ENC 4404 Fall 2020 Graban

What is “citizen science” in the digital age? Known alternatively as "ecospeak," "popular science," and "science-based CSR," the phenomenon of moving scientific facts into the public sphere is one that deserves our critical, rhetorical, and editorial attention. What does it mean to reason well in media environments where formal ways of reasoning have become passé? How can readers recognize moral eloquence in advocacy blogs, or inductive logic in scientific campaigns? How much can rhetorical grammar influence the ways that we read an environmental impact statement? How do writers achieve elegance in the creation of technical information, or integrity in the construction of an argument that seems common or mundane? What difference does an understanding of "deep revision" actually make? And what does all of this have to do with how we participate in ongoing public discussions, inhabit the issues we care about, and bring alive the genres we write? In a highly charged, highly mediated public sphere, is it possible to contend with this discourse? We will grapple with these questions in theory and practice, paying special attention to a still-lucrative genre, the trade magazine, and spending considerable time composing across different genres.

Assignments may include some of the following: (1) a scientific and technical blog; (2) a Wikipedia article revision; (3) a scripted video documentary, with analytic reflection; (4) the creation of a weblog that hosts occasional posts and serves as a digital portfolio for your work; and (5) a reflective analytical essay that synthesizes course readings to explain (for an outside audience) what you have learned.

Please note that this is not a course in line editing. (Students seeking a course in line-editing should consider ENC 4212). However, this is a course that emphasizes the need to produce and circulate thoughtful, well constructed texts for a variety of audiences with different expectations and assumptions, and that includes thinking deeply about language in use. As this is an advanced-level continuation of the EWM gateway courses (Rhetoric, WEPO, and HoTT), you can expect to look carefully at writing, revising, and editing practices among specific discourse communities —academic as well as public—and in different media, while applying them to your own writing practice. Instruction will begin immediately on the first day of class.