WRTG 3020: Environmental Writing — Spring 2011

Sections 42 and 51

Dr. Rebecca DicksonOffice: Environmental Design 1B76

Section 42: MW 3:00-4:15, Hellems 193Section 51: MW 4:30-5:45, Duane G1B39

Phone: 303/735-4908Office hours: Thur. 11:30-2:30 and by appt.

Mailbox: Environmental Design Room1B62Email:

COURSE OVERVIEW

In this class we will work on developing your writing and communication skills while adding to your rhetorical knowledge. We will investigate the choices speakers and writers make and build on your ability to comprehend and write various forms of academic writing. Our topic for the semester is environmental sustainability: we’ll look at some of the rhetoric involved with environmentalism and consider sustainability issues from various perspectives.You’llsee several documentaries and you’ll read a number of essays on environmental concerns. You’ll write six papers for a grade with multiple drafts of each; I will also ask you to do free writings in which you reflect on the ideas of the course and your own writing and learning process. Through the readings and assignments, you’ll get an idea of the range and possibilities of professional writing while absorbing the vast consequences associated with environmental sustainability. You will be engaging with your colleagues and me regularly, and you’ll frequently do reading quizzes and worksheets on basic writing conventions.

CORE AND OTHER CRITERIA

This course fulfills the Arts and Sciences core curriculum for written communication at CU-Boulder.This course also addresses the key criteria for an upper-division core course as specified by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE) and by the Program for Writing and Rhetoric (PWR).

Rhetorical Knowledge: In this course, we will review and develop your understanding of the power and prevalence of rhetoric. Being rhetorically savvy is useful, for we encounterrhetorical situations and strategies every day in what we hear, read, and see (movies, TV, Internet). And we use rhetorical approaches all the time, even if we don’t know it.As we’ll discover, examining environmental issues is a particularly effective way of understanding the purpose and power of rhetoric.We’ll also considervarious forms of academic writing and writers’ rhetorical choices. We’ll be using three highly regarded Web sites to better understand rhetoric: Silva Rhetoricae, the Purdue University OWL, and the Writing@CSU.

Writing Process. This course offers one of your last opportunities while in college to work intensively on your communication skills and get substantive feedback on your writing from others. By now, you know that good writing requires more than a single draft; it requires thought and revision and, if possible, input from others. Good writing also requires that you understand the rhetorical situation in any writing task.We’ll also consider the abundant writing resources now available through multiple technologies: print, film, the Internet, etc.

Critical Thinking: Reading, analysis, and discussion develop and exercise your critical thinking abilities. Thus we’ll be reading and examining complex issues and considering these issues from multiple points of view. You’ll work on discerning the difference between thoughtful responses and kneejerk reactions, criticism from critique, discourse from ranting, and more.

Conventions.You’ll write various types of academic essays for this course (summary, rhetorical analysis, literature review, grant proposal, and narrative). As you write these papers, we’ll consider the conventions, grammatical and stylistic, of upper-level academic writing.

Effective Communication: Our goal overall is to understand different approaches and possibilities when it comes to writing and speaking, academic and otherwise. At the same time, easy readability and comprehensible meaning are vital, whether you’re writing an email or putting together a press release or giving a presentation before your boss. We’ll work on how to make your writing negotiable and clear, whatever type of writing or speaking you’re doing.

TEXTS

1)Brooke Rollins and Lee Bauknight, eds., Green,(2010)

2) Diana Hacker, A Writer's Reference (Bedford Press, 6th edition)

3) Articles on CULearn

4) Rhetoric Web sites: writing@CSU ( Silva Rhetoricae ( the Purdue OWL (

FILMS

We’ll rhetorically analyze three documentaries this semester. We’ll watch two films in class:Ramin Bahrani’s Plastic Bag (2009) and Aaron Woolf’s King Corn (2007). We’ll also analyze Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. (2008) You are required to see all the films.

WORK and GRADING BREAKDOWN

Film summary 5

Film rhetorical analysis15

How My Future Looks: A Conversation with an Environmentalist project15

Literature review 8

Grant proposal22

Narrative-synthesis paper service learning10

presentation on readings—lead discussion 2

attendance at service learning event 3

reading quizzes, grammar worksheets, and in-class writings10 (averaged)

critiques of your colleagues' papers and general participation 5

attendance 5 (see attendance policy below)

TOTAL POINTS POSSIBLE: 100 points

GENERAL COURSE POLICIESAND PRACTICES

Attendance:If you don’t attend class regularly, you won’t get much from the course and you’ll likely get a disappointing grade. You also are a contributor to the class—your colleagues and I benefit from your presence. So I have an attendance policy: each absence after 3 ABSENCES will drop your attendance score. If you miss 6 times, you will receive a zero for attendance. If you miss 7 times or more, you will receive a zero for your participation score as well (meaning you will lose 10 points). If you are absent, you are responsible for finding out what you missed.

