Autumn 2015 course descriptions - College of Liberal Arts and

Autumn Quarter 2015
WRD Courses Eligible for Credit in
The WRD Major and the
Professional Writing Minor*
WRD 201, Digital Writing (new course!)
Major Elective; New Minor Requirement*
Professor Lisa Dush
LPC, TTH 2:40-4:10
Writing today requires more than just skill with written words: successful digital-age writers understand
how to strategically compose with a variety of modes and media, including still images, moving images,
social content, sound, and written text. This course aims to increase your flexibility and confidence with
this expanded range of modes and media. You will learn relevant design and rhetorical theories, get
instruction and hands-on practice with new digital production and distribution tools, and tackle projects
that develop your capacity to create persuasive digital texts for professional and civic purposes. *This
course is a requirement for all Professional Writing minors who declared the program after the end of Summer
Quarter, 2014. Ongoing minors who have not yet taken WRD 301 may substitute WRD 201 for 301 without
requesting to do so; alert Professor Vandenberg and he will adjust your DPR accordingly.
WRD 204, Technical Writing
Major Elective; PW Minor Elective
LPC, MW 9:40-11:10, Staff
Online, Dr. Christine Skolnik
Online, Staff
When we think of writing in school or academic settings, we often imagine a standard “paper”—an
argument about a historical event, or an analysis of a novel. But what do we imagine when we think of
writing in workplaces? Maybe we think that people don’t write that much in workplace settings.
However, in a recent annual survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the ability to
write and edit reports was considered “important” to “very important” by employers. Such survey data
only confirms an ongoing trend: your ability as a competent workplace writer is deeply valued by all
types of companies, and could be a crucial element of your career. In WRD204, students practice the
kinds of writing that will be expected in technical professions. The course will focus on understanding
audience needs and crafting written documents that meet the needs of clients, coworkers, managers, and
other stakeholders in technical workplaces. Students will learn by practicing how to write effective
instructions, tutorials, specifications, proposals, and technical reports. The course will also focus on the
design of professional documents, and how that differs from writing most students do in academic
settings. By taking the course, students will develop the kinds of facility in workplace writing that
employers in technical professions consistently say they are seeking when they recruit college graduates.
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WRD 206, Professional Writing
Major Elective; PW Minor Requirement
Professor Alan Ackmann
LPC, TTH 11:20-12:50
In this course, students learn fundamentals of professional writing, with a special focus on distinguishing
academic writing from workplace writing. The course provides a solid foundation that students can build
on as they develop specializations in their professional fields. Through a series of short assignments,
students explore the structure and format of typical professional writing documents, examine a variety of
workplace writing situations, and begin developing a clear and concise style appropriate for professional
settings. Students analyze and write a number of workplace genres, such as memos, emails, letters,
resumes, short reports, web documents, and professional presentations.
WRD 284, Sports Writing in America: Myths, Memories, Heroes, Villains
WRD Major Elective; PW Minor Requirement; Liberal Studies AL Domain credit (non-majors only)
Justin Staley, MFA
LPC, TTH 9:40-11:10
The influence of sports as an American institution is far-reaching and powerful, with the writing on these
sports helping establish and cement this influence. In this course, we will reflect on the ways that writers
have both reported on and impacted sports through the lenses of cultural, social, and economic events and
issues throughout America’s history. You will read, analyze, and discuss multiple genres of writing
including reporting, memoir/nonfiction, and argument, in the form of classic sports columns, essays,
audio and videos clips, and profiles of the heroes and villains of the sporting world. From boxing to
baseball, football to soccer, and beyond, you will develop greater insight into how writers craft
compelling narratives and posit effective arguments. By composing your own writing in these genres on
the sports of your choice, you will enter into the discourse of sports writing, exploring the role of sports as
part of your own life, as well as part of the wider cultural institution in the US.
WRD 290, Writer’s Tools Workshop: The Language of How: Creating
Digital Guides for Learning
Major Elective; PW Minor Elective
Sarah Brown
LPC, T 4:20-5:50 (two credit hours; course meets once per week)
This section of WRD 290 will help you craft skills in elucidation (exposition / description / explanation).
