Davida H Charney

Designed for students in the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan

The goal of this class is to develop your skills in writing, analyzing, and producing public arguments. The topic about which we will be arguing is either

• the environment (what counts as wilderness, how valuable it is, what is being done that preserves or endangers it, and what should be done about it)
• crime (what counts as a crime, how serious criminal activity is, what causes crime, what about the criminal justice system should change).

The class will collectively choose a set of published arguments on these issues that we will all read, analyze, and respond to. You will also develop your own position on privacy, find published sources relating to it, and write persuasively about it to a variety of audiences.

Even though you will practice analyzing and producing arguments about environmental or crime issues, this is not a class about the environment or crime. It is a class about argumentation. You will be learning to recognize and use effective strategies for every area of academics and public discourse. You will learn to write to specific audiences to achieve specific purposes--to change your readers' minds, adjust their attitudes, or inspire them to take action.

Your grade will NOT depend in any way on the position you take on an issue. But it WILL depend on the effort you invest in openly exploring the issues, analyzing the strength of your own and others' arguments, tailoring your arguments to a variety of readers (including those who may not agree with you), and refining your own argumentative techniques.

Main Texts

Having Your Say. Charney, D., Neuwirth, C., Geisler, G., and Kaufer, D. (2006).

Assignments and Grades

Your final grade will be a composite of grades on your papers and your involvement during the semester as a whole:

• 30% Argument Analysis
• 30% Problem/Solution Paper
• 30% State of the Issue
• 10% Participation: discussion board posts, peer reviews

RHE 325M is an advanced-level workshop in writing and editing. Its goal is to make already skilled writers more polished and publishable.  It will introduce you to stylistic analysis, the study of how word choice, sentence construction, audience adaptation and passage arrangement influence the rhetorical effects of texts on their audiences. The examples will come from non-fiction texts and popular, functional genres such as newspapers, blogs, political speeches, ads, music reviews, etc. In addition to one long paper, you will be doing many short exercises on passages of your own or ones you choose.

Assignments and Grading

30% Examples: 7 one-page analyses and/or mark-ups of how a passage illustrates one  or more features.

30% Exercises: 5 two-page rewrites or imitations of a passage.

30% Final Paper: Comparison and evaluation of style of several passages from a particular writer or from several writers on a particular topic.

10% Participation: Daily quizzes, peer reviews, and posts on discussion boards

Texts

Fahnestock, Jeanne.  Rhetorical Stylistics, Oxford University, 2012. ISBN: 978-0199764112

Graff, Gerald & Cathy Birkenstein. They Say, I Say, 2nd Edition. Norton, 2009. 978-0393933611

RHE 325M is an advanced-level workshop in writing and editing. Its goal is to make already skilled writers more polished and publishable.  It will introduce you to stylistic analysis, the study of how word choice, sentence construction, audience adaptation and passage arrangement influence the rhetorical effects of texts on their audiences. The examples will come from non-fiction texts and popular, functional genres such as newspapers, blogs, political speeches, ads, music reviews, etc. In addition to one long paper, you will be doing many short exercises on passages of your own or ones you choose.

Assignments and Grading

30% Examples: 7 one-page analyses and/or mark-ups of how a passage illustrates one  or more features.

30% Exercises: 5 two-page rewrites or imitations of a passage.

30% Final Paper: Comparison and evaluation of style of several passages from a particular writer or from several writers on a particular topic.

10% Participation: Daily quizzes, peer reviews, and posts on discussion boards

Texts

Fahnestock, Jeanne.  Rhetorical Stylistics, Oxford University, 2012. ISBN: 978-0199764112

Graff, Gerald & Cathy Birkenstein. They Say, I Say, 2nd Edition. Norton, 2009. 978-0393933611

The Agora of ancient Athens was a space where the daily religious, political, social, and commercial activities of citizens could be conducted. Though technologies and geographies have changed, we still conduct many of our civic activities in a virtual agora. Religious, political, social, and commercial freely mix in ones and zeroes across millions of miles of fiber optic cable and in thousands of acres of server rooms. The agora is no longer a bound area inside a city, but instead a nongeographical space bound by semiotic domains and discourse communities. This course explores rhetoric as civic and public discourse, with emphasis on delivering that discourse in our modern Agora, the Internet.

