Course Description: Competencies
Instruction in rhetorical literacy and writing across a variety of cultural genres. Students will work in community to learn the elements of argument and experiment with multiple configurations of their writing process through in-class workshops. We will hone our craft by tending to the development of critical voice, reading/writing positionality, “crowd work” (minding the audience), multimedia argumentation, intertextual writing (integrating/paraphrasing quotes), and close reading. We will strengthen our competencies in time management, managing personal writing environments, annotating techniques, research methods, drafting strategies, and writing materials and mediums. Students will leave the course with a strong foundation in persuasive writing for academic audiences on a variety of topics.
As I want this class to be useful for you regardless of whether you Major in English or not (though I hope you will!), I have incorporated opportunities for us to expand our skill base in web design and writing for the web. Our class will culminate in a communal Digital Humanities project wherein we produce our virtual map of London based on our critical readings of a journalistic satire of the city. This multimedia exercise will engage us in questions about writing for different audiences, repurposing content across genres, accessible design qualities, rhetorical uses of images, and marketing the metropole among other things. While this class is not a Media Studies, Marketing & Advertising, or Public Relations course, it will invite opportunities to begin thinking about the history and methods of these disciplines.
Course Description: Commitment to Cultural Literacy
We are each knowledgeable sources of information about the way the world works for and against us. Your lived experiences are vital forces influencing where we take our class this semester, and I encourage you to leverage this expertise in our class discussions. Just as successfully navigating a map does not necessarily require residency in the place depicted, generative literary readings do not depend on a habitual familiarity with the society that produced a text. In other words, being a 21st-century reader does not prevent you from grounding yourself in 17th/18th-century literary objects and figuring out how they work rhetorically. While our specific cultural contours are different than those authors of the primary texts, we are both concerned with questions about the ethics of representation and methods of challenging/affirming/innovating cultural models for living expressed therein.
Throughout this class we will be thinking about forms of orientation – to a map, diary, novella, satire, and critical writing – as mixed processes of wayfinding. Wayfinding is the strategy of superimposing familiar cognitive maps and systems of signs onto an unknown space that we take up in order to familiarize ourselves with it. I may not know the exact route out of a building, but I can recognize that an EXIT sign points the way. You may not know how long the chapters of a book are, but when you see a page only half written, you can tell a new chapter might be on the other side. There is the approved map of the city, and then there are the remappings of lived realities. Together we will consider the literatures of spatial loss, renewal, and rediscovery through the lenses of such authors as Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, Ned Ward, and Eliza Haywood.)
Required Materials
Provided Materials
Course Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
Accessibility and Accommodation
Throughout this course, we will consider the ways in which identity informs what and how we notice our environments. We will respect differences in what/how we notice and seek to enhance our own practices of awareness by learning from each other alongside the texts. As this attention to inclusion extends to different learning needs, I am also here to work with you on any accessibility and accommodation concerns you may have about this class. Students who anticipate barriers related to the requirements of this course due to disabilities are encouraged to contact DAS (the Department of Accessibility Services) to learn more about requesting accommodations. Students with accommodations should arrange to meet with me during the first two weeks of the semester to discuss specific needs.
Stress Management and Mental Health
As a student, you may find that personal and academic stressors in your life are creating barriers to learning this semester. Many students face personal and environmental challenges that can interfere with their academic success and overall well-being. If you are struggling with this class, please visit me during office hours or contact me via email at brittany.whelan@emory.edu. If you are feeling overwhelmed and think you might benefit from additional support, please know that there are people who care and offices to support you at Emory. These services – including confidential resources – are provided by staff who are respectful of students’ diverse backgrounds. For an extensive list of well-being resources on campus, please see the “Get Support” page of the Campus Life site. And keep in mind that Emory offers free, 24/7 emotional, mental health, and medical support resources via TimelyCare.
Other Emory resources include:
Writing Center Tutoring
The Emory Writing Center (EWC) is available to support faculty, staff, and student writers on a range of academic, creative, and professional composition projects (such as research papers, speeches, personal statements, etc.). EWC tutors are trained to meet with writers of all levels, at any stage of the writing process, from brainstorming to final revisions. Tutors do not proofread or edit but instead share skills and resources through dialogue and inquiry; they guide writers to revise and edit their own work. EWC services are available in multiple languages, and several tutors are ELL Specialists trained to support English Language Learners. Please visit our website to learn more and make an appointment.
