Can music education and youth instrumental ensembles fortify democracy? How? In this community-engaged course, students will work with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra OrchKids Program, an in-school and after-school music program that “provides Baltimore youth with equitable access to community-based, high-quality music instruction and programming that teaches musical and social skills transferable to all areas of their lives.” Along the way, students will write individually and collaboratively to pursue big questions connected to preK-12 education. For instance, we’ll explore how music-making affects kids developmentally; we’ll analyze the cultural contradiction of music as a defining feature of everyday life (ABCs, grocery stores, ringtones) at the same time that it is a precariously funded, extracurricular subject. Authors ranging from Danielle Allen to Leon Botstein will inform our inquiry. Students will write in a range of genres with varying audiences, including close textual analysis and argument; field notes and reflections; op-eds and other forms of persuasive appeal; presentations; and creative nonfiction. Throughout, we will discuss and rehearse writing as an intellectual, social, and always emerging practice. No musical background is needed; all are welcome. Many thanks to the Center for Social Concern for its support of this project.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Brodsky, Anne-Elizabeth Murdy
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Current CDC data states, that Black women are “three to four times more likely to die during or after delivery than are white women.” In this first-year writing course, we will explore Black women’s historical and contemporary birth narratives to question how their history of enslavement, and medical racism continues to inform their birthing realities. Through course readings, discussions, and workshops we will question the varied ways the delegitimization of Black midwives, Black women’s community practices, and contemporary advocates for reproductive and birthing justice, have impacted Black women’s care within and outside of medical institutions. Students will write in a range of genres including personal narratives and/or auto ethnographies, which will allow students to follow a course of inquiry that will lead them to a point of interest to compose a traditional academic paper or a multimodal composition as their final project. Students will support their research questions by using credible sources such as narratives, scholarly articles, and reputed journalism. Potential texts include excerpts by Harriet Jacobs, Margaret Charles Smith, Assata Shakur, Tressie Cottom, Nikky Finney, Beyonce, and reproductive justice advocate, Loretta Ross.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Wright, Lisa E.
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this process-based composition course, we will write in a variety of genres for a number of audiences while exploring what it means to move among and through the multiple literacies in our lives. We will read texts which examine the ways that our literacies shape our experience in the world and the ways that we are shaped by our language. We will examine these ideas in both U.S. and international contexts. In addition, we will explore scholarly works on writing theory as it applies to our own writing and language identities. Writing assignments will include literacy narratives, documented essays, reflections, and reading responses. We will engage in frequent peer review activities striving to become excellent readers of others' work.

• Days/Times: MWF 9:00AM - 9:50AM
• Instructor: Vinyard, Deirdre Will
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

What arguments about vaccination are circulating in the public sphere today? As public health officials and medical providers seek to encourage vaccination, what kinds of appeals are likely to succeed, and which are likely to fall flat—or even backfire? Why and how do discussions of vaccination evoke such strong feelings? In this course, we will collectively explore these questions, drawing on tools from the field of rhetoric. As you examine the audience, purpose, context, and style of texts concerning vaccination, you will derive strategies you can apply to your own writing, and practice communicating about science to diverse audiences.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Wilbanks, Rebecca
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Playing chess, writing novels, making art—as headlines claim almost daily, whatever humans used to be good at, A.I. can now do better. To what extent can human labor and creativity be automated, and where will that leave us? How have people thought about these questions in the past and how are they thinking about them today? Why bother learning to write if text generators can do it for us? This course asks students to imagine a world in which A.I. makes writing courses obsolete. By producing argumentative essays, policy memos, and group projects, students will develop skills in critical thinking and communicating in different genres as they explore the effects of A.I. not just in theory but in practice. Across all assignments, students will experiment with using text-generators like TPG-3 to do their writing for them.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Lewis, Alex
• Room: Bloomberg 178
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

What does it mean to be a person? This question is increasingly pressing in debates about the status and rights of nonhumans, ranging from animals to corporations to AI to rivers and forests. We will explore these debates and how they relate to each other. What is the significance of personhood when understood to include such diverse nonhumans, and does a broader understanding of its meaning destabilize human exceptionalism or reaffirm it? To what extent might personhood engender equality, kinship, or perceived likeness across humans and nonhumans and, if so, with what implications? Writing will be at the heart of our class. Across a series of writing assignments, we will study and write in the genres that we discover within these debates, including scholarly arguments, personal reflection, legal definitions, and works of advocacy. Throughout the course, we will explore connections between writing and personhood.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: O'Connor, Marisa T
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

What does it mean to be a person? This question is increasingly pressing in debates about the status and rights of nonhumans, ranging from animals to corporations to AI to rivers and forests. We will explore these debates and how they relate to each other. What is the significance of personhood when understood to include such diverse nonhumans, and does a broader understanding of its meaning destabilize human exceptionalism or reaffirm it? To what extent might personhood engender equality, kinship, or perceived likeness across humans and nonhumans and, if so, with what implications? Writing will be at the heart of our class. Across a series of writing assignments, we will study and write in the genres that we discover within these debates, including scholarly arguments, personal reflection, legal definitions, and works of advocacy. Throughout the course, we will explore connections between writing and personhood.

• Days/Times: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: O'Connor, Marisa T
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Animals are instructive. When we study animals, their biological makeups and creaturely habits, we do so with hopes of learning something about them. At the same time, such investigations often betray an interest in our human selves. The study of animals, in scientific and literary laboratories alike, quickly turns to acts of self-discovery: not what it means to be animal, exactly, but what it means to be human-animals. So what more could we learn by cultivating new strategies for listening and new languages for communicating with and about animals? Over the course of the semester, we will examine and respond to the rhetorical settings of works (premodern and modern, fictional and factual) in which animals are tasked with teaching lessons and testing the ethical obligations of their human audiences. We will approach composition as both a personal and a social project. We will concentrate on the personal aspects of writing--including expression, habit, transfer--as well as the social aspects of writing--including exploration, persuasion, and convention.

• Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Russell, Arthur J
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Animals are instructive. When we study animals, their biological makeups and creaturely habits, we do so with hopes of learning something about them. At the same time, such investigations often betray an interest in our human selves. The study of animals, in scientific and literary laboratories alike, quickly turns to acts of self-discovery: not what it means to be animal, exactly, but what it means to be human-animals. So what more could we learn by cultivating new strategies for listening and new languages for communicating with and about animals? Over the course of the semester, we will examine and respond to the rhetorical settings of works (premodern and modern, fictional and factual) in which animals are tasked with teaching lessons and testing the ethical obligations of their human audiences. We will approach composition as both a personal and a social project. We will concentrate on the personal aspects of writing--including expression, habit, transfer--as well as the social aspects of writing--including exploration, persuasion, and convention.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Russell, Arthur J
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

What do you love? Do you love your family? Your friends? Do you love hiking in the mountains, the music of Mozart, the idea of justice? We use the word “love” in all these contexts and more, but a satisfactory, shared understanding of the term is elusive. Philosophers have disagreed about its meaning for thousands of years. What is clear is that love plays a significant role in our lives. In this course, we will consider various philosophical accounts of love, and see how they measure up to our experience and other representations of love. We will explore the concept through writing; students can expect a variety of writing assignments, including academic essays, opinion pieces, and collaborative design projects. These assignments will provide the structure for us to analyze different genres of writing, and to reflect on communicating with various audiences, all while exploring the perplexing human phenomenon, love.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Koullas, Sandy Gillian
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

