WRI 101 [A] Images of Science in Literature and Film (McCulloh)
MWF 10:30-11:20
This course emphasizes writing in connection with the close reading of fictional treatments of science and scientific biography. Students will write five short papers during the course of the semester, four peer reviews, and one research paper. Readings include Brecht's Galileo, Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, Shute's On the Beach, Dürrenmatt's The Physicists, Frayn's Copenhagen, Goethe's Faust, Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Shelley's Frankenstein.

WRI 101 [B] Writing Cultural Criticism on Film (McCarthy)
MWF 10:30-11:20
To untrained eyes, the filmic medium looks "transparent," meaning it presumably functions like a mirror of or window onto a reality simply waiting to be captured. But like literature, film employs its own complex strategies of representation which can be understood in analytic, aesthetic, and cultural/historical terms. Academics often write about film technology like camera work, editing, sound, etc., and how they create a film's messages. Newspaper critics tend to consider narrative concerns, for instance whether a plot is interesting and logically constructed, as well as larger aesthetic concerns about the quality of the acting, directing, screenplay, etc. Academics and some film critics also write about larger cultural issues that play out on film, evident in the meanings of "bromances," and recent comedies about unwanted pregnancy, for instance. This course will introduce students to intellectual voices primarily from the public domain who blend all three approaches-analytic, aesthetic, cultural/historical-in their writing about film. It will guide students to shape their own written responses to film in lucid, perceptive, and original ways.
This course is part of the Writing Cultural Criticism Project.

WRI 101 [C] Writing Marginality (Marshall)
MWF 11:30-12:20
This course will examine the writing of those who have historically been considered "marginal" because of race, class, gender, or other aspects of identity. In reading these texts, we will interrogate what it means to be marginal and what it means to be mainstream; how writing articulates differences and also challenges those differences; how writing can give a voice to those who might otherwise remain unheard and unacknowledged; and most importantly, how writing provides the tools to (re)define our relationship to ourselves and others. Readings may include works by James Baldwin, Dorothy Allison, Lucy Greely, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Amy Tan.

WRI 101 [D] Writing Criticism (Ingram, R.)
MWF 12:30-1:20
This section of WRI 101 considers how writers convey the apparently private experiences of reading, viewing, and listening to a public audience. For example, how do you explain to your roommate why a song is your current favorite? How might you explain this preference differently to a parent or to a professor? As these questions suggest, aesthetic evaluations may begin with individual experiences, but writing effective criticism requires an awareness of varied publics. In 2009-2010, the ancient tension between the private and public natures of criticism seems especially acute, as encounters with art have become more intensely private (think of viewing films on a laptop or listening to music through an iPod) and criticism has become more broadly public (think of the many thousands of reviews available through blogs and on-line retailers). In this context, "Writing Criticism" will

• analyze a range of texts that will inspire much of the course's criticism;
• examine varied models of critical writing;
• study the specialized language of some criticism;
• explore the resources available for critical writes through the library; and
• respond to their classmates' writing, these responses being their own form of criticism.

By May of 2010, students will be prepared to address a variety of writing assignments at Davidson. They will also be more informed producers and consumers of criticism in college and beyond.
This course is part of the Writing Cultural Criticism Project.

WRI 101 [E] Justice and Piety (Shaw)
MWF 1:30-2:20
An examination of the nature of political justice and its relation to religious faith in works by Homer, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Plato.

WRI 101 [F] Nothing If Not Critical (Hillard)
T Th 8:30-9:45
Incisive, erudite, and at times delectably radical, the tradition of cultural criticism in America-ranging from deToqueville and Twain to Didion and Sontag-embraces self-scrutiny as a liberatory and corrective activity, with criticality understood as a necessary component of social and political life in a democracy. As a keyword, critical signals an active and principled questioning of commonplace assumptions and received truths and a sensibility for restless inquiry. But critical also suggest that which demands immediate attention, intervention, or restorative action. In its best moments, cultural criticism is purposive rather than merely oppositional, concerned rather than simply transgressive. The course examines the place of cultural criticism in American rhetoric, with a special interest in the persuasive perils and potentials of such writing. Readings include works by Joan Didion, Jane Jacobs, Susan Griffin, and others.
This course is part of the Writing Cultural Criticism Project.

WRI 101 [G] Crossing Cultures: East and West (Holland)
T Th 10:00-11:15
This course draws its readings from Chinese and Japanese as well as Western literature. The writing assignments will come from many genres, including analysis, the personal essay, a research paper, an autobiographical "spot of time," and some poetry and fiction of your own. The common elements in all of the writing assignments is to express oneself in readable and clear prose that is not bound by the argot of any particular discipline.
This course is part of the Writing Cultural Criticism Project.

WRI 101 [H] Nothing If Not Critical (Hillard)
T Th 1:00-2:15
Incisive, erudite, and at times delectably radical, the tradition of cultural criticism in America-ranging from deToqueville and Twain to Didion and Sontag-embraces self-scrutiny as a liberatory and restorative activity, with criticality understood as a necessary component of social and political life in a democracy. As a keyword, critical signals an active and principled questioning of commonplace assumptions and received truths and a sensibility for restless inquiry. But critical also suggest that which demands immediate attention, intervention, and restorative action. In its best moments, cultural criticism is purposive rather than merely oppositional, concerned rather than simply transgressive. The course examines the place of cultural criticism in American rhetoric, with a special interest in the persuasive perils and potentials of such writing. Readings include works by Joan Didion, Jane Jacobs, Susan Griffin, and others.
This course is part of the Writing Cultural Criticism Project.