The Workshop Format and the Essays You’ll Write

In this class we will often be working collectively on your papers. You must give me at least two versions of an essay for you to receive a grade on that essay. The only exception to this policy is the narrative on service learning.Please keep all drafts of your papers, especially those with my comments on them; you or I may want to refer back to them. Every paper you hand in to me should be typed, double-spaced, and, if necessary, stapled. No title pages, please—save paper when possible. Feel free to double-side your papers if your printer makes that easy to do.

A writing workshop refers to a group of writers who come together to share and receive feedback on each other’s writing. Workshop participants share ideas in regard tocontent, rhetorical approach, style, grammatical and punctuation matters, and more. As you write the assigned essays for this class, you’ll receive feedback from me.You’ll also read other students’ papers so that you can see the approaches your colleagues are taking to a given assignment. In this way, you’ll learn from each other as writers and as readers. You will write at least two drafts of each paper.

ON PAPERS TURNED IN FOR A GRADE

Papers are due when they are due. If I do accept your unexcused (undocumented) late paper, your grade will drop one full letter for each CU class day it is overdue. You will receive a grade only on the final draft of each paper.

HEADS UP: This class requires some unique extracurricular work.

Early in the semester, you will need to find a professional who is involved in sustainability issues in some way and interview that person. You will be creating some project on this person and/or what you learn from this person. Your task will be to learn what your future might look like as you pursue your own sustainability interests, given your major. Examples of a professional involved in sustainability: a researcher investigating climate change at NCAR, a professor researching global petroleum supplies at CU’s engineering school, the head of an environmental group, the city of Boulder’s environmental officer, a federal government employee looking at resource management or doing GIS projects, etc. There are many of such people in the Boulder area. Find this person early in the semester and start working on this project ASAP.

Please note that the narrative-synthesispaper is a two-part paper that requires that you engage in an outdoor service learning project in which you do something physical to help the environment (e.g., plant trees, do erosion control, pull weeds, etc.) There will be several opportunities this semester to engage in these projects. Please attend one of these or find another event/activity of interest to you (if I don’t suggest the event to the class, run your idea for this activity past me for approval). At the end of the semester, you’ll write a paper—4-5 pages—on the activity that ideally incorporates some of the issues we have discussed or read over the course of the semester. Your task in the narrative-synthesis paper is to connect your extracurricular event to the issues and/or readings we’ve discussed or done for class; you could also connect this experience to your major and intention to be become professionally involved in a job involving sustainability concerns. You’ll be writing this paper in close consultation with another writer in the class who will be assigned to you. The paper is due on Friday, April 29th. Please be looking for events/activities you can do as the semester progresses and share these with the class.

CU POLICIES

Learning Disabilities: If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit to me a letter from Disability Services during the first two weeks of the course so that your needs can be addressed. Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities. Disability Services' letters for students with disabilities indicate legally mandated reasonable accommodations. For more information on this: 303-492-8671, Willard 322, and

Religious Holidays

Campus policy regarding religious observances requires that faculty make every effort to deal reasonably and fairly with all students who, because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments or required attendance. I am happy to comply with this policy. Please let me know if you will miss class because of a religious observance and we will adjust your due dates for quizzes and essays accordingly. See full details at

Classroom Behavior

Students and faculty each have responsibility for maintaining an appropriate learning environment. Those who fail to adhere to such behavioral standards may be subject to discipline. Professional courtesy and sensitivity are especially important with respect to individuals and topics dealing with differences of race, culture, religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender, gender variance, and nationalities.

Electronics: Because the various electronic gadgets that most of us regularly use can be very distracting, please leave your cell phones, pagers, laptops, and other devices with flashing images and disruptive noises stowed in your bag and turned off from the moment class begins until it ends. If you do occasionally use your laptop in class (for taking notes or looking up something for the class), please do not check out your email or non-class related Web sites. And again, please keep your cell phones stowed at all times. Even a quick glance at your latest text message or email account is rude and disruptive. We are a small class and little actions like that will be noticed by many and thus could derail the flow of class activities.