What do you love? Do you love your family? Your friends? Do you love hiking in the mountains, the music of Mozart, the idea of justice? We use the word “love” in all these contexts and more, but a satisfactory, shared understanding of the term is elusive. Philosophers have disagreed about its meaning for thousands of years. What is clear is that love plays a significant role in our lives. In this course, we will consider various philosophical accounts of love, and see how they measure up to our experience and other representations of love. We will explore the concept through writing; students can expect a variety of writing assignments, including academic essays, opinion pieces, and collaborative design projects. These assignments will provide the structure for us to analyze different genres of writing, and to reflect on communicating with various audiences, all while exploring the perplexing human phenomenon, love.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Koullas, Sandy Gillian
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Undergraduates at Hopkins often bemoan what they call the “Hopkins Bubble”—an invisible boundary that separates life on campus from the “real” world. Such sentiments, however, run counter to Hopkins’ mission to produce “knowledge for the world” and its appeals for students to think of Baltimore as an “extension of campus.” Through critical reading and personal reflection, students will probe their experiences of campus life and Baltimore. They will employ writing as a process of inquiry, which enables them to engage in the thoughts and work of others. Students will analyze and respond to a variety of texts: from public signage, social media posts, and other messages that they encounter on a daily basis, to formal publications and scholarly arguments. Students will practice writing in these diverse genres as they interrogate the boundaries between the Homewood campus and Baltimore city. Through writing, students will investigate an aspect of the historical, economic, and political relationships between Baltimore and Hopkins that might contribute to or call into question the notion of a Hopkins Bubble. We will also consider the ways that practice of writing itself asks us to think critically about how we imagine, enact, and engage with community, and therefore informs our work to trouble the Hopkins Bubble.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Speller, Mo Elsmere Longley
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Undergraduates at Hopkins often bemoan what they call the “Hopkins Bubble”—an invisible boundary that separates life on campus from the “real” world. Such sentiments, however, run counter to Hopkins’ mission to produce “knowledge for the world” and its appeals for students to think of Baltimore as an “extension of campus.” Through critical reading and personal reflection, students will probe their experiences of campus life and Baltimore. They will employ writing as a process of inquiry, which enables them to engage in the thoughts and work of others. Students will analyze and respond to a variety of texts: from public signage, social media posts, and other messages that they encounter on a daily basis, to formal publications and scholarly arguments. Students will practice writing in these diverse genres as they interrogate the boundaries between the Homewood campus and Baltimore city. Through writing, students will investigate an aspect of the historical, economic, and political relationships between Baltimore and Hopkins that might contribute to or call into question the notion of a Hopkins Bubble. We will also consider the ways that practice of writing itself asks us to think critically about how we imagine, enact, and engage with community, and therefore informs our work to trouble the Hopkins Bubble.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Speller, Mo Elsmere Longley
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In a 2012 interview with the New York Times, American critic M.H. Abrams was asked, “Why study literature?” Abrams answered, because “it enables you to live the lives of other people.” But how does a master of short stories open a window to his or her characters’ thoughts and feelings? How does the writer, as Abrams suggests, draw us into other lives? In this class, students will explore these questions through their own writings across different modes and styles. Writing projects will range from evaluating another critic’s interpretation of how a story brings its characters to life to writing your own autobiographical narrative. Our readings will feature the work of some of the masters of contemporary American short stories including Joyce Carol Oates, Gish Jen, Richard Ford, Denis Johnson, Jennifer Egan, ZZ Packer, James Salter, George Saunders, Lorrie Moore, Edward P. Jones, David Foster Wallace, and Lydia Davis.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Berger, Donald W
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this first-year seminar, students will be asked to examine and record how their thoughts, beliefs, and impressions of the world are informed by various forms of visual representation. As in other writing-intensive courses, we’ll compose a variety of written works for a range of potential audiences, and we'll focus our time and attention on the creation and reception of art—including film, painting, sculpture, dance, performance art, architecture, and emerging artistic media—and will investigate the various ways that writers have critically, creatively, and analytically approached art, artists, and art-making practices. We’ll pay particular attention to the way that art and culture intersect, and investigate various elements of visual culture. The course will include visits to local art institutions and museums, reading and writing analysis and criticism, including popular reviews, hybrid forms of prose, ekphrastic pieces, and more formal academic criticism. Together, we'll attempt to test John Berger's claim that "the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled" while looking closely at and responding to images from the fine arts, advertisements, and social media.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Brown, Nate A
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this first-year seminar, students will be asked to examine and record how their thoughts, beliefs, and impressions of the world are informed by various forms of visual representation. As in other writing-intensive courses, we’ll compose a variety of written works for a range of potential audiences, and we'll focus our time and attention on the creation and reception of art—including film, painting, sculpture, dance, performance art, architecture, and emerging artistic media—and will investigate the various ways that writers have critically, creatively, and analytically approached art, artists, and art-making practices. We’ll pay particular attention to the way that art and culture intersect, and investigate various elements of visual culture. The course will include visits to local art institutions and museums, reading and writing analysis and criticism, including popular reviews, hybrid forms of prose, ekphrastic pieces, and more formal academic criticism. Together, we'll attempt to test John Berger's claim that "the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled" while looking closely at and responding to images from the fine arts, advertisements, and social media.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Brown, Nate A
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In the American imagination, the open road has been a mythical place of bliss, freedom, and self-discovery. But the experience of the road can change drastically based on one’s gender, sexuality, race, and place of origin. In this course, we’ll examine a diverse set of works that explore the long-standing American fascination with the open road. We’ll consider the road’s impact on America’s national identity, and we’ll discuss the emotions, desires, and life experiences that lead people to take to the road, and to get off it. At the heart of the course will be a series of writing assignments designed to help students examine the power and limits of this myth. Students will be asked to write in a variety of styles and genres, from op-eds to scholarly arguments, and from book reviews to rhetorical analyses. These writing assignments will help students reconsider what writing is, how to do it effectively and ethically, and how to become better at it.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Wexler, Anthony Charles
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In the American imagination, the open road has been a mythical place of bliss, freedom, and self-discovery. But the experience of the road can change drastically based on one’s gender, sexuality, race, and place of origin. In this course, we’ll examine a diverse set of works that explore the long-standing American fascination with the open road. We’ll consider the road’s impact on America’s national identity, and we’ll discuss the emotions, desires, and life experiences that lead people to take to the road, and to get off it. At the heart of the course will be a series of writing assignments designed to help students examine the power and limits of this myth. Students will be asked to write in a variety of styles and genres, from op-eds to scholarly arguments, and from book reviews to rhetorical analyses. These writing assignments will help students reconsider what writing is, how to do it effectively and ethically, and how to become better at it.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Wexler, Anthony Charles
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course, developed in collaboration with the Sheridan Librarians and other archival specialists, expands the classroom space to include the library and archival spaces at Hopkins—resources usually unavailable to first-year students. If you like libraries, old books, cursive handwriting, and crinkly papers; if you have ever wondered how information is preserved and knowledge is created; if you want to have a classroom experience that involves other physical spaces on campus; if you ever dressed up as Indiana Jones for Halloween—this may be the course for you. Throughout the semester, students will draw on library resources to write for different audiences in a range of genres. For example, one project will center on Special Collections, the space in the library dedicated to collecting and preserving rare books, documents, and photographs, including forgeries. In another assignment, we’ll examine the role of the library in cultivating an active intellectual life, visiting the George Peabody Library, the Albert D. Hutzler Reading Room (in Gilman Hall), and the Welch Medical Library. Our final project is “object-based”: students will create and curate a digital exhibition based on research in campus spaces that preserve and collect objects. These include the University Campus Collection, the Chesney Archives (archival repository for Hopkins Medicine, Nursing and Public Health), and the Archaeological Museum.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Hartmann-Villalta, Laura A
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In 1988, Baltimore’s first African-American mayor, Kurt Schmoke, declared Baltimore the “city that reads.” Baltimore has always been a city that writes, too, including luminaries like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and D. Watkins. But “writing” includes far more than the incredible books and essays written by these literary stars– and much more than the traditional analysis essays that most students write before they get to college. We write in all kinds of ways in order to live our lives: we write in text messages and social media to connect with loved ones and the wider world; we write in the classroom and outside of it to learn new knowledge and skills; we write ourselves into new futures by composing application essays, resumes, and more. Writing is part of the very fabric of our lives, and that’s why this Reintroduction to Writing will explore the role of writing in our lives, campus life at JHU, and the lives of Baltimore’s residents. And we’ll use the broadest possible definition of writing as we do so. This class will be in partnership, via JHU’s Center for Social Concern, with Wide Angle Youth Media (https://www.wideanglemedia.org), an organization dedicated to “cultivating and amplifying the voices of Baltimore youth through the media arts.” In partnership with WAYM, we’ll explore the ways that writing fuels the work of the organization, interacts with the residents of Baltimore, and knits together social life in this great city. Students in this class can expect to write both traditional academic essays and in other forms such as presentations, proposals, case studies, social media campaigns, and more. There will be lots of freedom to choose what to write, whom to write to, and why to write. After all, the stakes are high – these are our lives we’re talking about.

• Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Pavesich, Matthew
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Cases of tedium, genius, demonic possessions and religious ecstasy have consistently appeared in the historical record. In pre-modern Europe, people with depression were sometimes believed to be suffering from a bodily imbalance or plagued by a midday demon, while those given to delirium were either consorting with or possessed by spirits. Through writing, this course will consider how the early modern world understood and responded to these various forms of mental or emotional states. Through close readings of texts such as medical treatises and biographies of saints, we will focus in particular on how medicine and religion defined conditions such as ennui, listlessness, and insanity. We will also analyze contemporary forms, including museum exhibits and films, and how they comment or expand our ideas about these conditions. Students will study and write in a variety of genres including response papers, a book review, a film review, and a longer critique essay. At the end of the course, the student will have a portfolio of written works demonstrating skill in academic and public-facing writing.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Galasi, Francis
• Room: Maryland 104
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course will consider how the early modern world understood melancholy and madness. We will focus in particular on how religion and medicine gave meaning to various forms of mental or emotional states, such as malaise, tedium, genius and delirium. Included in this category are demonic possession and religious ecstasy. We will examine the conditions that may have given rise to these states, and how people understood and responded to them. Throughout the semester, we will be engaging with primary and secondary documents, images and other forms of media. Students will be expected to write short reaction papers, a long semester paper, a book review and a film review.

• Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Galasi, Francis
• Room: Croft Hall B32
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Cases of tedium, genius, demonic possessions and religious ecstasy have consistently appeared in the historical record. In pre-modern Europe, people with depression were sometimes believed to be suffering from a bodily imbalance or plagued by a midday demon, while those given to delirium were either consorting with or possessed by spirits. Through writing, this course will consider how the early modern world understood and responded to these various forms of mental or emotional states. Through close readings of texts such as medical treatises and biographies of saints, we will focus in particular on how medicine and religion defined conditions such as ennui, listlessness, and insanity. We will also analyze contemporary forms, including museum exhibits and films, and how they comment or expand our ideas about these conditions. Students will study and write in a variety of genres including response papers, a book review, a film review, and a longer critique essay. At the end of the course, the student will have a portfolio of written works demonstrating skill in academic and public-facing writing.

• Days/Times: MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Galasi, Francis
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

From “essential workers” and resurgent unions to automation, basic income, and “The Great Resignation”: work is once again at the center of a broad public conversation. This course takes a closer look at the variety of ways people in the past and present have used writing to establish and contest the meaning and definition of work, including to raise questions about whose experiences count in those definitions. We will examine a diverse collection of writings—from poems, novels, and journalism that try to represent, and make sense of, the experience of working, to analytical essays that aim to make future predictions about work, to workers’ own writing about their work. Assignments are designed to allow students to try writing in a range of genres, including potentially: short exploratory writing to define a concept related to work, an argumentative essay that contributes to a scholarly or public conversation about work, and a personal narrative inquiring into students’ own relationship to work. Along the way, we will investigate writing itself as a scene of work: asking what kind of work writing is, and what is at stake in it.

• Days/Times: MWF 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Begg, Aaron
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

From “essential workers” and resurgent unions, to automation, basic income, and “The Great Resignation,” work—and the meaning of work—is once again at the center of a broad public conversation. But how do we define work and its significance, and whose experiences count in those definitions? In this course, we will begin by holding that question open, and move toward what “work” means for us through encountering and examining, in a variety of genres, writing about work. Reading novels and poems that struggle to represent work and its subjective experiences, analyses of the present and future of work, and workers’ inquiries into their own work, students will explore what work means, and what it means to work, in the 21st century. Along the way, we will investigate writing itself as a scene of work: asking what kind of work writing is, and what is at stake in it. Writing in a range of genres, students will explore connections that link both work and writing as sites of collective transformation.

• Days/Times: MWF 12:00PM - 12:50PM
• Instructor: Begg, Aaron
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

From “essential workers” and resurgent unions to automation, basic income, and “The Great Resignation”: work is once again at the center of a broad public conversation. This course takes a closer look at the variety of ways people in the past and present have used writing to establish and contest the meaning and definition of work, including to raise questions about whose experiences count in those definitions. We will examine a diverse collection of writings—from poems, novels, and journalism that try to represent, and make sense of, the experience of working, to analytical essays that aim to make future predictions about work, to workers’ own writing about their work. Assignments are designed to allow students to try writing in a range of genres, including potentially: short exploratory writing to define a concept related to work, an argumentative essay that contributes to a scholarly or public conversation about work, and a personal narrative inquiring into students’ own relationship to work. Along the way, we will investigate writing itself as a scene of work: asking what kind of work writing is, and what is at stake in it.

• Days/Times: MWF 3:00PM - 3:50PM
• Instructor: Begg, Aaron
• Room: Shaffer 202
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 14/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this writing course, students will confront head-scratching philosophical paradoxes. By writing about these challenging, self-contained, and often slippery ideas in different expository and critical styles students will hone a writing and rhetorical skillset that is especially well suited to presenting abstract ideas in a variety of contexts. Every three weeks, we will engage a new paradox: some concern free will and chance; some concern morality, vagueness, and indeterminacy; some relate to the nature of space, time, and motion; and some concern the nature of logic, language, and truth itself. Four kinds of assignments will help us untangle and explore these paradoxes: (1) regular definitional exercises, where students write the equivalent of a short encyclopedia entry defining some crucial term involved in the paradox discussed in class; (2) informal dialogues, written collaboratively with other classmates, that show how these paradoxes can arise in ordinary life; (3) jokes or short comical writings exhibiting the paradoxes in unexpected and amusing ways; and (4) a traditional academic essay.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Teague, Richard John
• Room: Hodson 313
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

To whom does an ancient artifact belong? Do the descendants of its creator have the right to possess it? Can it be bought and sold, or does it belong to a people, a nation, or to all of humanity? The last few decades have seen countless controversies surrounding how scholars and scientists engage with the material remains of our distant past, controversies that have played out both in academic and in public writing, both in museums and in courtrooms; the treatment of human remains, scholarly publication of looted objects, and the repatriation of potentially stolen antiquities provide just some examples. In this course, students will develop and express their opinions about these issues by writing in a variety of genres, including a personal narrative, an academic essay, a formal debate, a policy document, and an op-ed. The course aims to equip students with the tools to be life-long participants in robust yet respectful debates about controversial and emotional topics in a democracy. It will appeal to students interested in law, ethical questions, ancient civilizations, and in expressing their opinion across different genres and media. Readings include the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, former Greek culture minister Melina Mercouri, legal scholar John Henry Merryman, and Native American activist Steve Russell. No prior knowledge of ancient history or law is required or expected; all are welcome.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Essam, Richard James Llewellyn
• Room: Gilman 381
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this course we will explore and write about what it means to be embodied beings in this world. We will examine concepts and conceptions of the human body through time and space, starting from Homeric epics and ending with contemporary literature. Some of the questions we will ask are: What are bodies made of, and how does the material world around us shape our understanding of the human body? How have human (and non-human) bodies been used as metaphors, models, and measures of other objects, including the world as a whole? The topic of the course will also help us think about writing as a human, and therefore embodied, activity that stretches inward from our fingertips to our very sense of self. By the end of the semester, you will learn to approach writing as a way of knowing and as a way of thinking, a versatile process that can take as many different forms as there are writers (and readers). You will write in a variety of genres and work with sources in different media, including audiovisual materials and museum objects. Your writing will include, but not be limited to, the following genres: academic essay, book review, Twitter thread, and response paper. You will also curate a virtual exhibition using objects from local museums that bear upon the subject of the course, as well as organize a roundtable discussion in which you present the exhibition, its scope and its goals.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Asuni, Michele
• Room: Gilman 219
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this course we will explore and write about what it means to be embodied beings in this world. We will examine concepts and conceptions of the human body through time and space, starting from Homeric epics and ending with contemporary literature. Some of the questions we will ask are: What are bodies made of, and how does the material world around us shape our understanding of the human body? How have human (and non-human) bodies been used as metaphors, models, and measures of other objects, including the world as a whole? The topic of the course will also help us think about writing as a human, and therefore embodied, activity that stretches inward from our fingertips to our very sense of self. By the end of the semester, you will learn to approach writing as a way of knowing and as a way of thinking, a versatile process that can take as many different forms as there are writers (and readers). You will write in a variety of genres and work with sources in different media, including audiovisual materials and museum objects. Your writing will include, but not be limited to, the following genres: academic essay, book review, Twitter thread, and response paper. You will also curate a virtual exhibition using objects from local museums that bear upon the subject of the course, as well as organize a roundtable discussion in which you present the exhibition, its scope and its goals.

