WRITING 1340: READING, WRITING, AND THINKING ABOUT BIG IDEAS
Course Description
WRIT 1340 is designed to help PSSP students build foundational academic literacy skills essential for success in college. Through a four-week curriculum, students engage in reading, writing, researching, and speaking activities that enable them to practice strategies such as rhetorical analysis, expository writing, and oral presentation, as well as learn about and reflect on the ways that digital tools and resources, like GenAI, can help or disrupt learning. Students participate in small seminar-style classes, one-on-one conferences with instructors, and weekly writing studios to explore big ideas that encourage personal reflection on the transition to university life. The course culminates in a writing assessment to guide future writing support and FWS placement.
We will offer several sections of WRIT 1340, each with a different course topic. Here are this year’s options:
- Community Identities (Adams) As social beings, humans participate in a variety of communities that shape the way we experience belonging. Including and beyond geography, what kinds of communities give meaning to our lives? How does our sense of communal connection influence the way we self-identify? What role does writing have in formulating our understanding of community? This class will explore various iterations of communities and the impacts they have on our lives.
- Food for thought (Carrick) How does the food on your table tell a story about you, your family, your community, your nation? How do we make food choices, and how are these choices complicated by the cultural, socio-economic, and political forces that both create and combat widespread international hunger and food insecurity?
- Civil Disobedience (Lavis) Hannah Arendt’s scorching response to Henry Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience raises questions that remain important today: what is our responsibility to protest injustices and how should we voice our dissent? This class explores these questions, their history, and their context.
- Theories of Happiness (Sands) What makes you happy? And how does happiness differ between different people? How do complex factors like genetics, culture, family, education, socio-economic background, and gender determine how happy we are, and how do our life choices contribute to our own and others’ happiness?
- Writing About Place (Sorrell) How do our own experiences shape the stories we tell about the places where we live? By reading about different ways people make meaning through place, we will work to better understand how social and environmental issues shape our own homes and communities.
- Metaphor in Art, Science and Culture (Zukovic) Metaphor is the essence of human creativity—a form of thought, desire and the language of the unconscious mind. How does metaphor operate in literature, pop culture, politics, and the thought of theoretical scientists such as Einstein and Richard Feynman? Can we improve our capacity to think metaphorically?
WRIT 1340 class sessions will be held twice a week (Tuesday and Thursdays from 8:30am – 10:30am or Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30pm – 2:30). Students will also be required to participate in Thursday afternoon Writing Studios from 2:45pm to 4:45pm and weekly one-on-one writing conferences with their instructor. (2 credits, letter grade)
ENROLLMENT DETAILS
If WRIT 1340 is assigned by a College Associate, PSSP students will be invited to submit a WRIT 1340 Course Selection Ballot. Students will have the opportunity to review the list of section topics and rank their top 3 preferences.