Writing Minor
On this page, you'll find all of the courses I took to complete my minor in Writing. This course load is the reason I'm able to create this portfolio.
How Am I Seen?
This piece for Advanced Creative Nonfiction had me focus on a transgenerational memory; my grandmother's youth has affected me in more ways than I ever knew.
ENGL 3015: Advanced Creative Nonfiction Writing
In this advanced creative nonfiction workshop, we generated new work through a variety of experiments that are energized by close-readings of contemporary literature. We considered the relationship between form and content and study syntax, as well as prose development and structure. Additionally, we investigated narrative theories and explored strategies to uncover those narratives we are compelled to articulate. We were encouraged to make contact with those stories that reside deep within us, and use our details to do the emotional labor of telling those stories. We produced two pieces of nonfiction work, as well as five short analyses of texts we read throughout the quarter.
WRIT 2555: Diverse Rhetorics
Rhetoric’s origins in classical texts, in the western canon, developed to serve early forms of democracy and civic participation. Despite classical rhetoric’s formative impact, plenty of languages and cultures have their own means of persuasion and civic participation. In this course, we were able to explore how rhetoric looks, operates, and is sustained differently in unique cultural settings. We did weekly close readings for each cultural group, and got to explore a rhetorical tradition in our final research essay.
Seminar Paper: Rhetorical Sovereignty
This was my final project for Diverse Rhetorics. The goal was to choose and analyze a cultural rhetorical tradition that we had learned about. I chose to look at rhetorical sovereignty and how it functions in and as decolonization. I wanted to write about this because I had learned a lot about the subject in Anthropology, and wanted to apply the writing and rhetoric to ideas I already had knowledge about.
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Rhetoric Around High School Book Bans
In order to understand public opinions around some state's decisions to ban classic books from high school reading lists, I scoured online message boards. People are incredibly honest on the internet.
WRIT 2000: Theories of Writing
This course introduced a number of theories of writing, providing an overview of complex issues and research into the state and status of writing and writers. It took up such questions as these: What is writing? What are different types of writing? What does it mean to study writing? How
have major figures theorized writing, and what tensions emerge among their theories? What are relationships among thought, speech, and writing--and among image, film/video, and sound?
How do such theories change our notions of what texts are and what texts do? In this course, we approached writing from every angle, and learned how to apply that to our own understandings and uses of writing. We got to write nonfiction, create a podcast, and choose any topic in the world of writing to research.
WRIT 3500: Writing Design and Circulation Capstone
The primary goal of this capstone course for the Minor in Writing Practices was to create and present a professional electronic/web-based portfolio synthesizing university writing experiences. The portfolio showcases and offers reflective insight into our writings, demonstrating our ability to navigate diverse rhetorical situations. We learned theories and practices for selecting, arranging, and circulating/publishing written work, culmination in a required portfolio that synthesizes our university writing experiences. In addition to practicing principles of editing and design, we produced a substantive revision of a previous piece of our own writing
Revision
For this Revision assignment, I turned a research paper on women in the garment industry into a creative nonfiction piece.
Deconstruction
This Deconstruction assignment allowed me to reflect on my writing process during one of my favorite anthropology midterms.
Sin for Sin
ENGL 1000: Introduction to Creative Writing
This course focused on the introductory modes of creativity. How do we use our own thoughts? How do we convey messages through the art of language? In this class, we explored different styles of creative writing — short stories, poetry, micro-fiction. We did this learning mainly through doing; I got to develop a sense of what those genres look like, and how I can use my mind more adeptly.
This story was my first, and only, foray into creative fiction. The prompt was to write a chapter of science fiction or fantasy, to see how we can pick up a story at any point (beginning, middle, or end). I wrote about a girl saddled with horrific visions.