Participation (20%)
Includes annotation exercises, homework, workshop participation, and active listening. Be present in class, take notes, contribute to class discussions, ask questions in class/after class/over email. Throughout the semester, I will ask for your notebooks to help determine your participation grade. Remember to keep up with your notetaking!
Close Reading Midterm Paper (20%)
details tbd
Final Paper (30%)
Choose one chapter from Edward Ward’s The Secret History of Clubs (1709) and write a 1500-2000 word essay with at least three secondary sources on how the space of a club meeting acts in accordance with and against the place it is held. Pay attention to considerations such as the narrator’s relationship to the space/place; club members’ relationship to the space/place; presence of props (ie wooden babies) and/or introduction of other materials (ie a written speech); and what the rules of engagement are for the meeting. More details when we begin reading The Secret History of Clubs.
Class Map Project (20%)
We will be designing our own Digital Humanities site for 18th-century London based on your final papers. Following the submission of the essays, we will discuss everyone’s readings/insights and have a collective drafting discussion about how to organize the chosen chapters into our own version of a digital map. Following a decision, we will work on translating aspects of the final papers into design elements for the website. No previous website design experience is necessary in order to complete this project. Students who are interested in participating more in coding the infrastructure of the site are encouraged to express interest in exchange for extra credit. Otherwise, expectations for technical literacy will be accessible for those with little to no knowledge of digital design. More details after submission of the final paper.
Reflection Essay (10%)
We will conclude this course with a brief reflective essay—relevant to one of our course outcomes—in which you will consider how you might further develop a project you completed or might refine your writing process. To do so, you will analyze at least one major course project over three-to-four double spaced pages. While I will evaluate and grade this essay, it will also be shared with faculty members from the Emory Writing Program later in the year for purposes of programmatic assessment.
Date | Read | Prep |
~ AUGUST ~ | ||
Aug 26 Meet and Greetings! | No Readings | Reflect on past learning experiences. Be prepared to discuss your learning style, pos/neg classroom experiences with material, and your educational goals for your time at Emory (ie major/minor, professional interests, and campus organization interests). |
Aug 31 Reading Lenses + Reencounter
| The Norton Field Guide to Writing, “Reading in Academic Contexts” (pp. 11-28) The Norton Field Guide to Writing, “Developing Academic Habits of Mind” (pp. 41-50) “For Note Taking, Low-Tech Is Often Best” (5 min) “Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning” (6 min) “Common Note-taking Methods” (5 min)
| Print out an essay from your senior year of high school and read/annotate it strategically, critically, and rhetorically. Use different pen ink for each pass. Come to class with an unruled notebook and a writing utensil |
~ SEPTEMBER ~ | ||
Sept 2 Taste Testings + Critical Curiosity | Excerpt packet (selections tbd) |
Read/annotate strategically. Note questions and comments on the upcoming major readings. Please be especially attentive to what ideas of interest are emerging for you in the texts and anything that feels confusing right now. I will use your initial responses to the excerpts to better calibrate my preparation for when we read them later in class. |
Monday, September 7 – No Class, Labor Day | ||
Sept 9 Close Reading in Conversation + the Ideation “I” | Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, “Introduction” (pp. 1-20) J.B. Harley, “Deconstructing the Map” (pp. 1-15) | Notes for class discussion. Develop a mind map of close reading as discussed in the introduction with clusters for each of the main components. After defining them from the text, expand on the definitions. You may provide examples, add further description where you think it is needed, and/or offer analogies for each element. Annotate “Deconstructing the Map” |
Sept 14
Close Reading in Writing + Embodiment
| Eric Hayot, “The Uneven U” (59-73) Douglas Porteous, “Landscapes” (2-17) Joseph Addison, “No. 69 Saturday, May 19, 1711” (tbd) | Map potential connections between “The Uneven U” and “Introduction” to Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century. Be prepared to discuss where the two works align and depart from each other. Take notes on how Addison constructs and relates to his London environment. Map connections between “No. 69”, “Landscapes”, and at least one other reading from the term so far. |
Sept 16 Close Reading in Writing Continued | The Norton Field Guide to Writing, “Rhetorical Situations” (pp. 73-90) The Norton Field Guide to Writing, “Organizing Your Writing, Guiding Your Readers” (pp. 352-355) The Norton Field Guide to Writing, “Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing” (pp. 521-32) | Review your maps from the previous two classes and begin to draft an argument (can be loose, but intentional thoughts) about how your chosen sentence uniquely participates in discourses on narrative mapping. |
Sept 21
| N/A | In Class: Midterm Paper Intro Due: 500-word write-up of your mapping close reading Schedule a meeting with one other classmate to discuss your ideas for at least twenty-minutes. Record your conversation and submit the audio file before the start of class. As you write, return to your conversation for inspiration.