• Days/Times: TTh 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Asuni, Michele
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this course we will explore and write about what it means to be embodied beings in this world. We will examine concepts and conceptions of the human body through time and space, starting from Homeric epics and ending with contemporary literature. Some of the questions we will ask are: What are bodies made of, and how does the material world around us shape our understanding of the human body? How have human (and non-human) bodies been used as metaphors, models, and measures of other objects, including the world as a whole? The topic of the course will also help us think about writing as a human, and therefore embodied, activity that stretches inward from our fingertips to our very sense of self. By the end of the semester, you will learn to approach writing as a way of knowing and as a way of thinking, a versatile process that can take as many different forms as there are writers (and readers). You will write in a variety of genres and work with sources in different media, including audiovisual materials and museum objects. Your writing will include, but not be limited to, the following genres: academic essay, book review, Twitter thread, and response paper. You will also curate a virtual exhibition using objects from local museums that bear upon the subject of the course, as well as organize a roundtable discussion in which you present the exhibition, its scope and its goals.

• Days/Times: TTh 6:00PM - 7:15PM
• Instructor: Asuni, Michele
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

There’s no question that much of our public discourse contains speech that can be regarded as false, worthless, and hateful. In these ways speech can produce real harm to individuals and society. Why then do we feel that it is important to protect speech to the maximum extent? That’s the large question we will address through a series of writing projects. We begin by reading John Stuart Mill’s canonical justification of free speech in his nineteenth century treatise On Liberty. You write a short essay that engages with Mill’s view that speech is essential to the pursuit of truth. We then read a sample of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence to get a sense of how the law defines the pivotal difference between speech and action. You’ll engage with some scholarly critics on the question of how the law defines “harm.” Finally, you are invited to research a contemporary free speech issue that interests you. Using online resources like the Free Speech Project and the Dangerous Speech Project you will map a particular controversy and produce a written report of your findings. Topics include hate speech, cancel culture, the regulation of online speech, and more.

• Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Oppel, George
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

There’s no question that much of our public discourse contains speech that can be regarded as false, worthless, and hateful. In these ways speech can produce real harm to individuals and society. Why then do we feel that it is important to protect speech to the maximum extent? That’s the large question we will address through a series of writing projects. We begin by reading John Stuart Mill’s canonical justification of free speech in his nineteenth century treatise On Liberty. You write a short essay that engages with Mill’s view that speech is essential to the pursuit of truth. We then read a sample of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence to get a sense of how the law defines the pivotal difference between speech and action. You’ll engage with some scholarly critics on the question of how the law defines “harm.” Finally, you are invited to research a contemporary free speech issue that interests you. Using online resources like the Free Speech Project and the Dangerous Speech Project you will map a particular controversy and produce a written report of your findings. Topics include hate speech, cancel culture, the regulation of online speech, and more.

• Days/Times: MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Oppel, George
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Universities hold a place like no other in American public discourse—they are mythologized in sunny campus novels, lambasted in fiery political speeches, and their value for money is calculated down to the last penny of expected future earnings. In this class, students will engage with a broad spectrum of literature, journalism, and academic and informal writing which all try to answer the question: just what is a university for, anyway? Universities often pride themselves as engines of truth, social mobility, and civic engagement, while to their critics universities can be financially-exploitative sites of elitism, structural racism, and inequity. Students will explore these contrasts in writing assignments across a range of genres, analyzing the philosophy, economics, and rhetoric of higher education, reflecting on their own experiences, and adding their own voices to significant public conversations. Students will gain the tools to engage different audiences through their writing, and weigh in to academic debates, campus issues, and public controversies. Special attention will be paid to Johns Hopkins University itself and its deep and sometimes fractious relationship with the citizens and institutions of Baltimore. Writing about universities offers a chance to acclimate to a range of compositional practices, develop your own skills, and look upon the university with a new and broadened perspective.

• Days/Times: MWF 10:00AM - 10:50AM
• Instructor: Shallit, Jonah Forest Lubiw
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 8/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

What is scientific knowledge? Who creates it, controls it, and benefits from it? What does it mean to “decolonize” something? Math, science, and technology are commonly described as tools, yet these overlapping disciplines often operate as black boxes whose broad social applications are hidden and whose environmental consequences may be too diffuse to accurately predict. This writing class will consider these topics from a variety of rhetorical genres including podcasts, YouTube videos, and academic articles. In a series of writing exercises that range from brief weekly written responses, a traditional essay, and a rhetorical analysis in a medium of their choosing, students will be given the opportunity to respond to questions of how math, science, and technology influence their everyday world.

• Days/Times: MWF 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Doherty, Nathanael Joseph
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Universities hold a place like no other in American public discourse—they are mythologized in sunny campus novels, lambasted in fiery political speeches, and their value for money is calculated down to the last penny of expected future earnings. In this class, students will engage with a broad spectrum of literature, journalism, and academic and informal writing which all try to answer the question: just what is a university for, anyway? Universities often pride themselves as engines of truth, social mobility, and civic engagement, while to their critics universities can be financially-exploitative sites of elitism, structural racism, and inequity. Students will explore these contrasts in writing assignments across a range of genres, analyzing the philosophy, economics, and rhetoric of higher education, reflecting on their own experiences, and adding their own voices to significant public conversations. Students will gain the tools to engage different audiences through their writing, and weigh in to academic debates, campus issues, and public controversies. Special attention will be paid to Johns Hopkins University itself and its deep and sometimes fractious relationship with the citizens and institutions of Baltimore. Writing about universities offers a chance to acclimate to a range of compositional practices, develop your own skills, and look upon the university with a new and broadened perspective.

• Days/Times: MWF 10:00AM - 10:50AM
• Instructor: Doherty, Nathanael Joseph
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Universities hold a place like no other in American public discourse—they are mythologized in sunny campus novels, lambasted in fiery political speeches, and their value for money is calculated down to the last penny of expected future earnings. In this class, students will engage with a broad spectrum of literature, journalism, and academic and informal writing which all try to answer the question: just what is a university for, anyway? Universities often pride themselves as engines of truth, social mobility, and civic engagement, while to their critics universities can be financially-exploitative sites of elitism, structural racism, and inequity. Students will explore these contrasts in writing assignments across a range of genres, analyzing the philosophy, economics, and rhetoric of higher education, reflecting on their own experiences, and adding their own voices to significant public conversations. Students will gain the tools to engage different audiences through their writing, and weigh in to academic debates, campus issues, and public controversies. Special attention will be paid to Johns Hopkins University itself and its deep and sometimes fractious relationship with the citizens and institutions of Baltimore. Writing about universities offers a chance to acclimate to a range of compositional practices, develop your own skills, and look upon the university with a new and broadened perspective.

• Days/Times: WF 6:00PM - 7:15PM
• Instructor: Doherty, Nathanael Joseph
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Bullshit is all around us–in advertising, politics, social media, everyday conversation, job applications, lectures, and eulogies. It is often involved in what we say to others as well as what we take others–our teachers, friends, and family members among them–to be saying to us. But what is bullshit–and more importantly, what does it tell us about our intentions in communicating with others? This first-year writing course leverages the idea of bullshit as an introduction to rhetoric, broadly understood as the study of how language induces certain types of action, or implants certain impressions, in a particular audience. Basing our investigation on a close reading of Harry Frankfurt’s influential essay "On Bullshit," our course will examine the connection between writing and the aims and expectations surrounding truth-telling and sincerity. Four types of assignments will help students develop their writing, research, and conceptual skills: (1) a conceptual and critical elaboration of a single term (modeled on Frankfurt’s approach to analyzing the term “bullshit”); (2) a scavenging exercise to locate and document the rhetorical nature of found objects and bits of discourse outside the classroom; (3) an academic essay on an assigned topic relating to the theme of the course; and (4) group collaboration on a written discussion, podcast, blog, scientific literature review, model correspondence, or other open-ended project.

