Winter Intersession 2020 Course Descriptions

2120.025: Intermediate Composition: Real World

Online
Julie Shigekuni, jshig@unm.edu

Life confronts us with a series of mysteries: The simplest daily goals—such as, what do I want and how do I go about getting what I want?—are fraught with complications, sometimes related to our objectives, sometimes not; yet what we are looking for determines the path we choose to take. The subject of this course is your world. What does it look like? What are the layers of your reality? In this weeklong intensive course, we will focus on inquiry and methods of investigation—from the rhetorical to the creative. You will act as an investigator and a reporter, utilizing research and evidence to clarify and present your world to an audience. The primary text for this weeklong intensive intersession, Natsuo Kirino's Real World, is available at the UNM Bookstore and on Amazon. Buy it ahead, read it, and be prepared to dive in on the first day of class!

2210.030: Professional & Technical Communication

Online
Rachael Reynolds, reynoldsr@unm.edu 

This course focuses on how to write and design the kinds of documents that are typically used in the professional workplace. The assignments for this class require students to create documents that are based on the needs of their readers. To create these documents, students will consider the type of research to conduct as well as the appropriate structure, writing style, and page layout to use. Assignments include creating professional letters, memos, instructions, proposals, and analytical reports. Assignments focus on: composing documents for workplace situations that relate to students’ professional interests, with an emphasis on elements of design; ethical considerations related to communication in the workplace; writing for multi-cultural and international audiences; working with a team of writers; using technology English 2210 focuses on analyzing rhetorical situations and responding with appropriate genres and technologies. You will be writing for workplace situations, using both text and visual design to convey your messages.

This class meets New Mexico Lower-Division General Education Common Core Curriculum Area I: Communications (NMCCN 1113). (EPW). 

315.010: The Harlem Renaissance

Online
Finnie Coleman, coleman@unm.edu

In this course we will review the first two centuries of African American literature (1746–1940) with an eye toward better understanding Black identity development and what it meant to be a Black American from the earliest days of the “American” republic through the Harlem Renaissance. With an eye trained on historical context, we will read the works of both “major” and “minor” writers from the first three distinct periods in African American literary history. We will begin with what editors of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature designate as “The Literature of Slavery and Freedom (1746–1865),” move on to “Literature of the Reconstruction to the Negro Renaissance (1865–1919),” and finish with “Harlem Renaissance (1919–1940).” We must keep in mind that bracketing histories of literature, art, and culture chronologically is often fraught with inconsistencies and paradoxes. As we will discover, “Periodizations” of African American Literature do not escape these inconsistencies and paradoxes; the periods adopted by Norton are not “universal” and may be contested. Along the way we will discuss rhetorical strategies and storytelling so important to Black writers in antebellum America; try to gain a better understanding of performance traditions and cultural nationalism that matured during the half century following Emancipation; and familiarize ourselves with the visual arts and the genesis of Jazz and Blues music that undergirded the Harlem Renaissance. We will close the course with a look at how the Harlem Renaissance set the stage for the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the coterminous rise of Hip Hop Culture. Throughout the course we will pay close attention to “Black Identity” development and the “healthy antinomianism” that has been present in this body of literature from its beginnings.

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