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Sept 23
| “Introduction” to Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy, Erin Manning (p. 5-12) The London Spy Selections |
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Sept 28
| The London Spy Selections |
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Sept 30
| The London Spy Selections |
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~ OCTOBER ~ | ||
Oct 5
| Hayot, tbd The Norton Field Guide to Writing, “Organizing Your Writing, Guiding Your Readers” (pp. 340-51)
| Come to class with a x-word draft for one-on-one workshopping |
Oct 7
| The Norton Field Guide to Writing, “Editing and Proofreading” (pp. 372-6) | Come to class with edited draft based on partner feedback, but no expansion |
Oct 12
| Odds and Ends formatting (selections from Norton tbd) | tbd |
Wednesday, October 14 – No Class, Fall Break
Friday, October 16th – Midterm DUE | ||
Oct 19
| Fantomina, Eliza Haywood (1720) | Devise an annotation key of at least three different ways of tracking how Fantomina navigates and relates to the spaces of the novella. Annotate at least four pages from the text according to this key.
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Oct 21
| Fantomina, Eliza Haywood (1720) |
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Oct 26
| Design and the Digital Humanities: A Handbook for Mutual Understanding, “Misunderstandings” (100-8); The Norton Field Guide to Writing, “Doing Research” (p. 473-520) Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles, and Politics, “Digital Humanities and the First-Year Writing Course” (97-109) “Multiliteracies in the Undergraduate Digital Humanities Curriculum: Skills, Principles, and Habits of Mind” (365-7; 373-6; 383-8)
| No prep Final Paper and Group Project Introduction |
Oct 28
| Secret History of Clubs, Ned Ward (“Dedication”, “Preface”, “Of Clubs in General”)1 | Notes on the audience and positionality. Why is Ward writing Secret History of Clubs? How is he establishing his credibility as a writer? What does he tell us to expect when we enter his various scenes?
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~ NOVEMBER ~ | ||
Nov 2
| Secret History of Clubs, Ned Ward (Chapter 2-10) | Notes, observations, comments. |
Nov 4
| Secret History of Clubs, Ned Ward (Chapter 11-9) | Notes, observations, comments. |
Nov 9
| Secret History of Clubs, Ned Ward (Chapter 20-7) | Notes, observations, comments. Fill out the sign-up sheet with the top three chapters you would be interested in writing about for the final.
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Nov 11
| The Norton Field Guide to Writing, “Doing Research” (p. 521-541)
| Come to class with three peer-reviewed articles and/or book chapters selected for your paper. Be prepared to speak to their relevance. |
Nov 16
| No readings | Come to class with roughly 500 words of your essay written.
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Nov 18
| No readings | Come to class with roughly 1000 words of your essay written. |
Monday, November 23 – No Class, Thanksgiving Break
11/23 DUE: Final Paper (1500-2000 words, 11:59pm)
Wednesday, November 25 – No Class, Thanksgiving Break | ||
Nov 30
| Watch “Intro to WordPress/ScholarBlogs” tutorial by ECDS Digital Publication Specialist Dr. Bailey Betik (45 min) | In-class workshop. Don’t forget your laptop! |
~ DECEMBER ~ | ||
Dec 2
| No readings | In-class workshop. Don’t forget your laptop! |
Dec 7
| No readings | In-class workshop. Don’t forget your laptop! |
FINAL EXAM: Complete revisions on your webpage AND submit your reflection essay by (final exam date provided by Emory)
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I take plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty seriously. Should I suspect that you engage in academic dishonesty in this course, I will refer the case to Emory’s Honor Council. You may also receive an F on the assignment(s) in question.
The Honor Code is in effect throughout the semester. By taking this course, you affirm that it is a violation of the code to cheat on exams, to plagiarize, to deviate from the teacher’s instructions about collaboration on work that is submitted for grades, to give false information to a faculty member, and to undertake any other form of academic misconduct. You agree that the instructor is entitled to move you to another seat during examinations, without explanation. You also affirm that if you witness others violating the code, you have a duty to report them to the honor council.
