124: Writing & Literature

124: Academic Writing and Literature

Course Description

This class is about writing and academic inquiry, with a special emphasis on literature. Good arguments stem from good questions, and academic essays allow writers to write their way toward answers, toward figuring out what they think. In this writing-intensive course, students focus on the creation of complex, analytic, well-supported arguments addressing questions that matter in academic contexts. The course also hones students’ critical thinking and reading skills. Working closely with their peers and the instructor, students develop their essays through workshops and extensive revision and editing. Readings cover a variety of genres and often serve as models or prompts for assigned essays; the specific questions students pursue in essays are guided by their own interests.

The Specific Goals of English 125 and English 124

In the English Department Writing Program, our overall learning goals for students in English 125 (Writing and Academic Inquiry) and English 124 (Academic Writing and Literature) are as follows:

1. To cultivate practices of inquiry and empathy that enable us to ask genuine questions, engage thoughtfully and rigorously with a wide range of perspectives, and create complex, analytic, well-supported arguments that matter in academic contexts and beyond. 
   
2. To read, summarize, analyze, and synthesize complex texts purposefully in order to generate and support writing.
3. To analyze the genres and rhetorical strategies that writers use to address particular audiences for various purposes and in various contexts.
4. To develop flexible strategies for revising, editing, and proofreading writing of varying lengths.
5. To develop strategies for self-assessment, goal-setting, and reflection on the process of writing.