College Writing Program

CWP 1001 Foundations of Academic Writing

This course may be required of some students before they take College Writing(placement to be determined by the department). Particular attention is paid to reading comprehension, critical thinking, organization of ideas and grammar. In some cases, students may be required to enroll in a one-credit tutorial along with this course.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

CWP 1502 College Writing: Citizen Scientist

Being a citizen of a modern democracy increasingly requires making decisions informed by our understanding of scientific consensus and the backing evidence. These decisions affect our environment, public health, state infrastructure, and government at every level. Identifying trustworthy academic research and journalism while resisting misguided public opinion and malicious disinformation campaigns can be daunting, particularly when we reflect on our own vulnerability to cognitive biases. Citizen Scientist aims to develop the ability to distinguish meaningful expertise from self-interested distortions and status quo platitudes. Inspired by our shared civic responsibility, Citizen Scientist teaches students to analyze and generate evidenced-based arguments that engage opinion, policy, activism, journalism, personal experience, and the research university. THIS COURSE SATISFIES THE FIRST-YEAR WRITING REQUIREMENT FOR ALL DIVISIONS.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

CWP 1503 College Writing: Dreams & Nightmares

This course is an opportunity to explore and experiment, to dwell in uncertainty and inquiry, and to entertain confusion before resolution. Whether your area of interest is the psychology of dreams, monsters, memory, desire, cognition and neuroscience, or the underbelly of the American Dream, you will find room to interrogate subjects, both real and imagined, as well as texts and theories that destabilize categories, embody possibility, and threaten established order. THIS COURSE SATISFIES THE FIRST-YEAR WRITING REQUIREMENT FOR ALL DIVISIONS.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

CWP 1504 College Writing: Writing Identity

What defines who we are and who we may become? How do class, gender, race, sexuality, and other social forces shape our identities? In what ways are our identities inherent or constructed, claimed or ascribed? In this course, we explore these and similar questions through the work of creative and critical writers, artists, and thinkers. We study key concepts such as double consciousness, intersectionality, and performativity, as well as cultural and historical contexts that influence our understanding of self and community. We consider how social dynamics, power, and privilege affect the language we use and the lives we live. All along, through writing and research assignments and class discussions, we examine and interpret visual, literary, and critical texts in an effort to explore, together, what identity is and why it matters. THIS COURSE SATISFIES THE FIRST-YEAR WRITING REQUIREMENT FOR ALL DIVISIONS.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

CWP 1506 College Writing: Place & Perspective

Place & Perspective will feature readings on the subject of our environments, whether physical spaces or digital, and from a wide range of diverse perspectives. Students will have the opportunity to write original works synthesizing current academic and popular conversations, while offering new views on what it means to live here in this world, to have a place in an ecosystem, a classroom, and a community. We will foreground diversity in both our in-class conversations as well as through the writing we share, from issues of inequality to concerns of access, from explorations of the self to our responsibilities as citizens. Possible topics may include global migration, urban and suburban spaces, nature writing, gender and sexuality studies, or a focus on our St. Louis surroundings. THIS COURSE SATISFIES THE FIRST-YEAR WRITING REQUIREMENT FOR ALL DIVISIONS.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

CWP 1507 College Writing: Power & Commodity Culture

How does fancy mustard relate to hip-hop? How might your taste in potato chips relate to your choice in winter coat? How does writing itself contribute to larger cultural conversations? This course will explore how our choices as consumers, creators, and writers are mediated by broader cultural forces such as foodways, fashion, music, advertisement, art, and social media. "Commodity culture" refers to what aspects of culture can be evaluated in terms of supposed "worth" or economic value. Here students will think critically, draft, take risks, and revise to present work that has been elevated to college-level writing and argumentation. Readings will explore a range of rigorous scholarship and multimedia texts -- whether it's the importance of cultural capital in college admissions, the role of social media in the rise of self-branding, recognizing accessibility in our known environment, Taylor Swift’s connection to “rainbow capitalism,” or the blurred line between high art and   Instagram. As avid readers and writers, we will delve into the details of rhetorical context to approach both published media and our own essays as instances of cultural production. No prior knowledge of foodways, art history, or media studies is necessary for this course, but students are expected to develop a nuanced appreciation of how something as seemingly innocuous as cultural output intersects with larger structures of status, power, and social justice. THIS COURSE SATISFIES THE FIRST-YEAR WRITING REQUIREMENT FOR ALL DIVISIONS.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

