Welcome to 2150! This is the second of a two-course sequence in the Pathways Required Core designed to equip you with critical thinking and analytical writing skills. The guiding focus of our work will be to read and write with consideration for the realms of public and private in writing—how does one write when the audience is ostensibly tiny (as in a private letter, for instance) versus for a massive global audience (as in a pop star memoir film)? How can one zone of public or private mimic the other and how can the conventions of one serve the other? We will consider many genres of public and private writing, from letters to emails to newspaper articles to memoirs to film, and ask ourselves what particular rhetorical situation each piece was written for, who we imagine the intended audience was, and how questions of public and private may have contributed to the outcome. We will also read secondary sources about audience, genre, issues of publicity and privacy in writing.

Readings will come from a wide range of times, places, and situations. The different contexts of each assigned reading will bring to light a range of rhetorical choices, and by considering these, you will expand your ability to summarize, analyze, argue, research, and think critically. You will write your own rhetorical analysis, interview, research essay, and create your own multimedia remix of your research.

The main work of the course is to deepen your thinking and writing, and to learn revise your work effectively. Writing will be viewed as a process, so drafts will be submitted and worked on before each final essay is submitted.