Who can take Popular Writing?
Any JMU student who has completed GWRTC 103 (formerly GWRIT 103) or its equivalent. Whether you’re a WRTC major, minor, or you’re just looking for another opportunity to explore your writing, Popular Writing is for everyone.
What is Popular Writing?
Simply put, Popular Writing is writing aimed at a general audience. That includes everything from reviews to comedy to blogs to profiles, and much more. Combining theory and practice, creativity and function, the course will provide an introduction to the field of Popular Writing. Following a workshop format, in which students will regularly read and respond to each other’s writing, the class will emphasize writing practice—which means by the end of the semester, you will have developed your own portfolio.
When and where will the class take place?
In the spring of 2010, section 5 will be offered from 9:05 to 9:55 a.m. in Harrison 2104, and section 3 will be offered from 12:20 to 1:10 p.m in Harrison 2111, both on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Why take Popular Writing?
WRTC 295 teaches the valuable skills of versatility, creativity, and craft. And for those of you graduating in the foreseeable future, a strong collection of writing can be an impressive tool for publishers, employers, and grad schools.
Course Description
The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever.
—Ezra Pound
One of the implicit values of academia is academic writing. As scholars, we depend on scholarly sources, as well as institutional, industrial, and government expertise. We tend to follow the lead of the poet Ezra Pound in our judgment of popular writing as “common,” second-class, disposable. In a university setting, the popular is largely unpopular.
And yet, perhaps more than ever before, we are surrounded by writing aimed at popular audiences. Contrary to Pound’s formula, Popular Writing—the writing we encounter everywhere from the grocery check-out to our televisions to the blogosphere—has its own set of rhetorical considerations, its own language of expertise. And with the growing presence of the Web, Popular Writing is also a growing career field.
Introduction to Popular Writing provides a theoretical and practical overview of this field. Students will analyze a broad range of texts, including advertisements, newspapers, magazines, popular fiction, and scripts, with the goal of increasing their awareness of a broadly defined rhetoric that emphasizes audience consideration. They will also study the impacts of media, technology, and popular culture on the field. At the same time, students will produce their own writing, developing a portfolio that represents diverse popular genres.
Required Texts
Johnson-Sheehan, Richard and Charles Paine, eds. Writing Today, Brief Edition. Longman, 2009. (ISBN: 978-0205619566.)
McQuade, Donald and Robert Atwan, eds. Popular Writing in America: The Interaction of Style and Audience. New York: Oxford, 1993. (ISBN 978-0195073089.)
For more information, please e-mail Professor Eleanor Henderson at henderea@jmu.edu. And spread the word!
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