Course Description
This class will give you extensive practice in reading and writing college-level prose, with the aim of empowering you to critically interpret a variety of texts, summarize and evaluate an author’s argument, map out and take part in intellectual conversations, and engage with audiences through research and persuasion.
We’ll start out by building our classroom community through public narrative. Then we’ll move into considering how the stories we hear and tell are intimately tied to what we think we know about the world and ourselves. As examples, we will read an assortment of texts throughout the semester that take part in public conversations in or about Hawaiʻi. We will consider these texts and the stories they tell through intensive class discussion, allowing us to develop our critical reading skills together.
As the semester progresses, we will turn our attention to how the production of knowledge happens through conversations, whether they are academic debates, political controversies, or discussions among friends. You will practice the mapping and positioning skills used in the process of researching a topic (aka a conversation) and making an argument.
Finally, we will consider how we can express our positions in persuasive ways to specific audiences as interventions in a conversation.
Course Requirements
This course will require that you write 5 papers and participate in class by being present and on-time, participating, and doing required readings before class.
Papers:
Public Narrative (3 pages)
Critical Reading (4 pages)
Summary & Evaluation (4 pages)
Literature Review (8 pages)
Persuasive Research Paper (5 pages)