Abbreviated Syllabi
Below is a selected list of courses I designed and taught at the University of Florida with links to abbreviated course syllabi. Courses I proposed are marked with an asterisk. To see a complete record of my teaching experiences, please visit my CV page.
*ENC 3310: Advanced Exposition—Cultural and Community Storytelling
We’re often asked to leave our identity at the classroom door, to leave behind the experiences that make us who we are and to instead draw “knowledge” from dry academic wells without engaging the outside world. At the same time, writing is happening everywhere, ranging from explanatory notes left behind in family cookbooks to instructions for practicing folk dances. What happens when we stop pretending that the writing classroom exists outside our world? How can we honor the stories we tell about ourselves and our communities in our writing? This class will explore these questions and more as we practice writing effective, engaging, and meaningful expositions.
ENC 2210: Technical Writing
ENC 2210 Technical Writing is an introduction to technical and professional writing. This course presents students with practical information about communicating in various workplace environments and professional/technical discourse communities. Throughout the semester, students will produce and analyze common technical writing genres, including emails, letters, resumes, memos, reports, proposals, technical descriptions, technical definitions, technical manuals, and proposals. Students will work toward understanding how to analyze and react to rhetorical situations each genre and writing situation presents, such as issues of audience, organization, visual design, style, and the material (digital) production of documents.
*ENC 1145: Topics in Composition—Writing Through Gainesville’s Rhetorical Monuments
Monuments are all around us, ranging from the Turlington Rock (“The Potato”) outside of Turlington Hall to the graffiti on Gainesville’s 34th Street Wall. But recent conversations surrounding the removal of Confederate monuments both here and elsewhere remind us that monuments are claims to both land and power. To write about monuments is to write about how a community remembers the past, envisions the present, and (re)imagines the future. What can we learn about Gainesville and even the university by studying their monuments? And what exactly is a monument anyway? This rhetoric and writing course will tackle these questions and more as we explore Gainesville’s monuments, in person (on your own) or online.
*ENC 1145: Topics in Composition—Writing About the (Visual) Rhetoric of American Advertising
Words are events, and if a picture is worth a thousand words we might only imagine how persuasive advertising can be. After all, advertisements permeate almost every square inch of our (visual and digital) lives and shape how we see the world. We all know for example that we “Save Money” and “Live Better” shopping at Walmart, and that Athletes “Just Do It” with Nike. And we propose to our partners with diamonds—one of the most common minerals on Earth—because of a highly organized campaign headed by the slogan, “A Diamond Is Forever.” Just what are major American advertisements doing? How do words and images work together to rhetorically turn readers into consumers? This writing and rhetoric course will explore these questions and more as we learn key concepts of effective writing.
ENC 1136: Multimodal Writing & Digital Literacy
Much of what we read and write in our personal, academic, professional, and civic lives draws from multiple modes of communication. How often, for example, do we come across text-based webpages embedded with GIFs, memes, or even YouTube videos? And who hasn’t used different fonts or styles when writing their résumé? We need to develop an expanded understanding of writing that reflects how we write in our day-to-day lives, both inside and outside the classroom. In this course, we will learn to write multimodally within digital spaces to convey creative, well-researched, carefully crafted, and attentively written information—a remarkably marketable skill.