Please carefully review Appendix I: Crediting the Work of Ideas and Others: Use of Sources, as the Honor Code has recently been updated to include the following statement on Artificial Intelligence: “students should only use […] content [generated by Artificial Intelligence] in instances when the professor of the course has authorized it. Editing content generated through artificial intelligence programs is not considered to be work ‘written entirely in the words of the student’ and must, therefore, be cited.” There will be no case at any point during this semester where AI usage is allowed. If you implement any writing that lifts from a large language model like Chatgpt, one of two things will happen:
Late work
Ideally, all assignments are due by the time and date specified, but life also happens. I get it! I am more than happy to grant you an extension on an assignment if you need it due to an unforeseen illness/death/plumbing issue/extracurricular commitment/family crisis on the condition that you send me a draft of your assignment along with the request. How far you are in the draft will determine the maximum extension you can ask after. For example, if you need an extension on the final paper and email me at least twenty-four hours from the deadline with a draft three complete pages long attached, I will allow you to submit the essay three days late. The first three pages may undergo edits between when you send them to me as a draft versus a finished paper. The point of submitting them is to show me that you seek an extension in good faith.
Otherwise, I will not accept late work without granting advance permission via email. For each day an assignment is late, your grade for the assignment decreases by one letter for each class period the assignment is late. Most assignments are due by 11:59 pm. A paper counts as late if it is not submitted before I start my regular workday at 9:00am the day after.
Course Assessment
Several of the assignments have multiple components, including written reflections and presentations. I will provide detailed assignment sheets well in advance of due dates, and we will discuss all assignments in class. Please note that our schedule may change as the semester progresses. I will inform you of such changes in class and over email.
Explanation of Letter Grades
A: An excellent response to the assignment. Demonstrates a sophisticated use of rhetorical knowledge, writing, and design techniques.
B: A good response to the assignment. Demonstrates an effective use of rhetorical knowledge, writing, and design techniques. May have minor problems that distract the reader.
C: An average response to the assignment. Demonstrates acceptable use of rhetorical knowledge, writing, and design technique. May have problems that distract the reader.
D: A poor response to the assignment. Demonstrates a lack of rhetorical knowledge and writing and design technique. May have significant problems that distract the reader.
F: A failure to respond to the assignment appropriately.
Grading Scale
Percentage | Letter | Emory Quality Points |
93.00-100 | A | 4.0 |
90.00-92.99 | A- | 3.7 |
86.00-89.99 | B+ | 3.3 |
83.00-85.99 | B | 3.0 |
80.00-82.99 | B- | 2.7 |
76.00-79.99 | C+ | 2.3 |
73.00-75.99 | C | 2.0 |
70.00-72.99 | C- | 1.7 |
66.00-69.99 | D+ | 1.3 |
60.00-65.99 | D | 1.0 |
00.00-59.99 | F | 0.0 |
Attendance is essential. Aside from documented absences for school-related activities or religious holidays, you may miss THREE classes without incident. For every class you miss after that, your final grade will decrease one letter for each class period missed. So, for example, if you have a B+ in the course but have missed four classes, that B+ becomes a B. If you miss any class periods as a result of the Add/Drop/Swap period, you are responsible for completing all reading and writing assignments from that time. Meet with me if you feel you’re facing a situation that warrants an exception to the course attendance policy. Please bring any appropriate documentation to our meeting.
Inclement Weather Policy
Should the university close because of inclement weather, you should continue to do your reading, writing, and analysis according to the weekly course schedule. Unless I otherwise notify you, due dates for reading and writing assignments will remain unchanged in the case of short-term closures. In the event of a prolonged campus closure lasting more than two class sessions, we will pivot to hosting classes online via Zoom with the option of changing the meeting time to better accommodate energy levels.
Zoom Recording Policy
Lectures and other classroom presentations presented through video conferencing and other materials posted on our class site are for the sole purpose of educating the students enrolled in the course. The release of such information (including but not limited to directly sharing, screen capturing, or recording content) is strictly prohibited, unless the instructor states otherwise. Doing so without the permission of the instructor will be considered an Honor Code violation and may also be a violation of state or federal law, such as the Copyright Act. All University policies remain in effect for students participating in remote education.
Email is the best way to contact me if you have questions or concerns. Generally, I will respond to all student emails within 24 hours (although on weekends and holidays, it may take a little longer). Please use the following information when you send an email.
My Address: brittany.whelan@emory.edu
Subject Line: Last Name, ENGRD 101, Purpose (scheduling, assignment question, absence)
Likewise, there may be instances when I will need to contact you by email. It is your responsibility to check your Emory-based email account regularly on weekdays. If we are corresponding and you do not hear from me more than 48 hours after your initial email, please send a follow up email.