learn from the writing of these activists, and what does activist writing from this period mean for today? Moreover, while we will engage autobiographical writing as a form of activism, students will not be expected to write about their own pain.
WRT 302	Advanced Writing Studio: Digital Writing	TTh	12:30 - 1:50	Zakery Munoz			Writing in digital environments. May include document and web design, multimedia, digital video, web logs. Introduction to a range of issues, theories, and software applications relevant to such writing.
WRT 303	Global Englishes	MW	5:15 - 6:35	Joe Wilson			What does standard English really mean, anyway? What are different Englishes used globally? People around the world use and adapt English for their own purposes, but the English of academic papers often feels constraining and challenging. In this class, we will try to make research writing feel less tedious. Toward this goal, you will get your feet wet conducting and writing about actual applied linguistics research within your own communities, and we will practice writing for jobs, graduate school, or other futures beyond Syracuse. (G&P) Note for interested students with Chinese language skills:在这节课，我鼓励你们用英语或者是中文进行写作和搜索.
WRT 304	Whose Land Is This?	MW	3:45 - 5:05	Kevin Browne			This immersive exploration of contemporary Indigenous Rhetoric in popular culture—including film, television, music, and others—will consider the beauty, complexity, and urgency of tradition; apply methods for seeing and knowing the contemporary world; and make meaning through—and in relation to—our critical engagement with those methods. We will craft an ethic that explores but does not exoticize, articulates but does not appropriate, and honors but does not own. Coursework will include field methods (e.g., interviews, archives). Final projects will engage matters of Indigenous sovereignty, survivance, and futures. (G&P)
WRT 307	Advanced Studio: Professional Writing	Various	Various	Multiple Instructors			Professional communication through the study of audience, purpose, and ethics. Rhetorical problem-solving principles applied to diverse professional writing tasks and situations. (Core Req for Majors.)
WRT 311	Community Writing & Photography	TTh	5:00 - 6:20	Brice Nordquist			This course offers an opportunity to work together with youth in the Syracuse community to develop visual storytelling projects that explore issues of identity, culture, and community. Through a partnership with SU Art Museum’s Photography & Literacy (PAL), you’ll collaborate with local public schools and community centers to offer training in visual literacies and multimodal composition, including photography and writing to help students produce these important projects. (G&P)
WRT 340	Publishing Intertext	F	9:30 - 12:15	Patrick Berry			What does it take to produce a publication from start to finish? In this course, we will explore publication processes: reviewing past issues of Intertext, analyzing audience, reading and selecting submissions, editing copy, finding and creating visual content, designing layouts, and developing supplemental editorial content. We will also explore production and manufacturing costs as well as issues pertaining to marketing, social media, promotion, and advertising. The ultimate goal is to create the 2025 issue of Intertext along with a supplemental Web-based component. (G&P)
WRT 413	Rhetoric, Ethics, and Just Futures after Prison	TTh	12:30 - 1:50	Patrick Berry			This section of WRT 413 will focus on individuals who have been impacted by the criminal justice system who often remain invisible in public debates, both nationally and globally. Students will partner with formerly incarcerated writers and learn how rhetoric and ethics are used to shape policy and perception about prison, crime, and punishment. Working with Project Mend and the Center for Community Alternatives, the course explores the prison-industrial complex and its relationship to ethics, justice, and rhetoric for justice-impacted people. (Engaged Humanities Course)
WRT 417	Medical Writing and Usability	TTh	2:00 - 3:20	Lenny Grant			Good medical documentation and communication has far reaching consequences for patient safety and satisfaction. In this course we will learn the rhetoric and ethics of researching, composing, and circulating medical information. We will analyze, practice, and usability test materials such as patient information sheets, plain language summaries, and medical report visualizations. Guest speakers from health care practices, patients’ rights advocates, and professional medical writers will share insights on what makes effective medical documents. No science background required to enroll. (G&P)
WRT 422	The Art of Creative Nonfiction	MW	5:15 - 6:25	Kevin Browne			This course emphasizes creativity as it relates to the art of nonfiction. It asks, “How creative can we be as we compose ourselves?” This is a particularly urgent question in these precarious times, compelled as we are to declare that we are (still) here; that we have something to say; that our lives, bodies, and minds matter. Viewed primarily through a lens of identity, culture, and social justice, we will approach Creative Nonfiction as an immersive—and collaborative—practice of transmedial possibility. Coursework will culminate in a dynamic final project that includes audio, visual, digital, and material elements. (G&P)
WRT 428	What Should We Eat?	MW	12:45 - 2:05	Eileen Schell			What should we eat? This question is a complex one in a world where we are bombarded by messages about “eating clean,” “buying local,” and “staying sustainable.” WRT 428 will help us examine and develop critical literacies around the messages we receive about our food and farming systems. We will study and research how growing, distributing, and preparing food impacts labor conditions, the environment, and human–animal relationships. We will also examine food in relation to questions of health, justice, access, social identities, emotions, and embodied, lived experiences. (H&T)
WRT 437	Information Design	TTh	9:30 - 10:50	Krista Kennedy			We live in constant streams of data, working to extract pertinent information from a swift current of text and visuals. We also face the challenges of getting our own messages to readers dealing with information overload and anxiety. This courseintroduces the concepts, vocabulary, and tools for effective visual presentation of data-driven information in print and digital contexts. Together, we’ll consider multiple genres in information design and create audience-centered products that account for usability aspects and accessibility for disabled audiences. This hybrid course meets on zoom and asynchronously. (H&T)
WRT 495	Distinction in Writing (Senior Research Seminar I)	TBD	TBD	Collin Brooke			Students may earn the award of Distinction in Writing if they are a Writing major, have an overall cumulative GPA of 3.4 and a minimum GPA of 3.5 in WRT after taking at least four Writing and Rhetoric major courses. Rising seniors who meet these criteria are invited to enroll in WRT 495 - Senior Research Seminar I in the fall of their senior year (one credit) and WRT 496 - Senior Research Seminar II in the spring of their senior year (two credits) during which students must complete a thesis-length independent research or creative project.