WRTG 3020 Topics in Writing: Sports/American Culture
Instructor Contact
Dr. Peter Kratzke
About This Course
This section of WRTG 3020, titled “Sports in American Culture,” attends very carefully to the merger of critical thinking and literacy underlying one, all-encompassing genre: formal argumentation. By doing so, the course’s overall aim centers on what is known in the field of Rhetoric/Composition as “transfer” (or “transference”), which means that you be able to take what you learn and then adjust to, and succeed in, any writing occasion that you encounter along life’s path. The world of sports provides a ready example of this goal, for it is a place where one sometimes finds athletes who are good in a variety of sports: give such people a ball (as it were), and they can do what needs doing. Similarly, this course is designed so that you achieve the best kind of “jack-of-all-trades” competency, whether writing a successful cover letter one moment, a poem the next, or a stock analysis the next.
Prerequisites
See your advisor regarding CU’s lower-division writing requirement.
Objectives
By the end of this course, you should be able to formulate and pursue formal argumentation given whatever occasion. Rhetorical tactics, logic, bibliographic practice, and precise language: each aspect of writing well will play its part in your meeting this objective.
Required Texts
The course has no required textbooks, but you shall need (1) a good printer and (2) full access to Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader.
Units and Grading
The course is composed of four units. The first unit is a “learning to write” progression of shorter assignments, the whole of which emphasizing a rigorous sense of craft. The second unit centers on the first of the course’s three major writing assignments and explores categories (“creating a box,” such may be called in an image). Through it, you will apply the information from Unit One. The third unit moves to contextual analysis (“creating a box and putting something in it,” to continue the image). You will thus move to a more dynamic practice of ideas in action. Finally, the fourth unit culminates the course in the time-honored social goal of argumentation (“creating a box, putting something in it, and judging the whole,” to conclude the image).
Academic Citizenship: (1) Canvas Discussions, (2) preliminary work (quality and punctuality), and (3) workshops. See penalties for excessive tardiness, below. In all: 10%
Unit 2: 30%
Unit 3: 30%
Unit 4: 30%