English Department Writing & Rhetoric I Spring Semester 2014
Expanded Literacy: Integrating Words and Images through Writing Course # 52-1151-05--3 Ct. Hrs. 15 weeks:
Monday and Wednesday 12:30AM to 1:50 PM, Rm. 412 C
Instructor: George Bailey Ph. D.
Office: 33 East Congress,
Office Phone: 312-369-8114 E-mail: gbailey@colum.edu
Office Hours: Tue & Thur. 9:00 to 9:45 AM- 2:00 to 3:00 PM, and by appointment
Departmental Course Description: Based on theories of new rhetoric and problem-solving sciences, this first required course in a two-semester sequence, Writing and Rhetoric I address techniques for idea generation, planning, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. Emphasis is on moving from expressive to persuasive writing while improving reading skills. These activities are carried out through one-on-one conferences, small-group workshops, and multi-draft approaches to writing assignments.

Departmental Course Rationale: The English Department takes seriously the work of teaching students to think, read and write well. Learning to read and write well are passports to conversations that help students gain firm, mature footings and moorings in an increasingly complicated world. It is important to practice thinking, reading and writing to ensure the attainment of communication skills for success in college and in any arts/communications discipline you intend to pursue. In order to meet the writing demands of courses across the curriculum, students need to become skilled at setting revision goals and creating strategies by which to achieve these goals.

Course Philosophy and Goals: The ability to relate closely to words on a page will improve your ability to function capably and comfortably in many settings within and outside of the academic world. It is important for students to recognize effective sentence patterns. Learning to read critically and to write clearly are the main goals of this course. Your writing assignments will involve re-reading, re-writing, and re-vision.

Note on our theme: Expanded Literacy: Integrating the Words and Images through Writing

In this spring 2014 Writing and Rhetoric I course we will use focused readings and writing assignments to negotiate the rich boundaries that exist between words and images to understand what we/ourselves, and others have had to say about print texts and imagistic texts. We will cultivate, appreciate and develop our own thoughts, responses, comments and interpretations to what we see and read. We will hopefully become comfortable, and even assertive in understanding and using a growing self authority to inquire into and write about subject areas and topics related to the words and images we read in our assigned texts. The experiences embodied in this course seek to establish a means by which we come to understand the recurring relationships of words and images that exist in our everyday lives. We will examine the ways in which we clarify our definitions of what it means to be literate. The theme of this course, Expanded Literacy: Integrating the Word and Image through Writing, invites and encourages students to focus on reading, and writing through inquiring into acknowledged and contested definitions of literacy. Students are increasingly asked to engage newly forming questions about what it means to read, and what it means to be a reader. These questions are not only asked of students but are also being asked of people from all walks of life as well. How do you read images, songs, the environment, the economy, relationships, colors, faces, situations or attitudes? The skills required to competently read what’s represented in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, games, drama and cinema, may well stem from a common kind of literacy training but perhaps not. Increasingly, people living in our neighborhoods, our towns, cities, counties and states are required to read the world differently