Description
In English 570 (“Strategies in Composition”), students will examines strategies in composition for community engagement, especially with respect to the ways writing might help bridge the seemingly insurmountable gap between universities and the communities in which they are situated (the “town”/”gown” dichotomy). Together, we will consider questions like the following: How have everyday people used writing to make a difference in their local communities? How do/can ordinary people “go public”? How do/can college students go public, and how can educators best support them? We will cover issues in community literacy studies, featuring historical examples of ordinary people garnering rhetorical agency across local publics and contemporary examples of civic engagement both within and beyond the college writing classroom.

Location: online
Dates: January 30-May 9, 2014

Instructor: Shannon Carter (Shannon.Carter@tamuc.edu

Required Texts: Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics (Long 2008),
Writing and Community Engagement (Deans et. al., 2010) Writing Democracy, special
issue of Community Literacy Journal (Carter and Mutnick, Eds, Fall 2012), Cedar
Crossing (Busby 2013).