WSC 002 - CompositionSemester Hours: 3
Fall, Spring, Summer
Continued instruction in expository writing and an introduction to writing in the disciplines of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Reading and writing assignments are organized around a central theme.
Current Special Topics
The Truth Behind The Facade
The class will concentrate on critical reading and critical thinking as well as include instruction in expository writing. The theme of the class focuses on the interactions of children and the choices children make. This will develop into consideration of the intricacies of human nature and the difficulty adults have in making ethical decisions. Through close analysis, critical thinking, discussion, and writing, we will explore the anomaly of the human conscience.
Understanding and Analyzing Perspectives
The skills required to perform a close reading and effective writing translate across genres and disciplines to communicate powerfully about the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences demands unique skills. These learned skills can improve a student’s ability to communicate in a variety of contexts. Students will develop the analytical skills necessary to identify rhetorical strategies and understand how to deploy those strategies in writing. To this end, our readings, discussions, and assignments will focus on recognizing perspectives—through memory, attention, focus, description, and revision. The authors on our syllabus have honed their voices and oriented their readers to engage with the complicated subject matter. We will read travel memoirs of borderlands, social science ghost stories, and nature essays mourning the death of glaciers, each of which will use familiar techniques to persuade their target audiences. In the process of reading and analyzing these texts, we will strive to emulate these authors’ techniques in writing our own essays.
Sleep and Dreams: An Inter-disciplinary Investigation
Sleep. All living things require it in some form or other. By rough estimate, human beings spend 1/3 of their lives doing it. Next to love, but more than money, we crave it most. Readings for this class will consist of texts in the Natural Sciences (Biology, Neurology), Social Sciences (Anthropology, Psychology), and Humanities (Literature). We will engage with these texts through reading responses, class discussions, and written composition. This course will focus on students’ continued to practice in developing theses and arguments through each stage of the composition process – discovery, organization, drafting, and revision.
The Business of Sports
The influence that sports has on world culture is the strongest it has ever been. Over the last 100 years, the world of sports has transformed from athletic competitions to a multi-billion-dollar industry. Students will examine how athletes have evolved from semi-professional individuals to purveyors of a global brand and how industries have been created to accommodate this new business world. Behind every sports hero, every winner, and every loser, is an army of people wrestling over dollars and television coverage. This section of WSC 002 will study and write about the sports world through interdisciplinary texts, media, and discussion of the industries that thrive in the sports world.
Dangerous Reproductions
A variety of reading selections throughout the semester will be chosen on the theme of “Dangerous Reproductions,” a broad theme that encompasses the humanities and the sciences as topics on sexual reproduction, scientific reproduction, artistic reproduction, historical reproduction, literary reproduction, and cultural reproduction, to name a few, are explored.
Our discussions will evaluate the cross-disciplinary literature we read in class based on questions such as: What were the prevalent social attitudes during the period in which the literature was written? How did families, political leaders, writers, artists, scientists, and other individuals, live, dress, eat, and think during this period? What were the political and cultural views that influenced the author’s work? These perspectives will dominate class conversations as we examine the theme of “Dangerous Reproductions.” These issues will circulate around the major influential novel of nineteenth-century England written by Mary Shelley in 1818, Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus.
Prerequisite(s)/Course Notes:
WSC 001 . May not be taken on a Pass/D+/D/Fail basis. The Writing Proficiency Exam is given as part of the course.
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