Academic Writing: How to Build Utopia

WRI 10203, fall 2020

TF 2:00-3:20

Instructor: Dr. Jean E. Graham

Office hours: R 10:30-12:00 and 3:00-4:30. See Canvas.

Email address: graham@tcnj.edu

Course Description: Academic Writing offers students a foundation of strong writing skills that they will take with them into writing intensive courses, most in their majors. This section will focus on examples of utopian literature–with some examples of utopia gone wrong (that is, dystopia).

Course Goals:

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Understand each act of writing as an act of communication in a specific genre, for a specific audience, with a specific purpose.
• Collect, analyze, interpret, and present information effectively and ethically.
• Use a variety of reasoning strategies, including definition, causation, analogy, deduction, and induction, while avoiding logical fallacies.
• Write rhetorically effective and well-structured arguments with clear thesis statements which accurately forecast the paper.
• Construct writing processes suitable to your learning style.
• Revise all aspects of an argument from its organization and logic to its paragraph unity and coherence.
• Edit and proofread your writing so that it conforms to Standard Written English.
• Use skillfully the conventions of academic writing.
• Interpret and apply the feedback you receive on your writing in a conscientious way.
• Offer tactful and productive feedback to others on their written arguments.

Required Texts (available through TCNJ’s bookstore):

Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. Everything’s an Argument, 8th edition

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia.

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

See Canvas for the complete syllabus.