Course Description:
Centering and building on the significance of place(s) in learning, this course aims to improve your writing skills through a series of informal and formal assignments that will challenge you examine notions of place(s) as you write nuanced and engaging sentences; build effective paragraphs; construct arguments; engage various audiences; and integrate other people’s thoughts into your own. In the end, these activities and assignments will encourage you to be more reflective, critical, and careful writers.
Course Requirements:
Major Paper Assignments: There are four major paper assignments required for this course: Place essay (4-5 pages), mapping analysis essay (4-5 pages), argumentative essay (4-5 pages), and a researched argumentative essay (5-6 pages).
Each paper will be accompanied by a short meta-commentary (1-2 pages).
Informal Writing Assignments: Periodically, students will write short responses to exploratory prompts, course readings, or class discussions. These exercises are intended to help you explore, summarize, analyze, and synthesize course material so that these ideas may be incorporated into larger paper assignments.
Discussion Facilitation: Rather than a formal presentation, students will instead facilitate one in-class discussion on a course related topic. During this activity, the facilitator should prepare 2-3 questions that can draw from weekly readings, classmate responses to informal writing assignments, or current events related to course materials. This “low stakes” discussion activity should last around 10-15 minutes.
Attendance: Regular attendance is expected.
Course Readings:
Selected essays from The Value of Hawai‘i 1 and 2 (Students may access online versions of these texts through the UHM Library system).
Any additional readings will be provided by the instructor.
NOTE: Course description is subject to change.
For more information on this course, contact the instructor at laurenk9@hawaii.edu.