Throughout this course, we will explore what defines communities, controversies, and credibility in electronic public discourse. Students will choose a contemporary argument to investigate and will produce three projects surrounding this controversy. The first two units will focus on analysis of written and visual rhetoric, while the third is a researched argument. All three units will be delivered on the Internet as interactive web pages. Students will learn both HTML5 and CSS3 for creating their webpages, and no prior HTML or CSS experience is assumed.  All that is required is the knowledge to work a keyboard and mouse and a willingness to learn new technologies.

Main Texts

Various readings provided by the instructor in pdf format

The Brief Penguin Handbook with Exercises, 4th Ed.; Lester Faigley

Major Assignments and Grading

This course is assessed using a Learning Record Online, a system that requires students to compile a portfolio of work throughout the semester and analyze it to determine their own grade. As such, students will be required to complete three major written assessments of their work: one at the beginning of the semester, one at the midterm, and one at the end.

RHE 325M is an advanced-level workshop in writing and editing. Its goal is to make already skilled writers more polished and publishable.  It will introduce you to stylistic analysis, the study of how word choice, sentence construction, audience adaptation and passage arrangement influence the rhetorical effects of texts on their audiences. The examples will come from non-fiction texts and popular, functional genres such as newspapers, blogs, political speeches, ads, music reviews, etc. In addition to one long paper, you will be doing many short exercises on passages of your own or ones you choose.

Assignments and Grading:

30% Examples: 7 one-page analyses and/or mark-ups of how a passage illustrates one  or more features.

30% Exercises: 5 two-page rewrites or imitations of a passage.

30% Final Paper: Comparison and evaluation of style of several passages from a particular writer or from several writers on a particular topic.

10% Participation: Daily quizzes, peer reviews, and posts on discussion boards

Texts: 

Fahnestock, Jeanne.  Rhetorical Stylistics, Oxford University, 2012. ISBN: 978-0199764112

Graff, Gerald & Cathy Birkenstein. They Say, I Say, 2nd Edition. Norton, 2009. 978-0393933611

The goal of this class is to develop your skills in writing, analyzing, and producing public arguments. The topic about which we will be arguing is either

• the environment (what counts as wilderness, how valuable it is, what is being done that preserves or endangers it, and what should be done about it)
• crime (what counts as a crime, how serious criminal activity is, what causes crime, what about the criminal justice system should change).

The class will collectively choose a set of published arguments on these issues that we will all read, analyze, and respond to. You will also develop your own position on privacy, find published sources relating to it, and write persuasively about it to a variety of audiences.

Even though you will practice analyzing and producing arguments about environmental or crime issues, this is not a class about the environment or crime. It is a class about argumentation. You will be learning to recognize and use effective strategies for every area of academics and public discourse. You will learn to write to specific audiences to achieve specific purposes--to change your readers' minds, adjust their attitudes, or inspire them to take action.

Your grade will NOT depend in any way on the position you take on an issue. But it WILL depend on the effort you invest in openly exploring the issues, analyzing the strength of your own and others' arguments, tailoring your arguments to a variety of readers (including those who may not agree with you), and refining your own argumentative techniques.

Main Texts

Having Your Say. Charney, D., Neuwirth, C., Geisler, G., and Kaufer, D. (2006).

Assignments and Grades

Your final grade will be a composite of grades on your papers and your involvement during the semester as a whole:

• 30% Argument Analysis
• 30% Problem/Solution Paper
• 30% State of the Issue
• 10% Participation: discussion board posts, peer reviews

Why does a joke fall flat in one situation and bring guffaws in another? Why has Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" been so successful after decades of public apathy about global warming?