In this course, we’ll examine some popular and effective ways that people learn, such as Khan Academy
and TEDTalks. Then, we’ll analyze several of the venues available for learning something new from
online resources: how-to videos, video game walkthroughs, interactive technical documentation, and
screencapture/screenshare. Students will choose an area of interest and will create a “how-to package”
that uses some or all of these formats to provide guidance to users or audience members. Students can
expect to leave the class with a portfolio of samples of within this genre.
NOTE: At least one section of WRD 290 will be offered almost every quarter on a different topic. WRD
290 can be repeated multiple times for credit as long as the topic differs. We anticipate that most students
will take two sections of 290, equaling four credit hours, all of which will count for elective credit in the
WRD major and Pro Writing minor. This course will make a fine complement to many other WRD courses.
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WRD 300, Composition and Style
Major Elective; PW Minor Elective
Jan Hickey
LPC, MW 1:00-2:30
WRD 300 provides advanced instruction in invention, arrangement, and style. You will leave this class
with a better sense of yourself as a writer and with your own goals and plans for maintaining and
improving your prose style.
WRD 301, Writing in Workplace Contexts
Major Core Requirement; PW Minor Requirement
Professor Sarah Read
LPC, MW 2:40-4:10
Students study writing in professional contexts in order to form a broader understanding of the many
purposes and forms of writing across a wide variety of workplaces. Students will investigate writing at a
workplace of their choice and write a formal document reporting on their findings. Class topics include
writing and the knowledge economy, contemporary workplace writing practices, the ethics of workplace
writing, research methods for doing site research and discussion of how the methods of writing
researchers are applicable to the daily practices of workplace writers.
WRD 306, Rhetorical Traditions
Major Core Requirement; PW Minor Elective
Professor Jason Kalin
LPC, MW 1:00-2:30
We will study the history and principles of rhetoric to understand how rhetorical relations shape our lives.
In short, this course discusses the history of rhetoric and its contemporary applications. Aristotle
describes rhetoric as the faculty of observing in any particular case the available means of persuasion.
This course will investigate emerging modes of expression to think and imagine the available means of
persuasion. Students will both analyze and produce rhetorical artifacts and objects. We will be asking:
How do we cultivate a rhetorical sensibility to everyday life? What are the available means of persuasion
in our current media environment? What new rhetorical theories and practices do we need for digital
technologies? This course will encourage us to critique and to apply rhetorical principles so that we may
better understand our actions and responsibilities as rhetorical agents that influence the world around us.
WRD 321, Topics in Professional Writing: Writing in the Legal
Profession
Major Elective; Minor Elective
Ms. Andrea Yelin, JD
LPC, MW 420-550
This course explores the role of writing in legal contexts. You will learn about various genres of
professional legal writing: case summaries, objective memoranda, briefs, judicial opinions, oral
arguments, and contracts. We will focus on developing clear, direct, succinct, and precise writing for the
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legal context, in objective and persuasive formats. The course is not designed to teach substantive law,
but to explore narrative and persuasive writing styles within a legal framework.
Andrea B. Yelin is an attorney, author and writing specialist. She is the co-author of The Legal Research
and Writing Handbook, 6th edition (Wolters Kluwer 2012), Basic Legal Writing, 4th edition (Wolters
Kluwer 2013), and the author of Contract Law for Legal Professionals (Pearson 2011). She is also an
Adjunct Professor at the School of Law, Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches legal writing to first
year law students and directs the Legal Writing Workshop. Ms. Yelin conducts writing workshops at law
firms and writes materials for a financial services and litigation consulting firm.
WRD 345, Ghostwriting (new course!)