• Days/Times: MWF 1:30PM - 2:20PM
• Instructor: Gartenberg, Zachary M
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Bullshit is all around us–in advertising, politics, social media, everyday conversation, job applications, lectures, and eulogies. It is often involved in what we say to others as well as what we take others–our teachers, friends, and family members among them–to be saying to us. But what is bullshit–and more importantly, what does it tell us about our intentions in communicating with others? This first-year writing course leverages the idea of bullshit as an introduction to rhetoric, broadly understood as the study of how language induces certain types of action, or implants certain impressions, in a particular audience. Basing our investigation on a close reading of Harry Frankfurt’s influential essay "On Bullshit," our course will examine the connection between writing and the aims and expectations surrounding truth-telling and sincerity. Four types of assignments will help students develop their writing, research, and conceptual skills: (1) a conceptual and critical elaboration of a single term (modeled on Frankfurt’s approach to analyzing the term “bullshit”); (2) a scavenging exercise to locate and document the rhetorical nature of found objects and bits of discourse outside the classroom; (3) an academic essay on an assigned topic relating to the theme of the course; and (4) group collaboration on a written discussion, podcast, blog, scientific literature review, model correspondence, or other open-ended project.

• Days/Times: MWF 3:00PM - 3:50PM
• Instructor: Gartenberg, Zachary M
• Room: Croft Hall G02
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Bullshit is all around us–in advertising, politics, social media, everyday conversation, job applications, lectures, and eulogies. It is often involved in what we say to others as well as what we take others–our teachers, friends, and family members among them–to be saying to us. But what is bullshit–and more importantly, what does it tell us about our intentions in communicating with others? This first-year writing course leverages the idea of bullshit as an introduction to rhetoric, broadly understood as the study of how language induces certain types of action, or implants certain impressions, in a particular audience. Basing our investigation on a close reading of Harry Frankfurt’s influential essay "On Bullshit," our course will examine the connection between writing and the aims and expectations surrounding truth-telling and sincerity. Four types of assignments will help students develop their writing, research, and conceptual skills: (1) a conceptual and critical elaboration of a single term (modeled on Frankfurt’s approach to analyzing the term “bullshit”); (2) a scavenging exercise to locate and document the rhetorical nature of found objects and bits of discourse outside the classroom; (3) an academic essay on an assigned topic relating to the theme of the course; and (4) group collaboration on a written discussion, podcast, blog, scientific literature review, model correspondence, or other open-ended project.

• Days/Times: MWF 4:30PM - 5:20PM
• Instructor: Gartenberg, Zachary M
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Playing chess, writing novels, making art—as headlines claim almost daily, whatever humans used to be good at, A.I. can now do better. To what extent can human labor and creativity be automated, and where will that leave us? How have people thought about these questions in the past and how are they thinking about them today? Why bother learning to write if text generators can do it for us? This course asks students to imagine a world in which A.I. makes writing courses obsolete. By producing argumentative essays, policy memos, and group projects, students will develop skills in critical thinking and communicating in different genres as they explore the effects of A.I. not just in theory but in practice. Across all assignments, students will experiment with using text-generators like TPG-3 to do their writing for them.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Lewis, Alex
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Playing chess, writing novels, making art—as headlines claim almost daily, whatever humans used to be good at, A.I. can now do better. To what extent can human labor and creativity be automated, and where will that leave us? How have people thought about these questions in the past and how are they thinking about them today? Why bother learning to write if text generators can do it for us? This course asks students to imagine a world in which A.I. makes writing courses obsolete. By producing argumentative essays, policy memos, and group projects, students will develop skills in critical thinking and communicating in different genres as they explore the effects of A.I. not just in theory but in practice. Across all assignments, students will experiment with using text-generators like TPG-3 to do their writing for them.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Lewis, Alex
• Room: Bloomberg 178
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Imagine yourself playing a new game that you’ve been waiting ages to pick up. The world feels expansive and full, and you have what seems like an endless array of options to choose from. You’re instructed to walk into a bar, and to be prepared for a deadly serious meeting—suddenly, your face disappears as the cutscene begins, leaving just your disembodied eyes and still-talking mouth floating in midair. All the while, the glitched conversation carries on as though nothing has happened, despite all dramatic tension having gone out the window. The ridiculousness of it all leaves you reeling. What are you to make of this? From an audience’s standpoint, textual worlds can often appear self-sufficient and whole. But occasionally, a world that seemed whole can betray unnoticed elements of its composition, complicating everything we thought we knew about its boundaries, scope, and limitations. In this course, we will write about moments of glitching and distortion in texts spanning several genres and mediums in order to see what we can learn about the composition of a text (whether literary, graphic, or in a videogame) when its seemingly stable boundaries suddenly become less certain. How do glitches affect our sense of a textual world? What might it mean when a text deliberately references a moment of world-breaking incoherence from a completely different genre or medium? And how might this knowledge influence our own compositional habits as we work to produce accessible writing for our own audiences? We will work to answer these questions with our own experiments in composition. Students will write analyses of visual distortion in works of art, organize group presentations on texts that reference glitches found in other mediums, produce accessible podcast episodes about world-breaking game glitches aimed at a casual audience, and pen persuasive essays pitched at professionals within our own disciplines.

• Days/Times: MWF 10:00AM - 10:50AM
• Instructor: Oliver, Xavier A
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

As we face the environmental crisis—born from failures to engage with nature in a way we might call “sustainable”—a debate has arisen, in many disciplines, of the best way to understand the natural world. The rhetorical terrain is fraught: historical arguments both justify the human domination of nature and present other possibilities, and in the present day, some argue that humans are an inextricable part of nature, others that there is a separation, and still others that we need another framework entirely. We’ll join this conversation by studying where we’ve been and how that's influenced where we are, and use these analyses to articulate our own reasoned thoughts on where we want our relationship with nature to go, with an acknowledgment of the high stakes (studies show that simply discussing topics like climate change, through writing and conversation alike, can have a measurable impact on policy). We’ll reach far and wide in our review of contemporary conversations on nature, from a study of current science journalism and public writing to the personal creative narratives of Wendell Berry to the Studio Ghibli film Princess Mononoke. In terms of writing, students will focus on structure, and apply techniques for creating structured writing to four assignments, including an argumentative essay, a personal narrative, and an article, as well as smaller experimental assignments in a variety of other genres. We’ll end with a project that will investigate, and write about, environmental justice issues affecting the communities of Baltimore, particularly as they relate to the Environmental Human Rights movement; students will identify a problem and use the medium of their choice to argue for their personal solution.

• Days/Times: MWF 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Fautsch, Carolina
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In an era when sophisticated algorithms mine data at unfathomable scales, the idea that we could learn anything new or important by simply wandering out into the real world with notepad in hand may seem outdated, even naive. So what is the value in directly engaging with the messiness of the real world and attempting to write something meaningful about the experience? This first-year writing course will explore “ethnographic” writing, rich contextual portraits of life rooted in firsthand experience. Writing ethnographically requires us to cultivate a radical openness to the world around us, to make room for the unexpected, and to hone our skills of noticing things we might otherwise take for granted. Because it can force us to challenge preconceived ideas and grapple with the complexity of the lived world and our place in it, ethnographic writing can help us to become more creative and nuanced thinkers, and more compassionate and responsible citizens. In this course we will engage with ethnographic writing across a range of genres including academic scholarship, journalism, and documentary film. We will explore how authors craft narratives and arguments from lived experience and how they connect these small-scale observations to larger concepts, theories, and histories. We will engage with the many thorny ethical questions that arise when studying and writing about the lives and social worlds of others, particularly across lines of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. Throughout the course, students will have opportunities to practice ethnographic fieldwork, taking field notes and journaling about their experiences. Through a series of writing assignments, they will translate these experiences and insights into different written genres including personal narratives, academic essays, and op-eds.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Adams, Nat Johnson
• Room: Shriver Hall 001
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

In recent decades, a small but vocal minority has begun to call for systemic change in our treatment of nonhuman animals. Proposals range from calls for widespread reform of our use of animals in food, science, and other settings, to the total abolition of these practices. The conversation has gained prominence in both academic and non-academic circles, with contributions from such diverse sources as philosophers, journalists, and novelists. Discussions this topic are of both theoretical and personal relevance: they challenge us to contemplate the nature of our moral obligations to animals, and they carry implications for whether we should radically alter our social institutions and personal habits. But they do more than this: they also provoke us to consider the value of different forms of persuasion in shaping public opinion on a controversial topic. In this class, we consider different genres of writing and rhetoric and their role in the broader debate over what we owe to nonhuman animals. Students will write three major assignments in three different genres: an investigative piece that is geared towards a mainstream audience; an argumentative essay, written for an academic audience; and a third assignment in a genre of their choosing. Students will also be assigned a reflective essay towards the end of the semester.

