Q: What would your dream WRD or NMS course look like?

Did you know Rutgers University offers students a class on Queen Bey? “Politicizing Beyonce” explores the boundaries / non-boundaries between American race, gender and sexual politics, but if this class wouldn’t do it for you, what would your dream course look like? Do you want to learn more on corporate Digital Asset Management (DAM)? Or how about spending 10 weeks exploring rhetoric, sports, and gender? As always, leave your answers in the comments or on FB and we’ll post them next week.

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Narratives, Netflix, and Newsweek

Two of our articles this week focus on teaching writing.  In different ways, the pieces advocate for more complex and challenging goals as a teacher — problematizing the role of a writing teacher and refusing to settle for simple solutions.  We’ve also found a lighter read:  The Atlantic’s roundup of new apps that hope to become the “Netflix of reading”.  Enjoy!

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Good Things from Chicago Public Schools, The Worst in Professional Writing, and Obama’s Rhetoric of Education

This week’s roundup of articles collectively considers the question ‘How can we do well in writing, rhetoric, and discourse?’  The New York Times article shares a tutoring success story in Chicago, while Stephen Lurie’s piece in The Atlantic argues that Obama’s vision of education reform has proven to be empty rhetoric thus far.  Each piece asks its readers to consider the efficacy of words, rhetoric, and  discourse.  On a lighter note, we found a list of the worst examples of professional writing in 2013 — read at your own risk!

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Grant Writing Class Aids Nonprofits

Students from the WQ2013 course WRD 560: Grant Writing wrote grant proposals that resulted in three local non-profit organizations receiving $33,500 in awards. WRD 560, taught by Antonio Ceraso, Assistant Professor in WRD and Director of the MA in New Media Studies, focuses on the genre of the grant proposal—both the written documents themselves, and the genre as a particular response to the emergence of broader social forms of giving or contribution. As part of their coursework, students partner with local organizations to apply their grant writing skills and, ideally, to help these organizations to secure grants.

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