“[T]he things that people make, make people” (Miller, Materiality:  An Introduction). 

In this themed composition course, we’ll explore the stories and significance of things.  From toys and tools to technologies and manuscripts, from the handmade to the mass-produced, we’ll consider objects’ intersections with daily lived experience and culture—and how composition and rhetoric enable this exploration.  Indeed, we’ll analyze essays, archives, and images to discover and make meaning of things.

English 401 urges you “to use writing for academic, professional, and personal goals” and to take on “the intellectual and ethical responsibility to construct meaning—to frame interpretations, to explore multiple perspectives, to defend assertions, and to relate the new to the known.”  Exploring writing processes, you will develop strategies for “building” your writing across genres and purposes, producing rich, thorough, innovative essays with a confident voice.