Writing and Rhetoric (WR)

This is a zero credit, bi-weekly studio class for students enrolled in an individualized WR Tutorial courses, WR 12200 or WR 12300 (instructor approval required and Concurrent enrollment in either WR 12300 or 12200).

This course is an elective supplement to the three-credit Writing and Rhetoric or University Seminar course for first-year students. In this course, students will learn to make the most of the feedback they've received on their writing thus far. Specifically, they will synthesize feedback, identify objectives for growth, and develop a rigorous approach to planning, drafting, and revising essays.

Students in this course will practice higher-level thinking and writing strategies required for success in foundational undergraduate courses in the liberal arts and social sciences. The course involves individual and small group instruction sessions, scheduled per instructor and student mutual availability. Students will learn reading and writing strategies for summary, synthesis, and critical analysis of text, and they will produce a final portfolio of revised writing pieces. Enrollment by departmental approval only.

Students enrolled in Critical Reading and Writing in the Disciplines will have completed or be concurrently enrolled in WR 13100, 13200, or 13300. WR 12200 helps students apply rigorous reading and writing strategies in the context of challenging courses across the disciplines. Consisting of two weekly one-on-one sessions and one weekly small-group instruction session, this course offers intensive practice analyzing disciplinary readings and writing assignments. Students will receive individual instruction on how to apply professors' feedback, and they will learn ethical practices for citation and collaboration. Enrollment by departmental approval.

Students in this course will examine the ways that scholars think in disciplines where they are taking writing-intensive courses. They will cultivate these same habits of mind, learning to think, read, and write like scholars in a particular discipline. Finally, they will learn practices of revision as a way to focus and deepen their own writing, reflecting on and growing from the feedback they receive from course professors.

In this course, students will learn and practice strategies for rigorous critical thinking and for planning and drafting essays in the context of the first-year Notre Dame curriculum. This course is designed for multi-lingual students who are transitioning to practicing English full-time in academic settings, and it will involve individual and small group instruction sessions, formal midterm and final assessments, and weekly writing exercise and presentations designed to build skill at every step of the writing process.

Students enrolled in WR 12300 will have completed or be concurrently enrolled in Writing and Rhetoric 13100, 13200, or 13300. This course will offer strategies for successful written and verbal communication in the English academic context. Students will learn critical thinking practices, developing their capacity for thinking like a scholar in the context of different disciplines. Consisting of one weekly one-on-one instruction session and one weekly guided small-group session, this course helps students to develop an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses and to realize their potential as academic writers. Enrollment by departmental approval.

Students in this course will learn strategies for meeting the expectations of academic audiences beyond first-year undergraduate courses. They will learn to isolate and address problem areas in their writing process, to independently plan and manage their process, and to challenge themselves to grow to the next level as writers.

Writing and Rhetoric introduces students to the study and composition of ethical arguments. Engaging with a variety of rhetorical situations and genres, students will make claims supported by evidence, consider counterarguments, and conduct research. Special attention is devoted to the collaborative, social, and iterative aspects of the writing process, as students exchange feedback with their peers and subsequently revise their work. Students will also reflect on their development as writers and critical thinkers.

These sections of Writing and Rhetoric place students in learning situations that engage with the local community, often in off-campus activities. Each section focuses on a particular social issue and its attendant discourse, with related writing assignments and community work. Students learn to craft effective arguments and pursue academic research. Some sections also carry the SUS4 designation, counting the course toward the Minor in Sustainability. We welcome all students with an interest in community engagement and a commitment to social justice.

Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric focuses on ethical, rhetorical, and practical dimensions of composing across modalities. Students explore ways image, sound, language, and design help writers achieve rhetorical goals in specific contexts and with specific audiences. Students read, analyze, research, and create a variety of multimodal texts including such genres as podcasts, videos, presentations, posters, fine art, and print-based essays. Prior technological skills are not necessary, but students should be open to experimenting with tools for multimodal composing and revising.

Do you wish, sometimes, you could just put your phone away? Do you want the chance to think for yourself, without feeling compelled to turn to Chat? Would you like to take your life back? This course can help. In this writing-intensive course, we will recapture our time, thoughts, and very being by writing through a series of experiences on campus, from walks around the lakes to dedicated reflection in the Basilica to meditative practices in the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. The majority of the reading and writing for the class will take place during class-time itself, and will offer strategies and practices for reading and writing that you can hold onto in any walk of life. Topics in the course will include writing and reading to learn, experiential writing, communal practices of reading and writing, and methods for resisting the technological attention economy.

What does writing look like in the age of generative AI? What does it mean to communicate with others, or to seek to persuade others, or to write for the sake of learning about a topic (or about oneself) at a time when generative AI has radically shifted the very sense of our educational, professional, and personal lives? These are the questions that will guide our work in this course, as we will experiment with generative AI to gain a deeper, clearer understanding of its impact on writing and our writerly identities. We will examine the role of AI during various parts of the writing process and in various genres and modes of writing in order to better assess, on the one hand, where generative AI can develop our thinking and writing in useful (and perhaps even astonishing) ways, and, on the other hand, where it requires us to think critically and ethically about its impacts on our own learning and ways of being.

What does writing look like in the age of generative AI? What does it mean to communicate with others, or to seek to persuade others, or to write for the sake of learning about a topic (or about oneself) at a time when generative AI has radically shifted the very sense of our educational, professional, and personal lives? These are the questions that will guide our work in this course, as we will experiment with generative AI to gain a deeper, clearer understanding of its impact on writing and our writerly identities. We will examine the role of AI during various parts of the writing process and in various genres and modes of writing in order to better assess, on the one hand, where generative AI can develop our thinking and writing in useful (and perhaps even astonishing) ways, and, on the other hand, where it requires us to think critically and ethically about its impacts on our own learning and ways of being.

Do you love the nuts and bolts of writing? Are you the kind of reader who can sense when something is off in a sentence and knows how to fix it, but struggles to explain why the fix works? This course will develop the metalinguistic knowledge you need to discuss sentence-level choices clearly and confidently, whether you are an advanced writer, a writing tutor, or a graduate instructor. The focus is not on correcting errors but on understanding how sentences work, so you can help other writers understand it too. This is not a remedial grammar course.

Research in writing pedagogy is a serious scholarly endeavor, and this course treats it that way. Open to writing center tutors, graduate instructors, and anyone with a deep interest in how writing is taught and learned, the course invites students to explore core scholarship, learn research methods appropriate to writing studies, and contribute to mentored research or assessment projects under faculty supervision. The course culminates in a scholarly artifact, such as a conference proposal, research poster, assessment report, or critical analysis, suitable for presentation or publication.