See policies at and at

Discrimination and Harassment

The University of Colorado at Boulder policy on Discrimination and Harassment, the University of Colorado policy on Sexual Harassment and the University of Colorado policy on Amorous Relationships apply to all students, staff and faculty. Any student, staff or faculty member who believes s/he has been the subject of sexual harassment or discrimination or harassment based upon race, color, national origin, sex, age, disability, creed, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status should contact the Office of Discrimination and Harassment (ODH) at 303-492-2127 or the Office of Judicial Affairs at 303-492-5550. Information about the ODH, the above referenced policies and the campus resources available to assist individuals regarding discrimination or harassment can be obtained at

Academic Honesty and CU’s Honor Code

All students of the University of Colorado at Boulder are responsible for knowing and adhering to the academic integrity policy of this institution. Violations of this policy may include cheating, plagiarism, aid of academic dishonesty, fabrication, lying, bribery, and threatening behavior. All incidents of academic misconduct shall be reported to the Honor Code Council (; 303/735-2273). Students who are found to be in violation of the academic integrity policy will be subject to both academic sanctions from the faculty member and non-academic sanctions (including but not limited to university probation, suspension, or expulsion). Other information on the Honor Code can be found at at

The policy for cheating and plagiarism in this course: If I discover that you have plagiarized any part of a paper, you will receive an F for that paper. If 50 percent or more of a paper is plagiarized (e.g., an essay downloaded from the Web or if somebody else writes half or more of your paper for you, for pay or for free), you will flunk the course. I use online plagiarism search engines to detect cheating, and I will report all cheaters, whether they flunk the course or not, to CU’s Honor Code Council. We will discuss cheating and plagiarism in class. If you miss any of these discussions, please see me.

MORE INFORMATION ON THE COURSE

Sustainability, Environmental Conservation, Human Health, and Rhetoric

It is easy to see how the first three items in the list above—“sustainability,” “environmental conservation,” and “human health”—are interrelated. But rhetoric may not appear to fit there. “Rhetoric” is a word with myriad meanings that at first seem difficult to grasp. As Gideon Burton, on his Web site “Silva Rhetoricae,” puts it, “Rhetoric is the study of effective speaking and writing. And the art of persuasion. And many other things.”Burton is spot on—rhetoric involves many things. It has a history of some 2500 years, reaching back to the age of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Though the word has a negative connotation (e.g., “that’s mererhetoric!”), it also has many positive meanings. As a means to study communication methods, it has been a centerpiece of education for more than two millennia.

As you likely learned in your first-year writing course here at CU, in a basic sense a study of rhetoric concerns a study of communication methods that are spoken or written or recorded in some way. There is a “what” that a piece of writing or communication conveys—this refers to what is being said, the content. But there is also a “how” to any communication. Rhetoricalstudies look at how effective a given method of communication is. If you took a first-year writing course here at CU, you might remember discussions about appeals to one’s audience—you might have learned that when writing persuasively, one can use an emotional appeal or a logical or fact-based appeal or an authoritative or reputation-based appeal (pathos, logos, and ethos). In your first-year class, you likely investigated the needs and expectations of different audiences and considered those issues as you wrote your papers.

In this upper-level sustainability-based course, we’ll be examining rhetoric from a more particular perspective—we’ll examine some big rhetorics at work. Let’s start with some basics about our environment. As far as humanity currently knows, there is only one fit place in the universe for human beings to live, and we call it Earth. Even if there are multiple planets where we could live, any of those planets are impossibly far away given humanity’s current technology. So we have one home, and yet, as any Environmental Studies major knows, we humans are not kind to our Earth. Most animals understand the importance of not fouling their nests, but many humans have forgotten this. Seventy percent of Americans say that they are concerned about the health of the environment, and yet year after year we pollute and poison and destroy habitat on our finite planet. And even though we know—personally, viscerally, and scientifically—that our world is getting hotter, year after year climate change legislation does not happen in any meaningful way nationally or internationally. Why? In part because some very powerful entities are using rhetoric to block change, and this rhetoric is so smart and effective that to many environmentalists, it feels as though we are running in place.

There is no better way to understand and analyze the power of rhetoric than by looking at the reams of print and ads and Internet sites and media reports in regard to sustainability issues. King Coal and King Oil and King Corn prevail, year after year, even though we know the dangers and drawbacks of each. And every American is dependent on these industries to some degree. This is no small issue. Fossil fuels are so central to the American and global economies that it’s easy for the fossil fuel industries to rhetorically attack any attack on fossil fuels. Thus the conversation in regard to global energy is big on rhetoric. Rhetoric involves efforts at persuasion, and sometimes a rhetoric can be very successful.When it is, rhetoric can become a vital part of enculturation. Consider these sayings, each created by an advertising company working for a large corporation:“You deserve a break today.” “Supersize me.” “Where’s the beef?” “It’s the real thing.” Another example: we all expect that gasoline will be cheap in the US and it should be that way, right? And each of knows how to drive and we all know that your car is a symbol of your personal success. Who taught us this? Our parents, our movies, our TV shows, our TV ads, our politicians, our bosses and corporate CEOs, our teachers, our traditions, our national documents, our grandparents, our friends, our neighbors. The importance of cars in America is something we just know, and we’ve known it since we were toddlers.That’s a mark of a powerful rhetoric: when you can’t pinpoint how you “know” something that everyone around you “knows” as well, likely some powerful cultural rhetoric is at work. (Among other things—cars are also convenient, useful things).