Event Recap: WRD Professionalization Panel

Last quarter, WRD”s Student Community Committee hosted a Professionalization Panel for students to hear from WRD graduates who work as professional writers about their lives post-graduation. As Dr. Michael Gallaway, who facilitated the panel shared, “The goal is to talk about what life is like after you leave DePaul and after you have received your degree from the WRD Department, including what kind of things you might be doing and some of the intricacies of professional writing jobs.”  WRD undergraduate and graduate students joined the panel on Zoom, which included three speakers: one DePaul Career Center staff member and two

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Updates from WRD’s Equity Committee

This year, the WRD Equity Committee is demonstrating more commitment to the students, staff, and faculty of the department. Through events, a public whiteboard, grant-funded research, and additional projects, the committee is facilitating conversations on equity and striving to make the department more inclusive and diverse. Read on to learn about these ongoing projects. The mission of the Equity Committee is to create practices to embrace and sustain DEI initiatives in the department as a way to respond to the wider WRD community’s exigencies. WRD Equity Committee member Dr. Maria Prikhodko Community Whiteboard During each week of the Winter Quarter,

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Course Spotlight – WRD 285: Truth in Disguise: The Rhetoric of Satire

During the upcoming summer session, Professor Justin Staley will be teaching the online asynchronous course WRD 285-Truth in Disguise: The Rhetoric of Satire. The course will examine satire as a powerful tool for persuasion and change, or, in lieu of that, ridicule. For students planning to take the course, Professor Staley shares, “Likely, you will be entertained, disturbed, pleased, and annoyed. And while the matters we will read about are indeed serious, we will see that it’s not always most effective to take ourselves equally seriously.” Here’s an additional excerpt from course description:  “From Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain to

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Event Recap: The Colorado Environmental Justice Digital Storytelling Project with Dr. Phaedra Pezzullo

In the latest installment of the Writing and Rhetoric Across Borders Speaker Series on April 12, the WRD Department welcomed Dr. Phaedra C. Pezzullo, scholar-activist, University of Colorado-Boulder professor, and Co-Director for the Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change and Just Transition Collaborative. Dr. Pezzullo’s presentation, “Beyond Punchlines, Deficit, and Fatigue: Piloting the Colorado Environmental Justice Digital Storytelling Project,” outlined her work sharing the stories of communities impacted by environmental harm across Colorado, demonstrating storytelling’s power to spark change.  Framing the Presentation: Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice  Opening with a land acknowledgement, Dr. Pezzullo shared her intention to

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Course Recap – WRD 309: Persuasion in the Age of TikTok

Last year, we chatted with Professor Margaret Poncin Reeves about her upcoming course WRD 309: Persuasion in the Age of TikTok. Now that the course has ended, we wanted to share a recap from students’ perspectives as well. Here two students, education major NIna Odishoo and WRD major Miranda Kincer, share their perspective on this fasicnating course.  Why did you decide to take this course? Nina: I decided to take this course to fill a requirement, but I did have the choice to pick a few WRD courses. This one in particular intrigued me due to its title, as I find

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Course Spotlight – WRD 286: Writing with Photographs

This upcoming Autumn Quarter, the WRD Department will be offering another iteration of WRD 286: Writing with Photographs. While the WRD Blog published a post outlining the course when it was taught by Professor Lisa Dush, this additional spotlight looks through the lens of Professor Justin Staley, who will now be teaching the course for the third time. Read on for Professor Staley’s perspective on this exciting class, including how it engages students in essential skills and practices “to understand that world more deeply.” What interests you about teaching Writing with Photographs? JS: Everything. WRD 286 was designed by Professor

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Course Spotlight – WRD 327: Content Writing

In the WRD Department, Spring Quarter is well underway—meaning that course registration for next quarter has begun! WRD will be offering several new courses at the undergraduate level, including WRD 327: Content Writing taught by Professor Tim Elliott. Here, Professor Elliott discusses his plans for the new course, including how it came about, course projects, and major takeaways. To start on the same page, how do you define “content writing” for your students? In this context, content writing means writing about a particular or specialized subject matter area, and then making that specialized subject matter accessible and engaging. Good content

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Alumni Perspectives: 2023 CCCC Convention

The 2023 CCCC Convention, themed “Doing Hope in Desperate Times,” took place in Chicago from February 15-18. Attendees joined the conference from around the country – and world – among whom were several WRD students, alumni, and faculty! WRD alumni Maddy Crozier (BA 2018; MA 2020) and Krissy Wilson (MA 2018) both presented original research at this year’s conference.  Crozier is currently a third-year PhD student in Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics at The University of Tennessee Knoxville, where she teaches first-year composition courses.  Wilson is a Senior Learning Designer at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies and an adjunct instructor at

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Student Perspectives: 2023 CCCC Convention

After several years of online and hybrid conventions, the Conference on College Composition and Communication hosted a primarily in-person convention this year in Chicago. Themed “Doing Hope in Desperate Times,” the 2023 CCCC Convention took place February 15-18. Many WRD students, alumni, and faculty attended, sharing their scholarship in various presentation formats. Here, MAWRD students Nan Denette and Maggie Rothrock offer insights on their convention experiences as first-time attendees and presenters. The Big Picture For both students, their first CCCC Convention yielded exciting ideas and new opportunities. Denette shared, “I was (pleasantly!) surprised how large the conference was, both in

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Community Engagement in WRD Courses

One of the WRD Department’s goals for students is to prepare them, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, to excel in the range of contexts in which they will go on to write. Practicing writing in a variety of contexts and genres, for a variety of audiences, is a key part of this preparation that is embedded into many WRD courses. Community-engaged WRD courses offer students the opportunity to deepen their learning by engaging with real-world audiences, learning more about their local communities, and producing meaningful writing with tangible impacts. Read on for perspectives from faculty in various roles

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