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WRITING 201

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Writing with Digital and Social Media Mini-Courses

Credits: 1 | May be elected 3 times for credit | May be elected more than once in the same term

In WRITING 201, students analyze and apply rhetorical principles in their writing with digital media. A variety of topics and innovation in pedagogy are hallmarks of this course. Why pay attention to multimedia in a writing course? As members of a media-saturated culture, we know that print text is only one form of "writing" and communication, and sometimes it is not the most effective choice. Because all of us make sense of texts and issues in a variety of ways, this course will ask students to utilize multimodal (visual, aural, kinetic, etc.) forms of communication and become more informed and critical consumers of digital media writing themselves.

WRITING 201 - LSA COURSE GUIDE LINK

Writing 201.001 - The Rhetoric of Online Cute

Cats wearing knitted hats, shiny-eyed dogs looking for their furever homes, polymer clay mushrooms, toddlers acting like adults, fuzzy stop-motion creatures cooking tiny foods, baby animals that may or may not exist IRL, Barbies who swear, and long Furby…what does it all MEAN? What makes any of these online phenomena "just cute," and what makes them cursed? What makes cute content innocuous, and what makes it manipulative? And what kind of cute makes you feel a little gross for liking it? What IS that gross feeling all about, anyway? If you've ever wondered about any such question, and if you want to practice harnessing the rhetorical power of cuteness for your own purposes, take this class! 

In this class, we will read and write and make with a skeptical eye toward the familiar idea of cuteness as silly or benign. Cuteness is everywhere online, deployed with all sorts of complicated rhetorical aims. In other words: plenty of people are betting on the power of cute content to do more than just warm hearts. We'll spend time in and outside of class critiquing cute content, reading affective and rhetorical theories of cuteness, making our own cute content, and writing about it all. 

Writing 201.002 - Tell Me What To Do: The Rhetoric of the Online Advice Column

When people anonymously seek guidance from an advice columnist, or a forum like reddit’s r/AmITheAsshole, they are often seeking solace, sympathy, practical suggestions, and, whether they like it or not, moral judgment. A peek at the pleas for help on daily columns like Dear Prudence, Ask a Manager, and Carolyn Hax reveals resonant cultural crises of our times, just as newspaper columns like Dear Abby and Victorian conduct guides did in years past. In this mini-course, we will explore how advice columns reveal fascinating implications about the norms of etiquette, relationships, self-perception, and how we “should” go about something. In other words, we will explore ideological and rhetorical nuances of “online advice.” Assignments will move between analysis and more creative prompts. Analyses will dissect the rhetorical strategies and social norms in real advice columns. The creative prompts include imagining fictional characters’ dilemmas and crafting emotionally charged queries in the voice of a specific columnist, and writing satirical “anti-advice” that subverts conventional wisdom.

Writing 201.003 - Activism, Organizing, and Community Building in Online Spaces

The revolution may not be televised, but it may end up on TikTok. This three credit hour class will introduce students to the tools of online advocacy and provide opportunities to experiment with designing their own advocacy campaigns through content creation in a highly production-oriented environment.

This class invites students of all experience levels with digital media and content creation to make and experiment alongside each other as we encounter how writing mediates capacities for change and connection online. Students in this class will explore online communities and their impacts, develop research skills to help generate knowledge about online advocacy and interpret analytics of impacts of advocacy-related content, and develop advocacy and community-building projects of their own throughout the semester.

Together, we will understand how platforms structure the kinds of engagement and content we can more readily produce, engage questions of online safety and surveillance, and explore tactics for adapting to ever-shifting social landscapes online with rhetorical awareness.

Writing 201.005 - The Netflix Edit: Rhetoric at the Edge of the Real

This mini-course examines “the Netflix edit” not simply as a storytelling style, but as a contextual rhetorical practice that shows how digital platforms shape our sense of reality. Focusing on Netflix reality television (e.g., Love Is Blind, Perfect Match, and The Ultimatum: Queer Love), the course analyzes how editing constructs narrative through cuts, pacing, music, sequencing, and strategic pauses between batch releases.

Students will explore how these editorial choices do more than produce “heroes” and “villains”: they guide audience emotion, invite speculation, and shape online discourse as episodes circulate across social media. The course asks what it means to literally edit reality in the streaming era, examining how narrative control, platform design, and viewer participation work together to produce meaning.

In addition to analyzing editing and release strategies as persuasive rhetorical choices, students will study fan commentary and online engagement to understand how meaning emerges through collective interpretation. The course emphasizes writing and composing within these digital genres, attending to their specific conventions, rhetorical moves, and timeliness. 
Students will be expected to have an active Netflix account to watch selected episodes in preparation for class.

Writing 201.006 - Press Any Button to Continue: Playful Writing of Games Across Modalities

Video games, board games, table top games, sports, and more all involve the mediation of playful activities through writing game design choices. In this course, students will engage with questions of how we compose play, but also how we can compose playfully. 

Students will design games or sports of their own making across a wide array of modalities, playtest and workshop their creations, and seek to be playful but intentional designers and writers.

This class is not a coding or animation class. As such, this class offers opportunities for both people who are looking to grow their digital development or game design experience and those who are looking to experiment with these modes of composing for the first time.

Sweetland Center for Writing
105 S. State Street
1310 North Quad
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
734.764.0429
734.763.9148
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