• Days/Times: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Powell, Kevin Matthew
• Room: Bloomberg 172
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Current CDC data states, that Black women are “three to four times more likely to die during or after delivery than are white women.” In this first-year writing course, we will explore Black women’s historical and contemporary birth narratives to question how their history of enslavement, and medical racism continues to inform their birthing realities. Through course readings, discussions, and workshops we will question the varied ways the delegitimization of Black midwives, Black women’s community practices, and contemporary advocates for reproductive and birthing justice, have impacted Black women’s care within and outside of medical institutions. Students will write in a range of genres including personal narratives and/or auto ethnographies, which will allow students to follow a course of inquiry that will lead them to a point of interest to compose a traditional academic paper or a multimodal composition as their final project. Students will support their research questions by using credible sources such as narratives, scholarly articles, and reputed journalism. Potential texts include excerpts by Harriet Jacobs, Margaret Charles Smith, Assata Shakur, Tressie Cottom, Nikky Finney, Beyonce, and reproductive justice advocate, Loretta Ross.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Wright, Lisa E.
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course, developed in collaboration with the Sheridan Librarians and other archival specialists, expands the classroom space to include the library and archival spaces at Hopkins—resources usually unavailable to first-year students. If you like libraries, old books, cursive handwriting, and crinkly papers; if you have ever wondered how information is preserved and knowledge is created; if you want to have a classroom experience that involves other physical spaces on campus; if you ever dressed up as Indiana Jones for Halloween—this may be the course for you. Throughout the semester, students will draw on library resources to write for different audiences in a range of genres. For example, one project will center on Special Collections, the space in the library dedicated to collecting and preserving rare books, documents, and photographs, including forgeries. In another assignment, we’ll examine the role of the library in cultivating an active intellectual life, visiting the George Peabody Library, the Albert D. Hutzler Reading Room (in Gilman Hall), and the Welch Medical Library. Our final project is “object-based”: students will create and curate a digital exhibition based on research in campus spaces that preserve and collect objects. These include the University Campus Collection, the Chesney Archives (archival repository for Hopkins Medicine, Nursing and Public Health), and the Archaeological Museum.

• Days/Times: TTh 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Hartmann-Villalta, Laura A
• Room: Gilman 134
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

What arguments about vaccination are circulating in the public sphere today? As public health officials and medical providers seek to encourage vaccination, what kinds of appeals are likely to succeed, and which are likely to fall flat—or even backfire? Why and how do discussions of vaccination evoke such strong feelings? In this course, we will collectively explore these questions, drawing on tools from the field of rhetoric. As you examine the audience, purpose, context, and style of texts concerning vaccination, you will derive strategies you can apply to your own writing, and practice communicating about science to diverse audiences.

• Days/Times: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Wilbanks, Rebecca
• Room: Krieger Laverty
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Corporations are all around us. They interact with us every day in ways minute and profound. We work with them and for them. They have rights and freedoms, for instance, to speech and religious expression. They seem to have intentions, desires, voices, and goals. Yet, they can’t take a walk or feel the wind or smell the earth. If they do harm, they are notoriously hard to punish. When they come to an end, no one writes an obituary. This First-Year Seminar will query whether a corporation is a person across a range of sources and perspectives, including from law, politics, philosophy, literature, and popular culture. Can a corporation be a person? Who should decide and on what basis? What are the implications for our understanding of rights, agency, and morality and for pressing global issues such as climate change? And what are the implications for our own understanding of ourselves as “a person”?

• Days/Times: T 10:30AM - 1:00PM
• Instructor: O'Connor, Marisa T
• Room: Greenhouse 113
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this First-Year Seminar, we will examine the roles of love, fear, anger, and hope in our lives. We’ll ask questions about their value, danger, and appropriateness or inappropriateness in our lives at both the individual level and the level of political life. Some examples of questions we’ll consider are these: Should we love those who have wronged us? Is enjoying a horror movie morally problematic? How is fear used in political rhetoric and how should we respond to it? Is anger acceptable, or perhaps even necessary, in protest? Is love necessary for meaningful social change? When and how is hope justifiable and useful? We’ll also draw connections between these emotions and engage with related concepts such as forgiveness and trust. While our engagement with these concepts will be primarily through philosophy, we will also consider works of art and think about the value of portraying and evoking these emotions through various forms of art. Students can expect to read philosophical texts, journalism, occasional fiction and poetry, and to watch at least one horror film, among the sources for the course. Possible authors include Berit Brogaard, Noël Carroll, Myisha Cherry, Raja Halwani, Stephen King, Adrienne Martin, Martha Nussbaum, Edgar Allan Poe, Jason Stanley, and Desmond Tutu. We will take at least one field trip to a location in Baltimore during the semester. Students will emerge from this course with a more nuanced understanding of these powerful and often controversial emotions, and the ability to talk about them in an academic and public context.

• Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Koullas, Sandy Gillian
• Room: Greenhouse 113
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

The phrase a seat at the table is often used to describe an instance where someone is included in an opportunity that has the potential to lead them to some form of success. The symbolism of pulling up a chair to a table represents a sense of belonging and inclusion that wasn’t extended previously for one reason or another. What happens when you get “a seat” that you’ve pursued for a long time? This course asks you to engage with feelings of inclusion/exclusion by drawing from your own experiences of negotiating and fighting for your seat. One way to think about this is to consider how your potential major (or careers relating to your potential major) relate to your body and how you are expected to exist in these spaces. In these moments of expectation, what are you willing to give? What is an acceptable cost (changing how you dress, talk, think, etc.) for your success? How can you fight to protect yourself and be successful? Is it possible to do both? Students can expect to explore these important questions via scaffolded writing activities which support the major assignments: rhetorical analysis essay, literature review, and research-based argument essay.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Hull, Brittany Sabrina
• Room: Shaffer 304
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Many of us have (at least) two selves: an analog or “real-life” self and a digital self. These doppelgangers can bear striking resemblance to our embodied selves—or not—and raise many questions around issues of representation, authenticity, and impersonation. So too, we leave digital traces of ourselves in the form of “data doubles,” extracted through clicks, scrolls, and other forms of tracked data. This double is frequently a target for manipulation and persuasion, but also can be a tool to enhance creativity and efficiency in our analog lives. In this course, we will investigate the concept of the digital doppelganger from three distinct perspectives, asking how our capacious digital identities are formed, changed, and controlled in commercial, political, and creative contexts. By crafting auto-ethnographies, policy briefs, and creative computational projects, students will develop critical thinking skills, learn to communicate with agility and precision across different genres, and reflect on how we create and know ourselves in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

• Days/Times: MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Schnitzler, Carly Elisabeth
• Room: Gilman 413
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

How has the advent of digital networks influenced our culture, attitudes, and behaviors? How have these transformations affected our personal and civic lives, education, and professional endeavors? Increasingly growing digital sources and digital networks have profoundly changed every aspect of our lives. In this course, we will critically examine the influence of digital networks, analyzing online interactions, exploring digital cultures, and studying online communities. Students are encouraged to select a topic of personal and academic interest to investigate, such as digital literacy practices, AI in education, influencer culture, social support in online communities, algorithmic fairness, privacy and safety in digital spaces, or social activism like #BlackLivesMatter. Throughout this course, students will develop research skills and advance their writing proficiency in content, clarity, organization, and readability. This will be accomplished through readings, discussions, writing tasks, feedback, and reflections. Students will write various genres, including reading response, literacy narrative, research proposal, research-based argumentative essay, reflective journal, and presentation. By undertaking this course, students will cultivate critical thinking abilities, professional communication strategies, and lifelong learning skills necessary for success in both their academic pursuits and professional careers.

• Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Cui, Wenqi
• Room: Gilman 217
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

The phrase a seat at the table is often used to describe an instance where someone is included in an opportunity that has the potential to lead them to some form of success. The symbolism of pulling up a chair to a table represents a sense of belonging and inclusion that wasn’t extended previously for one reason or another. What happens when you get “a seat” that you’ve pursued for a long time? This course asks you to engage with feelings of inclusion/exclusion by drawing from your own experiences of negotiating and fighting for your seat. One way to think about this is to consider how your potential major (or careers relating to your potential major) relate to your body and how you are expected to exist in these spaces. In these moments of expectation, what are you willing to give? What is an acceptable cost (changing how you dress, talk, think, etc.) for your success? How can you fight to protect yourself and be successful? Is it possible to do both? Students can expect to explore these important questions via scaffolded writing activities which support the major assignments: rhetorical analysis essay, literature review, and research-based argument essay.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Hull, Brittany Sabrina
• Room: Shaffer 304
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

How has the advent of digital networks influenced our culture, attitudes, and behaviors? How have these transformations affected our personal and civic lives, education, and professional endeavors? Increasingly growing digital sources and digital networks have profoundly changed every aspect of our lives. In this course, we will critically examine the influence of digital networks, analyzing online interactions, exploring digital cultures, and studying online communities. Students are encouraged to select a topic of personal and academic interest to investigate, such as digital literacy practices, AI in education, influencer culture, social support in online communities, algorithmic fairness, privacy and safety in digital spaces, or social activism like #BlackLivesMatter. Throughout this course, students will develop research skills and advance their writing proficiency in content, clarity, organization, and readability. This will be accomplished through readings, discussions, writing tasks, feedback, and reflections. Students will write various genres, including reading response, literacy narrative, research proposal, research-based argumentative essay, reflective journal, and presentation. By undertaking this course, students will cultivate critical thinking abilities, professional communication strategies, and lifelong learning skills necessary for success in both their academic pursuits and professional careers.

• Days/Times: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Cui, Wenqi
• Room: Gilman 217
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

In a 2012 interview with the New York Times, American critic M.H. Abrams was asked, “Why study literature?” Abrams answered, because “it enables you to live the lives of other people.” But how does a master of short stories open a window to his or her characters’ thoughts and feelings? How does the writer, as Abrams suggests, draw us into other lives? In this class, students will explore these questions through their own writings across different modes and styles. Writing projects will range from evaluating another critic’s interpretation of how a story brings its characters to life to writing your own autobiographical narrative. Our readings will feature the work of some of the masters of contemporary American short stories including Joyce Carol Oates, Nate Brown, Gish Jen, Richard Ford, Ashleigh Parker Phillips, Denis Johnson, Jennifer Egan, ZZ Packer, James Salter, George Saunders, Lorrie Moore, Edward P. Jones, and Lydia Davis.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Berger, Donald W
• Room: Hodson 216
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Competing views about the dangers and potential benefits of drugs are ubiquitous. In the context of changing drug laws regarding psychedelic medicines, the legalization of cannabis, and “mandatory minimum” jail sentences, how can we gain insight into the cultural history of drugs in our society? This writing course will provide the opportunity for students to directly engage with recent debates over drug legislation by critically reflecting on the evolution of writing about drugs over the past 250 years. How does the cultural understanding of drugs change with shifts in rhetoric? How can we balance the need to protect society while still respecting individual freedoms and privacy? How can the latest scientific and sociological research help to guide legislative decisions? Our society’s understandings about drugs and their relationship to human consciousness have been, and continue to be, mediated by rhetoric and public discussions; by directly engaging in this evolving rhetoric through written and oral assignments, students will have the opportunity to deepen their understanding of this complex and persistent topic. Students will explore this topic by writing in a variety of genres and persuasive strategies, including op-eds, policy memos, close textual and visual analyses, and reflections.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Devenot, Nese Lisa
• Room: Gilman 186
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Competing views about the dangers and potential benefits of drugs are ubiquitous. In the context of changing drug laws regarding psychedelic medicines, the legalization of cannabis, and “mandatory minimum” jail sentences, how can we gain insight into the cultural history of drugs in our society? This writing course will provide the opportunity for students to directly engage with recent debates over drug legislation by critically reflecting on the evolution of writing about drugs over the past 250 years. How does the cultural understanding of drugs change with shifts in rhetoric? How can we balance the need to protect society while still respecting individual freedoms and privacy? How can the latest scientific and sociological research help to guide legislative decisions? Our society’s understandings about drugs and their relationship to human consciousness have been, and continue to be, mediated by rhetoric and public discussions; by directly engaging in this evolving rhetoric through written and oral assignments, students will have the opportunity to deepen their understanding of this complex and persistent topic. Students will explore this topic by writing in a variety of genres and persuasive strategies, including op-eds, policy memos, close textual and visual analyses, and reflections.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Devenot, Nese Lisa
• Room: Shaffer 304
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Many of us have (at least) two selves: an analog or “real-life” self and a digital self. These doppelgangers can bear striking resemblance to our embodied selves—or not—and raise many questions around issues of representation, authenticity, and impersonation. So too, we leave digital traces of ourselves in the form of “data doubles,” extracted through clicks, scrolls, and other forms of tracked data. This double is frequently a target for manipulation and persuasion, but also can be a tool to enhance creativity and efficiency in our analog lives. In this course, we will investigate the concept of the digital doppelganger from three distinct perspectives, asking how our capacious digital identities are formed, changed, and controlled in commercial, political, and creative contexts. By crafting auto-ethnographies, policy briefs, and creative computational projects, students will develop critical thinking skills, learn to communicate with agility and precision across different genres, and reflect on how we create and know ourselves in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

• Days/Times: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Schnitzler, Carly Elisabeth
• Room: Hodson 313
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this first-year seminar, we'll examine and record how our thoughts, beliefs, and impressions of the world are informed by what we “see.” As in other writing-intensive courses, we’ll compose a variety of written works for a range of audiences, and we'll focus our time and attention on the creation and reception of art—including film, painting, sculpture, dance, performance art, architecture, and emerging artistic media. We'll read essays and criticism by Parul Sehgal, Maggie Nelson, Zadie Smith, Alain de Botton, and others to better understand how people critically, creatively, and analytically respond to art, artists, and artistic movements. The course will include visits to local art institutions and museums, reading and writing analysis and criticism, and performing research. Together, we'll attempt to test John Berger's claim that "the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled" while looking closely at and responding to images from the world of the fine arts, advertisement, social media, and AI.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Brown, Nate A
• Room: Krieger 306
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

In this interdisciplinary course focused on academic research and argument, everyone in the class will be surviving the zombie apocalypse together: What does your chosen academic discipline bring to our survival? How can this field of study contribute to innovation or ultimately building a new world? What kinds of collegial practices (aka teamwork) are necessary? Although the zombie apocalypse is our collective topic for discussion and an animating metaphor for the course, students will not conduct research about zombies. Rather, we will use the tropes of zombie apocalypse to pose research questions about real-life disasters, whether natural or man-made. For example, a political science major may research military responses to disaster (survival), or a dance major may investigate how dance performance is used to process collective trauma in post-genocide societies (the new world). Conducting individual research, students will write in academic research genres, from proposal to research paper to poster presentation. All students comfortable with gory zombies who are at the sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Hartmann-Villalta, Laura A
• Room: Shaffer 301
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Noam Chomsky once remarked that sport’s primary function is to “deflect people’s attention from things that matter.” But most people love sport! Even Chomsky has admitted to being impressed by the “extensive knowledge that people have of sport … and their self-confidence in discussing it.” Sport matters because of its central place in our culture and because of its ability to create knowledge and self-confidence in so many people who play sport, watch it intensely, talk about it ceaselessly. And it matters because it produces so much high-caliber writing. How does sport inspire such productive discourse? When people write about sport, are they really writing about something else? We tackle these questions by studying how people have written about sport and by doing some sports-writing ourselves. The first project will be to write your own personal narrative about sport. For the next you will enter a controversy about sport from a selection of topics the class will decide collectively. Finally, you will choose an aspect of the sporting world to research. You could do a piece of sports-reporting here at Hopkins; a profile of an athlete; a photo essay; or an analysis of how a particular sport has been brought to life through blogging and other forms of media. The course overall aims to develop your own ability to write with knowledge, self-confidence, and agility about sport and the things that matter beyond sport. Guest speakers include Baltimore Sun Ravens reporter. All undergraduates at the sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Oppel, George
• Room: Hodson 211
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, AGRI-ELECT

