Collin Brooke, instructor
Office: HBC 239
Phone: 315.443.1067
cbrooke@syr.edu
http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/

Summer I, Mondays & Thursdays, 1:00 - 4:45 pm, HBC 020

Although the discipline of rhetoric and composition is focused primarily on the study of writing, we are sometimes reluctant to take what we know about writing and to investigate how our own processes and practices are implicated in that knowledge. While we are capable of using genre theory, for example, to examine sets of student writing or workplace writing, we have been slower to consider sites closer to "home," such as the scholarly writing we produce both in order to receive advanced degrees and once we've translated those degrees into careers. The questions we ask (almost reflexively) of others' texts, however, can also be applied to our own. What constraints and opportunities arise when we engage with genres like literature reviews, dissertations, or journal articles? Are there particular patterns that emerge over the course of scholarly conversations? What are the tacit strategies for entering those conversations?

The course will be structured into three units. The first part of the course will introduce students to central and recent work in genre theory as it has been taken up in rhetoric and composition. We will apply the concepts and vocabulary from this work during the second part of the course, focusing specifically on genres at play in scholarly conversations. The final segment of the course will be a publication workshop where students have the chance to apply the insights from the first two units to current scholarly projects.

The following books are required for the course:

• Anis Bawarshi, Genre and the Invention of the Writer
• Christine Casanave and Stephanie Vandrick, eds., Writing for Scholarly Publication
• a course packet

In addition to reading materials, I highly recommend that you download some concept mapping software, which you will be usings for one of your course projects. There are a number of different options, but I recommend CMap, which is available for both Mac and Windows at the following address: http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/. Download it early, and familiarize yourself with its features.

In addition to active, regular class participation, I will ask you to attend to the following three requirements:

• Each of you should subscribe to our course listserv, if you have not already done so. In addition to providing a space for announcements, this list will be a place where we raise questions and concerns about the course readings.
• As part of this course, you will be working fairly intensively on a research project of your own devising. In addition to preparing an article-length essay for publication, I will be asking you to complete what I am calling a research network map. I will provide more detail and examples during our first meeting.
• Each of you should be coming to this course with an essay that you are interested in submitting for publication, which we will be workshopping during the final 3 class meetings. You should not expect to have the time to actually write this essay during the course--you should be working with a project that you have already developed for another course or on your own.

If any of these requirements presents a problem for you, speak with me at the earliest possible time so that we can make alternative arrangements.

Please Note! This calendar is still in-progress.

[Note: CR = course reader]

Day 1 (5/23) introduction to course
Day 2 (5/26) Read: Bakhtin, Giddens, Miller (CR) [Derek, Ty]

Day 3 (5/30) no class - Memorial Day
Day 4 (6/2) Read: Bawarshi [Denise, Aleisha]

Day 5 (6/6) Read: Devitt, Prior (CR) [Mike]
Day 6 (6/9) Read: Vandenberg, Berkenkotter & Huckin (CR) [Rachel]

Day 7 (6/13) Read: Geisler (CR) [Carolyn]
Day 8 (6/16) Read: Secor, Wilder (CR) [Gina]

Day 9 (6/20) Read: McNabb (CR), selections from Casaneve [Kurt]
Day 10 (6/23) Essay Workshop

Day 11 (6/27) Essay Workshop
Day 12 (6/30) Essay Workshop