Davis, Elizabeth
MWF 3 :00 PM
Park Hall 149
Writing and Community will examine the concept of community, both within the classroom (i.e., a community of peers concerned with providing critique and support for each other’s writing), and outside of the academic classroom through exploration of the various communities in which we participate and the role of written communication in the development and maintenance of those communities.
Recent events have demonstrated quite clearly that “no one is an island.’” We must think of ourselves not only as individuals, but as members of various different communities that are integrally connected. Our individual actions have consequences for the health and well-being of all of those communities. At the same time, as a society we are re-evaluating our history and reckoning with our past and making decisions about the kind of communities we want to be[come]. In these rapidly changing and unsettling times, writing is vitally important as our primary means of communication, connection, and documentation of our human experience. Our aim in this course is to focus our attention on how the present and the past will, can, and should affect our attitudes about and understanding of community, and on the writing and rhetorical skills we need to develop as we move forward as a society.
We will be working with one of UGA’s Public Service and Outreach units, the Archway Partnership, this semester on a new initiative, Connected Resilient Communities. We will also continue working on an ongoing Writing and Community project in Hart County, Georgia (an Archway Partnership community).
Students in the course will produce a final portfolio of writing throughout a process of drafting, review, and revision. Projects we will work on for this portfolio will include individual writing projects and contributions to collaborative work on the community engagement projects.