Rhetoric, or the art of persuasion, is the beating heart of political life. It’s how candidates, parties, lobbyists, and activists compete for our attention and support. In a democracy, we listen to rational arguments presented in good faith, but we are also exposed to deceptive forms of persuasion that attempt to mislead us through misinformation and other techniques of propaganda. Democratic citizens today need to utilize persuasive techniques to advance their political goals. But they also need to be alert to the perils of certain forms of persuasion that may even threaten democracy itself. This course will help students develop the rhetorical literacy capable of meeting these demands. We begin by studying the classical forms of rhetoric – including ethos, pathos, and logos -- as outlined by Aristotle and other thinkers from the ancient world. You’ll write a rhetorical analysis that applies these concepts to a canonical political speech. Thus grounded, our attention turns to the multiple ways in which persuasion is deployed in a democracy today. Whether it’s a campaign speech, an effort from an activist group to engage the community through social media, or a rant by your favorite YouTuber, we are now exposed to more competing voices and images than ever before. Is it possible for a rational consensus to emerge from the cacophony of speech unleashed in the digital age? Your next project, an argumentative essay, will address this question. Finally, you will design and produce a persuasive piece of political writing – which may incorporate visual components -- targeted to a specific audience on a topic of your choice. All undergraduates at the sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Oppel, George
• Room: Hodson 203
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, AGRI-ELECT

For survivors of the worst atrocities in recent history, remembering is seen as both a moral and political duty. The command to “never forget” has become a popular refrain in the aftermath of these traumatic events. But how should the memory of these mass traumas be carried forward in the public sphere? What forms of commemoration are the most effective, accurate, or enduring? And how might new technologies impact the future of Holocaust memory? Using the Holocaust as our central case study, we’ll examine the remembering of trauma in a range of public “memory sites,” including oral testimonies, memoirs, photographs, monuments, and museums. And we’ll focus specifically on how new technologies, including virtual reality and holographic technology, will impact how we remember traumatic events. At the heart of the course will be a series of writing assignments designed to help students reflect on the future of Holocaust memory. Students will be asked to write in a variety of styles and genres, from op-eds to scholarly arguments, and from video essays to rhetorical analyses. These writing assignments will help students reconsider what writing is, how to do it effectively and ethically, and how to become better at it. The class will include a field trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. All undergraduates at sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Wexler, Anthony Charles
• Room: Bloomberg 172
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, AGRI-ELECT

The maternal health crisis for Black women is a global issue. Many pregnant women of African descent in the U.S., Caribbean, and Africa lack support during and after pregnancy, experience coercion, and aren’t connected to alternative birthing traditions. In this writing-intensive course, we will write to reflect on and respond to novels, memoirs, essays, and scholarly works on historical and contemporary Black women’s birthing experiences throughout the African diaspora. Students will pursue their own research interests to enter an ongoing conversation within the birthing justice movement. Students will build a portfolio that may include writing for social media, community, and/or scholarly audiences. All undergraduates at sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Wright, Lisa E.
• Room: Bloomberg 172
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, AGRI-ELECT

What do the practices of academic research and writing look like in the humanities? This course invites you to develop an individual, discipline-specific research project in a collaborative workshop environment structured around the practical and theoretical commitments of research writing in the humanities. Our interdisciplinary lab model will allow us time and space to pursue in-depth inquiry in your field of interest, from extending a seminar paper to generating a research proposal. Over the semester, we will explore and practice every step of developing a long-term research project prior to publication: tracking scholarly conversations, navigating research archives, developing research questions, cultivating critical methodologies, and presenting in-process work. We will visit archives and museums, hear from a variety of scholar-practitioners, and participate in interdisciplinary events around campus. Our course will culminate in a public conference, in collaboration with The Academic Conference course, where you can present aspects of your research or the research process. All students at the sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: W 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Brodsky, Anne-Elizabeth Murdy; Russell, Arthur J
• Room: Maryland 309
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 12/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

Why did “Cat Person” go viral? What’s an earnout bonus? How did the Black Lives Matter movement change the publishing landscape? And who is the bad art friend, anyway? In this class, we’ll ask these questions and more as we research the world of book publishing, taking a particularly close look at literary controversies. We’ll read literary work, essays, and journalism related to the book business alongside legislation, school board meeting minutes, and court records to understand what the publishing industry is, how it works, and where it’s headed. In addition to performing and writing research, we’ll meet industry professionals and examine publishing documents like profit and loss requisitions, book contracts, and press releases to familiarize ourselves with the language used by publishers, editors, and agents. Finally, we’ll look at the local publishing ecosystem, which includes academic presses, independent publishers, literary journals and zines, book reviewers, bookstores, reading series, and more. All undergraduates at sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Brown, Nate A
• Room: Shriver Hall 104
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

This is an interdisciplinary course blending the study of visual and textual narrative, history, ethics, medicine, and war. Focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries in the US and Britain, we will focus on wartime narratives (memoirs, diaries, letters) written by nurses as well as by psychiatrists, psychologists, field medics, orderlies, ambulance drivers, and doctors. We will examine how politics infiltrates the war hospital and affects care; the changing dynamic of women and men in the medical (and battle) field throughout the twentieth century; the innovations that emerged from battle surgery; humanitarian concerns on the front line where friend and foe are blurred; and more. The critical lenses of gender, race, empire, colonialism, and disability will help us interrogate how medicine supports – or destabilizes! – these concepts in war. Writing projects include a keyword presentation; a short research essay on medicine and the military during World War I or the 1920s; a short analysis of a life writing text; a book chat with the instructor; and a final, summative, creative project. All undergraduates at the sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: TTh 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Hartmann-Villalta, Laura A
• Room: Gilman 217
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

Deirdre Cooper Owens argues that the experimental and pioneering work performed on enslaved Black women such as Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy, by Dr. James Marion Sims, who is known as the father of gynecology, has been overshadowed in America’s understanding of American gynecology. In this writing intensive course, we will explore the role of Black enslaved women in the formation of the field of American gynecology. We will examine the writing about enslaved Black midwives, nurses, and Black women whose medical practices and bodies were deemed inferior and flawed yet provided foundational knowledge for white practitioners in the mid-1800s. Potential readings include Deirdre Cooper Owens’ Medical Bondage: Race Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology, Deborah Gray Whites’ Ar’nt I a Woman?, and Marie Jenkins Schwartz’s Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South. Throughout the term, students will conduct their own research and write to combine these conversations with contemporary discussions surrounding Black maternal health, Black midwives, birthing justice, and reproductive justice more broadly. This course will culminate with an academic conference where students will present their research to an audience of their peers. All undergraduates at sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Wright, Lisa E.
• Room: Bloomberg 172
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

An important and exciting platform for academic writing is the academic conference, and in this writing class, we will explore and practice all that goes into putting one together. As a class, we will collaboratively conceptualize, plan, publicize, and host a conference around a broad theme with wide appeal in the humanities. We will analyze and write in genres such as the call for papers, the abstract, the conference schedule, the presentation, and commentary. We will collectively make decisions about aspects of the conference such as themes, keynote speakers, conference format and venue, and invitees. The conference will be held near the end of the semester, where each student in the class will present a paper, and perform other tasks associated with hosting a conference. We will be joined by students from the Humanities Research Writing Lab course, who will present some of their work. After the conference, we will spend class time reflecting on the process and potentially curating a selection of papers to be published as conference proceedings on a public-facing website. This course offers students an opportunity for experiential learning and professional development in the academy, with an emphasis on humanistic disciplines. All students at the sophomore level and above are welcome.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Koullas, Sandy Gillian
• Room: Gilman 75
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/15
• PosTag(s): n/a