ENC 3416 Fall 2024 - Ziemer

This course takes a journalistic and adaptive graphic design approach, inviting students to consider and problematize principles of composing across different mediums, modalities, and spaces. Students read texts to understand theoretical perspectives within the field and serve as mere inspiration to situate themselves comfortably and appropriately within different genres. Students will find themselves writing articles, podcasting, “publishing” for print while engaging with “industry standard” software (i.e., Adobe InDesign), ultimately leaving the course with the necessary skills to compose within varied genres, modes, mediums, etc. for specific audiences.

We will focus on: (1) composing rhetorically and designing with purpose; (2) writing for different mediums—print/digital, audio, and online—considering their affordances, constraints, and rhetorical situations; (3) focus on “texts” to gain competency in re-writing (editing and revising), remixing, and re-learning ideas of prescriptivism and descriptivism; and (4) gain an understanding on relationships existing across and between genres, modalities, and materiality.

Students end the course by curating a digital portfolio showcasing acquired knowledge and skills while highlighting (in)tangible artifacts.