Kairos (or timeliness) has been one of the most important concepts in rhetoric since it was invented in classical Greece. It is related to the classical Roman notion of Carpe Diem (or "seize the day"). In this class, we will use this concept to investigate why some writers succeed at grabbing attention and inspiring action while others fail. You will also learn to make use of these concepts in your own writing in college and in the public arena.

Grading

Paper 1: Rhetorical Analysis of Hot and Cold Texts (25%)

Paper 2: Analysis and Design of Problem Statements (25%)

Paper 3: Synthesis of "Interesting Research" in a Discipline (25%)

Informal Responses and Peer Review (25%)

Required Texts

Having Your Say, Charney, Neuwirth, Kaufer, and Geisler

Course Packet

Why does a joke fall flat in one situation and bring guffaws in another? Why has Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" been so successful after decades of public apathy about global warming?

Kairos (or timeliness) has been one of the most important concepts in rhetoric since it was invented in classical Greece. It is related to the classical Roman notion of Carpe Diem (or "seize the day"). In this class, we will use this concept to investigate why some writers succeed at grabbing attention and inspiring action while others fail. You will also learn to make use of these concepts in your own writing in college and in the public arena.

Grading

Paper 1: Rhetorical Analysis of Hot and Cold Texts (25%)

Paper 2: Analysis and Design of Problem Statements (25%)

Paper 3: Synthesis of "Interesting Research" in a Discipline (25%)

Informal Responses and Peer Review (25%)

Required Texts

Having Your Say, Charney, Neuwirth, Kaufer, and Geisler

Course Packet

In this substantial writing course, we will examine how scientific inventions and discoveries are portrayed to the public through newspapers, magazines and popular nonfiction books.  These portrayals are important because scientific findings have huge social, political, and ethical consequences for all of us.  For us to make good decisions about healthcare, the environment, the food supply and national security, we need fair and accurate portrayals of how science works.

In the first part of the course, students will read and analyze a wide array of news stories about scientists, including articles about just-published research, profiles of scientists at work, and reviews of major scientific concepts and theories. In the second section, students will analyze and evaluate the quality of media coverage of a particularly "hot" scientific study that received wide coverage in different media such as newspapers, editorials, broadcasts, and science websites. In the third section, students will write news articles describing breaking scientific work based on interviews with UT scientists.

Required Texts

Having Your Say, Charney et al., Longman, 2006

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson, 2008

Communicating Uncertainty, Friedman, Dunwoody, Rogers (eds.), 1999

Assignments

30% Rhetorical Analysis of Popular Science Articles (5-7 pages)

30% Media Coverage Analysis (5-7 pages)

30% Popular Science Interview & Essay (5-7 pages)

10% Homework, informal responses to readings, topic proposals, peer reviews.

The goal of this class is to develop your skills in writing, analyzing, and producing public arguments. The topic about which we will be arguing is either

•    the environment (what counts as wilderness, how valuable it is, what is being done that preserves or endangers it, and what should be done about it)
•    crime (what counts as a crime, how serious criminal activity is, what causes crime, what about the criminal justice system should change).

The class will collectively choose a set of published arguments on these issues that we will all read, analyze, and respond to. You will also develop your own position on privacy, find published sources relating to it, and write persuasively about it to a variety of audiences.
Even though you will practice analyzing and producing arguments about environmental or crime issues, this is not a class about the environment or crime. It is a class about argumentation. You will be learning to recognize and use effective strategies for every area of academics and public discourse. You will learn to write to specific audiences to achieve specific purposes--to change your readers' minds, adjust their attitudes, or inspire them to take action.
Your grade will NOT depend in any way on the position you take on an issue. But it WILL depend on the effort you invest in openly exploring the issues, analyzing the strength of your own and others' arguments, tailoring your arguments to a variety of readers (including those who may not agree with you), and refining your own argumentative techniques.