Major Elective; Minor Elective
Professor Peter Vandenberg
LPC, TTH 1:00-2:30
In this course, we will explore the phenomenon of writing for, on behalf of, or “behind” others—ghost
writing. From paper-mill student essays to best-seller “as told to” autobiographies, we’ll try to cover the
function of ghosting across all genres, and in the process usefully complicate our conception of authors
and authorship. We’ll be particularly interested in the role of ghosting in the digital age, understanding
“the machine” in the course title to stand for contexts or environments in which ghosts develop
multimodal content (alphabetic text, images, sound, and so on) for absent authors. We will spend some
time reading about and studying the rhetoric of ghosting, but you’ll spend much of the course engaged in
ghosting texts (media-rich and/or conventional “written” ones) on behalf of others. Whose story do you
want to write?
This course has been offered once in the past as a Topics in Writing course. This will be the first time it
will be taught under its permanent number.
WRD 398, Internship
Major Elective; Minor Elective
Dana Dunham
Arranged
Any internship opportunity that coincides with your role as a WRD major or Professional Writing minor
is eligible to be coordinated for course credit with WRD 398, Internship. For a complete explanation of
Internship guidelines, see http://las.depaul.edu/wrd/StudentResources/Internships/index.asp. For
additional information on WRD internships, see http://depaulwrd.wordpress.com/category/internships/.
For questions or to register, contact WRD Internship Coordinator Dana Dunham ddunham2@depaul.edu.
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Summer 2015
WRD Courses Eligible for Credit
in the WRD Major
and Professional Writing Minor*
First Summer Session (June 15-July 19)
WRD 204, Technical Writing
Major Elective; PW Minor Elective
Professor Antonio Ceraso
Loop, MW 5:45-9:00pm
When we think of writing in school or academic settings, we often imagine a standard “paper” - an
argument about a historical event, or an analysis of a novel. But what do we imagine when we think of
writing in workplaces? Maybe we think that people don’t write that much in workplace settings.
However, in a recent annual survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the ability to
write and edit reports was considered “important” to “very important” by employers. Such survey data
only confirms an ongoing trend: your ability as a competent workplace writer is deeply valued by all
types of companies, and could be a crucial element of your career. In WRD204, students practice the
kinds of writing that will be expected in technical professions. The course will focus on understanding
audience needs and crafting written documents that meet the needs of clients, coworkers, managers, and
other stakeholders in technical workplaces. Students will learn by practicing how to write effective
instructions, tutorials, specifications, proposals, and technical reports. The course will also focus on the
design of professional documents, and how that differs from writing most students do in academic
settings. By taking the course, students will develop the kinds of facility in workplace writing that
employers in technical professions consistently say they are seeking when they recruit college graduates.
WRD 309, Topics in Writing: Digital Storytelling (new course!)
Major Elective; PW Minor Elective; EL Credit in the Major
Professor Lisa Dush
LPC, TTH 6:00-9:15
Digital storytelling is a community-based media arts practice used to create first-person video narratives.
In recent years, organizations and communities worldwide have launched digital storytelling initiatives to
start important discussions and create powerful media for outreach and advocacy. This course introduces
digital storytelling and its allied values of personal storytelling, participatory process, and affordable, DIY
production methods. Students will read foundational digital storytelling texts, create their own digital
stories (learning, in the process of doing so, the basics of capturing and editing images, audio, and video),
and learn about a wide range of real-world digital storytelling projects. The course will prepare students—
including those with no prior digital production experience—to conceive of and carry out compelling
digital storytelling projects in organizations and communities.
This course will cover the Experiential Learning requirement in the major (but it does not count for JYEL
credit). If your DPR does not reflect coverage of the EL credit, email Professor Vandenberg.
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WRD 398, Internship
Major Elective; Minor Elective
Dana Dunham
Arranged
Any internship opportunity that coincides with your role as a WRD major or Professional Writing minor
is eligible to be coordinated for course credit with WRD 398, Internship. For a complete explanation of
Internship guidelines, see http://las.depaul.edu/wrd/StudentResources/Internships/index.asp. For
additional information on WRD internships, see http://depaulwrd.wordpress.com/category/internships/.
For questions or to register, contact WRD Internship Coordinator Dana Dunham ddunham2@depaul.edu.
depaulwrd.wordpress.com
wrd.depaul.edu
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