CWP 1508 College Writing: Technology & Selfhood

Writing is a technology that allows one to read the thoughts of others across space and time. Our course's theme -- technology -- is the subject matter that we will be reading to hone skills such as analysis, argumentation, and critical thinking. This does not mean that a student must be a budding technologist to succeed in this course, nor will this course seek to transform a student into one. Rather, this course treats technology in its broadest sense, from its root in the Greek techne (which means craftsmanship, craft, art, or rhetoric) to its contemporary definition as the realm of knowledge that deals with the mechanical arts and applied sciences. In writing about technology, we will consider perspectives across the university curriculum in order to better comprehend our relationship with our tools and to scrutinize the dynamic interaction, communication, and interdependence of different kinds of tools for various means of communication and representation. We will strive to think critically about ourselves as part of larger communities and systems by attending closely to the ways we communicate with and about others through technologies such as writing, film, and social media. In writing creative, analytical, argumentative, and researched essays, we will address responsible uses of technology and the effects that technologies have on different communities and individuals, and we will try to answer questions like the following: How does technology affect us when we use it? How do technologies intersect and affect one another? What roles does technology play in our everyday lives? What roles do we want it to play in our future? THIS COURSE SATISFIES THE FIRST-YEAR WRITING REQUIREMENT FOR ALL DIVISIONS.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

CWP 1509 College Writing: Writing On Aging

Half of the current students' generation will see their hundredth birthdays. This astonishing shift in demographics is one that affects each of us as individuals, as members of families, and as citizens. This writing course takes aging as its theme, sharpening our critical thinking through such practices as analysis, argumentation, and research while asking the following questions: How will we negotiate the changing goals and life circumstances that accompany a century of life? How will new technologies change how we live as individuals and as a society? How will our experiences and those who go before us shift how we imagine the possibilities open to our future selves? We will read essayists, critics, and theorists tackling these problems. In turn, we will engage our new longer future through our own creative and critical responses as well. THIS COURSE SATISFIES THE FIRST-YEAR WRITING REQUIREMENT FOR ALL DIVISIONS.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

CWP 1510 College Writing: Text & Traditions

When we hear the word hoax today, the terms misinformation and fake news often follow, along with concerns that the very fabric of American society is being destroyed by the internet's ability to cloak falsehood as truth. And yet hoaxes have been around longer than the internet, and often do work beyond the realm of the political. Kevin Young writes in Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbugs, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News that the hoax is suited to America in a way that other places can only aspire to, with our fake-it-til-you-make-it hucksterism a kind of national ethos. In this course we look at a wealth of hoaxes, from those in art, which are often designed to shake our faith in institutions telling us what is valuable and to ask us to think for ourselves, to those of the newspaper wars of the 1800s, when outrageous scoops about the creatures who live on the moon helped sell papers to readers who were invited to enjoy, if not quite believe, the news. We will examine what we can learn from these historical and contemporary apolitical hoaxes, and how that knowledge can be brought to bear on those we see today, where hoaxes can fray trust in public institutions like the press, the government, and even the university. This course is linked to the Text & Tradition Focus seminar program. THIS COURSE SATISFIES THE FIRST-YEAR WRITING REQUIREMENT FOR ALL DIVISIONS.