Main Texts

Having Your Say. Charney, D., Neuwirth, C., Geisler, G., and Kaufer, D. (2006).

Assignments and Grades

Your final grade will be a composite of grades on your papers and your involvement during the semester as a whole:
•    30% Argument Analysis
•    30% Problem/Solution Paper
•    30% State of the Issue
•    10% Participation: discussion board posts, peer reviews

The goal of this class is to develop your skills in writing, analyzing, and producing public arguments. The topic about which we will be arguing is crime: what counts as a crime, how serious crime is, what is being done that increases or descreases it, and what should be done about it. The class will collectively choose a set of published arguments on these issues that we will all read, analyze, and respond to. You will also develop your own position on crime, find published sources relating to it, and write persuasively about it to a variety of audiences.

Even though you will practice analyzing and producing arguments about crime, this is not a class about crime. It is a class about argumentation. You will be learning to recognize and use effective strategies for every area of academics and public discourse. You will learn to write to specific audiences to achieve specific purposes--to change your readers' minds, adjust their attitudes, or inspire them to take action.
Your grade will NOT depend in any way on the position you take on an issue. But it WILL depend on the effort you invest in openly exploring the issues, analyzing the strength of your own and others' arguments, tailoring your arguments to a variety of readers (including those who may not agree with you), and refining your own argumentative techniques.

Assignments and Grading
25% Argument Analysis
30% Problem/Solution Paper
30% Issue Introduction
15% Homework: discussion board posts, peer reviews

Texts
“Having Your Say” (Charney, Neuwirth, Geisler, and Kaufer)

In this substantial writing course, we will examine how scientific inventions and discoveries are portrayed to the public through newspapers, magazines and popular nonfiction books.  These portrayals are important because scientific findings have huge social, political, and ethical consequences for all of us.  For us to make good decisions about healthcare, the environment, the food supply and national security, we need fair and accurate portrayals of how science works.

In the first part of the course, students will read and analyze a wide array of news stories about scientists, including articles about just-published research, profiles of scientists at work, and reviews of major scientific concepts and theories. In the second section, students will analyze and evaluate the quality of media coverage of a particularly "hot" scientific study that received wide coverage in different media such as newspapers, editorials, broadcasts, and science websites. In the third section, students will write news articles describing breaking scientific work based on interviews with UT scientists.

Required Texts

Having Your Say, Charney et al., Longman, 2006
The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson, 2008
Communicating Uncertainty, Friedman, Dunwoody, Rogers (eds.), 1999

Assignments

30% Rhetorical Analysis of Popular Science Articles (5-7 pages)
30% Media Coverage Analysis (5-7 pages)
30% Popular Science Interview & Essay (5-7 pages)
10% Homework, informal responses to readings, topic proposals, peer reviews.

In this substantial writing course, we will examine how scientific inventions and discoveries are portrayed to the public through newspapers, magazines and popular nonfiction books.  These portrayals are important because scientific findings have huge social, political, and ethical consequences for all of us.  For us to make good decisions about healthcare, the environment, the food supply and national security, we need fair and accurate portrayals of how science works.

In the first part of the course, students will read and analyze a wide array of news stories about scientists, including articles about just-published research, profiles of scientists at work, and reviews of major scientific concepts and theories. In the second section, students will analyze and evaluate the quality of media coverage of a particularly "hot" scientific study that received wide coverage in different media such as newspapers, editorials, broadcasts, and science websites. In the third section, students will write news articles describing breaking scientific work based on interviews with UT scientists.

Required Texts
Having Your Say, Charney et al., Longman, 2006
The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson, 2008
Communicating Uncertainty, Friedman, Dunwoody, Rogers (eds.), 1999

Assignments
30% Rhetorical Analysis of Popular Science Articles (5-7 pages)
30% Media Coverage Analysis (5-7 pages)
30% Popular Science Interview & Essay (5-7 pages)
10% Homework, informal responses to readings, topic proposals, peer reviews.