We have a great lineup for spring 2024!

ENG 641: Rhetorics of Silence and Listening
Online Mondays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Melissa Goldthwaite
CRN: 11813 – Area II

In Rhetorics of Silence and Listening, we will examine—through reading, writing, discussion, listening, and contemplative practices—the complex rhetorical relationships among silence, speech, and writing. We will focus on the multiple ways people both deliver and receive silence in intentional (and sometimes unintentional) ways and consider the rhetorical and even bodily effects of these silences. We will consider a range of practices involving silence and listening: the potentially destructive practices of silencing oneself or others, the potentially empowering effects of choosing to be silent for a particular purpose, and the calming and potentially healing effects of contemplative silences (including the ways in which such silences can help individuals listen more carefully to themselves, to others, and even to texts). We will seek to understand the potential of rhetorical listening across differences for communication, critical thinking, action, and compassion.

 ENG 620: Special Topics in Literature & Culture (The Essay, In Hard Times)
Online Tuesdays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Jenny Spinner
CRN: 11811 – Area I

In this course, we will explore personal essays written about the COVID-19 pandemic and protests against racial injustice that erupted around the U.S. in 2020. While our focus will primarily be American essayists, we will also examine writings by authors outside the U.S., including the work of Murong Xuecun. Additionally, we will dive into the past to read personal essays written during other global health crises, including the bubonic plague epidemic in the 1500s, the 1918 flu pandemic, and the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s. As we will discover, one of the challenges faced by essayists writing in public hard times is how to position their personal experiences amid a public calamity. Writers of color face additional challenges as they navigate the complexities, and pressures, of representational narratives. We will tackle these challenges in our own writing, producing personal writing about (and in) hard times. Course material will include The Best American Essays 2021, Zadie Smith’s Intimations, Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped, and a variety of other essays and podcasts. Assignments will include weekly discussion posts on readings, in-class creative responses to prompts, a historical reference entry and accompanying SlideShare presentation, a personal essay, and a collaborative class interview project on the Class of 2024, the graduating college seniors who missed their high school graduation and spent the first (and sometimes second) years of their college experiences enduring significant covid protocols.

 ENG 681: Writers at Work
Online Wednesdays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Professor Tenaya Darlington
CRN: 11814 – Area III

This course is designed to set your professional life as a writer in motion. Over the course of 15 weeks, you’ll meet a series of working writers from around Philadelphia who will visit our class. During these visits, you’ll have the opportunity to network with professional writers and learn about possible career paths, from public relations to publishing. Each writer’s visit will tie into a different writing assignment so that you can begin building a portfolio of professional work (likely assignments will include: a press release, a review, a book proposal, an edited manuscript, plus a professional resume and bio.) At the end, you’ll develop an online portfolio that you can use as a calling card.

 ENG 560: Rhetoric Then & Now
Online Thursdays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Cristina Hanganu-Bresch
CRN: 10592 – Core Class

Consideration of the history of rhetoric, from the Sophists to the present day, with particular concern both for the ethical considerations involved in persuasive uses of language and for the stylistic choices in developing written work.