Credit 3 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

CWP 2001 Writing Workshop

This workshop focuses on engaging research, with all of the multiple meanings implied in the phrase's wordplay: engaging as interesting and interested; as active, responsive to and engaged with others. Just what we mean by engaging - and by research, for that matter - will be our topic of conversation all semester, and you should come prepared to contribute your views on that topic and to complicate your current understanding. Where possible, we will focus on practical, applied work with sources, which should provide a good foundation for advanced research and writing in your discipline, and we'll give some thought to the different methods by which different audiences and scholarly disciplines select, analyze, evaluate, incorporate, and document the works of others. Along the way, we will attend to the relationship between different kinds of research projects and the types of sources that suit them, and we'll practice techniques for drawing on the ideas and writings of others in responsible and engaged ways. Finally, we will grapple with the subtleties and complexities of Academic Integrity, attempting to understand not only the principles that govern responsible research but also the assumptions that underlie them. Ultimately, this course should enhance your ability to produce scholarly writing that not only draws on the voices and views of others responsibly, but that also speaks with its own distinct, engaging voice, that builds its own original arguments.

Credit 1 unit. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

CWP 2020 Pump Up the Volume: Collaboration and Cultural Impact Through Podcasting

When you're walking to class or catching a shuttle, what's playing in your earbuds? Music, perhaps. Or maybe you're listening to one of the more than 800,000 podcasts available to stream at any given moment. From tracking the rise and fall of Theranos' founder Elizabeth Holmes to unapologetic musings about life from recovering addict and actor Dax Shepard, podcasts have never been more primed to take our ears, our minds, and our hearts by storm. In this course, students will examine this phenomenon and its value in our global-minded culture and put into practice the storytelling skills we will observe from a collection of podcasts by creating our own podcast episode. Together, we will find out what happens when you fuse creative impulse with rigorous research and let it loose on the airwaves.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

CWP 2030 Food Writing Workshop: From Identity to Social Justice

From Proust's madeleine moment to rap songs about truffle butter and milkshakes, food is an enormous part of identity, status, and culture. As an object for analysis, food rests at the center of the intersection of race, class, gender, and more. This course will explore food from a variety of angles and, most importantly, as a mode of social justice. Based heavily on scholarly readings and weekly writing workshops, the course asks students to think and write critically about the role eating plays in their personal identity, the culture with which they or others identify, and as a way to enact equitable social change. Students will rely on analytical and research skills, with an emphasis on the idea that all writing is creative and can enact a meaningful paradigm shift, even if the subject is as seemingly innocuous as food.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

CWP 2040 Conspiracy Theories and Online Hoaxes: The Rhetoric of Disinformation

Why do people believe in conspiracies, and what can we do to quell disinformation? This course will build on foundational information literacy skills by studying conspiracy theories and hoaxes that originate and are circulated online and that are then used for political advantage. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, we will read texts in composition and rhetoric, media studies, philosophy, history, sociology, political science, and psychology to understand how conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and other forms of disinformation are amplified through social media networks and come to be believed by millions. Working with case studies such as QAnon, climate change denial, the anti-vaccination movement, and the Flat Earth Society, this course will explore the rhetoric that convinces people to believe in disinformation and the networks that contribute to its proliferation while also studying ways to combat disinformation, from methods for debunking conspiracy theories and hoaxes to the actions that journalists, educators, and others can take to resist the spread of disinformation.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

CWP 2050 Navigating New Media

New media is commonly defined as any media delivered digitally rather than in print form, and includes everything from a New Yorker article shared on Twitter to a Youtube influencer's latest vlog to an annual Spotify Wrapped list posted to Instagram. We engage new media everyday, but how does it shape the way we receive, share, and interpret information? How might it undergird our very sense of self? This course would focus on analyzing and interpreting new forms of media-specifically social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, but also blogs, podcasts, and streaming platforms, all of which toward no small amount of recent scholarship has been dedicated. Taking these platforms seriously as forms of communication (and miscommunication) is crucial to being media literate today, and to understanding the power asymmetries inherent to almost any new media experience. Reading essays by scholars such as Safiya Umoja Noble, Slavoj Zizek, and Ian Bogost, along with writings by culture critics like Malcolm Gladwell, Barrett Swanson, Safy-Hallan Farah, and Jia Tolentino, we will explore new media through a variety of interdisciplinary lenses, considering a cross-generational span of perspectives.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall