Course Descriptions & Fliers

Reading Time: 8 minutes

CRN 91049 | ENGL6524: Theories of Written Communication
Blacksburg | M 4-6:50 | Fall 2024 | Mueller
Our seminar-styled study of theories of written communication this semester will begin with 1) considerations of what theory (θεωρέω, theóreó, 🔭) is and what it does, 2) how/why to engage with the theorizing sojourns and sightings of others, and 3) how this “bloom space” called theory has made us feel, especially as it hands a bouquet of possibilities to writing and rhetoric. Together we will read articles and chapters, book intros, and dissertation intros grouped with selected theoretical antecedents, thereby listening carefully for how theory circulates. Themes among these small sets include -isms and -graphies, root metaphors, academic writing and its alternatives, intellectual genealogies, expertise, rationalism, literacy development, and how we write. Readings will include selections by Gloria Anzaldúa, Mikhail Bakhtin, Deborah Brandt, Michel de Certeau, Manuel DeLanda, Yrjö Engeström, Harvey Graff, Joy Harjo, Cynthia Haynes, Julia Molinari, Beverly Moss, Stephen Pepper, Louise Phelps, Michael Polanyi, Malea Powell, Paul Prior & Jody Shipka, Jenny Rice, Jacqueline Royster, Kathleen Stewart, Eve Tuck & C. Ree, and more. Class activities will include weekly writing, discussion, a substantive project (Theory Deck/Microanthology), a presentation, and a course reflection.

CRN 90655 | ENGL6344: Rhetoric in Digital Environments
Blacksburg | M 4-6:50 | Fall 2023 | Mueller
Setting out broadly and together with questions such as, “What are digital rhetorics now?” and “What, as rhetoric and writing readers, writers, teachers, researchers, and learners might we do with digital rhetorics?”—In ENGL6344, we will inquire into a set of rhetorical concepts, language patterns, and conditions commonly associated with digital environments: hypertext, database-vs-story, avatar/identity, artificial intelligences, attention structures, and dataism. The course is designed to be expansively but manageably kaleidoscopic, seeing/seeking many directions and possibilities at once among the intersecting through lines shared across these concepts; given this, as your own historical, critical, practical, and theoretical interests emerge, you will develop a stepped project to be shaped through shorter then longer episodes, from 100-word reactions, to 2-3 blog carnivals, and, ultimately, to a substantive project. Longer readings will include (in part or whole) Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing (2019),  Byung-Chul Han’s Non-things (2022), Adam Banks’ Digital Griots (2011), Steven Mailloux’s Disciplinary Identities (2006), in addition to shorter selections from Angela Haas, Dànielle Devoss and Jim Ridolfo, Jim Brown, Collin Brooke, Lev Manovich, N. Katherine Hayles, Jorge Luis Borges, Nathaniel Rivers, and University of Michigan’s Gayle Morris Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (https://www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/). No prior experience with practices or studies related to digital rhetorics is required.

A circular pizza topped with magical symbols, marinara, and curiosities.
ENGL2014, Spring 2023; it’s like a round pizza topped with technical-creative symbols, marinara, and curiosities.

CRN 21697 | ENGL2014: Food Writing
Blacksburg | MW 4-5:15 | Spring 2023 | Mueller
Through a series of projects, we will write food into focus, taking into account the descriptive, analytic, and stylistic qualities in food writing done by others–down to the crumbs!, as we plan and carry out writing of our own. Frequently, food writing connects gathering, cooking, and eating with acute sensory experiences, places, memories (and the people inhabiting them), and culture, oftentimes with visual (images) or auditory (sound) accompaniments. Provisional sub-themes include 1) family recipes/interview/multigenerational foodways, 2) the ends of food/preservation/discarding and expiries, and 3) a palimpsest placemat/documentary (layered across multiple sittings). In addition to occasional meals together (the planning of which we’ll work out in more detail later), Food Writing has something to offer everyone, whether your goals are technical, creative, or both. [3 credits; Pathways 1A]  


CRN 90548 | ENGL5054: Composition Theory
Blacksburg | M 4-6:50 | Fall 2022 | Mueller
Generations of writing teacher-scholars in classrooms and in communities have sought to enact the liberatory, democratizing priorities of practical, supportive, and engaging literacy education as a common good sponsored within and sustained in part by U.S. colleges and universities. With this as our opening premise, in ENGL5054 (Fall 2022), we will learn about and trace relationships among several watershed moments and significant progenitors for critical pedagogy. Generative questions for the course include the following: Over the past forty years, how has critical pedagogy (and its offshoots) intersected with the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies? How fully have the goals and priorities of critical pedagogy (and its offshoots) been realized within university writing programs? What have been the most successful applications of critical pedagogy? What are some of its documented complications or setbacks? Readings will include selections from Steven Alvarez, bell hooks, John Dewey, Victor Villanueva, Paulo Freire, Maxine Hairston, April Baker-Bell, Keith Gilyard, Henry Giroux, Ira Shor, Linda Brodkey, Geneva Smitherman, Malea Powell, Asao Inuoe, Frankie Condon and Vershawn Young, Cynthia Haynes, Stacey Waite, Lisa Delpit, Russel Durst, Jonathan Alexander, and James Berlin. Provisional projects include a collaborative timeline (developed using Timeline JS, https://timeline.knightlab.com/), a series of teaching artifacts, dialogic/double-entry reading responses, and a teaching statement.


CRN 20765 | ENGL6364: Research Design in Rhetoric and Writing
Blacksburg | W 4-6:50 | Spring 2022 | Mueller
At multiple points between utter mess and rationally ordered empiricism, research methods and methodologies in Rhetoric and Writing have, since Lauer and Asher’s 1988 volume, Composition Research, bloomed spectacularly. Accepting as a given the discipline’s continuously learning from other research traditions in the social sciences and humanities, as well as beyond the academy, ENGL6364 orients researchers to possible research designs selected and adapted from this expansive constellation. Our inquiring together into research designs will include analysis and application of methods and methodologies; that is, we will notice what others have done, puzzle over choices, and try it out ourselves. The course will key especially on terminologies, disciplinary taxonomies, ethics, and occluded research genres, while extending to its participants experience crafting and revising researchable questions. Such questions—and the provisional rationale accompanying them—will be informed by well-established scholarly accounts, contemporary debates, recent award-winning dissertations, and our own emerging interests and curiosities.


CRN 40307 | ENGL3764: Technical Writing
Online | Winter 2022 | Mueller
In its accelerated, three-week online format, English 3764: Technical Writing will begin to introduce you to theories, issues, and practices of technical communications common in contemporary workplaces, such as general correspondence, proposals, reports, and presentations. From a foundation based on the principles of rhetoric, you will learn to analyze writing situations, consider the needs of your audience, assemble research-based evidence, and develop final documents that are user friendly and visually persuasive. By the time this course is over, you should be able to understand these documents and produce them with greater fluency and confidence.


CRN xxxxx | ENGL3844: Writing and Digital Media
Blacksburg | TBD | Spring 2021 | Mueller [Did not teach; later reassigned]
Just how much range should digital writers exact in their ecologies of practice? In ENGL3844, we will inquire into this question about range—the range you bring, however broad or narrow, as well as the range you seek—by actively making way through a series of digital media projects: a webtext, a video or podcast, and a data visualization. The course itself cares for the ethics of becoming a generalist as distinct from becoming a specialist, as the age-old adage about the fox (who knows many things) and the hedgehog (who knows one big thing) from Archilochus bears out possibilities and challenges for writing and digital media. In combination with the course’s emphasis on making digital media projects, our pursuing expanded and/or refined range(s) will be guided by a series of readings selected and sampled from Wysocki’s “awaywithwords” (2005), Borges’ “Forking Paths” (1941), Epstein’s Range (2019), Banks’ Digital Griots (2010),  and Lupi and Posavec’s Dear Data (2016).

CRN 84445 | ENGL1105: First-year Writing: Introduction to College Composition
Blacksburg | MWF 1:25-2:15 | Fall 2020 | Mueller
Assuming a focus on habits and practices, this writing course progresses through a series of three major projects and culminates with a showcase event on December 7. We’re fully online and mostly asynchronous due to the pandemic; our class will transpire between Canvas and a Google Folder that will be set up for you. The class projects this semester will tie-in with inquiry and analysis focused on formative digital literacies, rhetorical effectiveness profiles, and analyses of specific issues in higher education with the goal of writing a provisional change proposal. 


CRN 19935 | ENGL6364: Research Design in Rhetoric and Writing
Blacksburg | M 4-6:50 | Spring 2020 | Derek Mueller
At myriad points between utter mess and staid empiricism, research methods and methodologies in Rhetoric and Writing have, since Lauer and Asher’s 1988 volume, Composition Research, bloomed spectacularly. Accepting as a given the discipline’s continuously learning from other research traditions in the social sciences and humanities, as well as beyond the academy, ENGL6364 orients researchers to possible research designs selected and adapted from this expansive constellation. Our inquiring together into research designs will include analysis and application of methods and methodologies; that is, we will notice what others have done, puzzle over choices, and try it out ourselves. The course will key especially on terminologies and ethics, while extending to its participants experience crafting researchable questions. Such questions—and the provisional rationale accompanying them—will be informed by well-established scholarly accounts, contemporary debates, and recent award-winning dissertations.


CRN 90863 | ENGL5454: Studies in Theory: Theory & Practice of University Writing Instruction
Blacksburg | W 2:30-5:15 | Fall 2019 | Derek Mueller

N.b. So that it can be offered as a three credit hour course, ENGL5454 is listed in Fall 2019 as a substitute/equivalent for ENGL5004: Theory & Practice of University Writing Instruction. Please note this exception for advising, in relation to programs of study and in consultation with graduate program directors.

ENGL5004 provides an introduction to the histories and purposes of college composition in the U.S., a laboratory for developing into a thoughtful, innovative teacher cognizant of contemporary pedagogical approaches, and a space for studying cultural shifts impacting what literate citizenship—in the academy and elsewhere—looks like now. Consistent with principles at the core of the field of rhetoric and composition/writing studies, the course balances and blends together (i.e., mixing in equal and mutually informing measure) theoretical and practical matters negotiated over several decades by composition researchers, scholars, and practitioners. Required readings this semester include selections from Writing About Writing, Bad Ideas About Writing, Writing Spaces, and several PDFs, all of which are open access or otherwise provided to those enrolled. Students will also gain fluency with the first-year writing curriculum at Virginia Tech as preparation to teach ENGL1105 and/or ENGL1106 in the future. Contact Derek Mueller at dmueller@vt.edu for more information. 


CRN 19102 | ENGL5004: Theory & Practice of University Writing Instruction
Blacksburg | Spring 2019 | Mueller
ENGL5004 provides an introduction to the histories and purposes of college composition in the U.S., a laboratory for developing into a thoughtful, innovative teacher cognizant of contemporary pedagogical approaches, and a space for studying cultural shifts impacting what literate citizenship—in the academy and elsewhere—looks like now. Consistent with principles at the core of the field of rhetoric and composition/writing studies, the course balances and blends together (i.e., mixing in equal and mutually informing measure) theoretical and practical matters negotiated over several decades by composition researchers, scholars, and practitioners. Students will also gain fluency with the first-year writing curriculum at Virginia Tech in anticipation of applying to teach ENGL1105 and/or ENGL1106 in the future.


CRN 40445 | ENGL3764: Technical Writing
Online | Winter 2019 | Mueller
In its accelerated, three-week online format, English 3764: Technical Writing will begin to introduce you to theories, issues, and practices of technical communications common in contemporary workplaces, such as general correspondence, proposals, reports, and presentations. From a foundation based on the principles of rhetoric, you will learn to analyze writing situations, consider the needs of your audience, assemble research-based evidence, and develop final documents that are user friendly and visually persuasive. By the time this course is over, you should be able to understand these documents and produce them with greater fluency and confidence.


CRN 83911 | ENGL1105: First-year Writing: Introduction to College Composition
Blacksburg | Fall 2018 | Mueller
This semester you will gain grounded, practical experience with the conventions of academic discourse. The subject of the course is writing: how effective writers write in all variety of situations, in and beyond college, what successful writing looks like, and how specific practices, strategies, and concepts will aid you in becoming a more flexible, adaptive, and skillful communicator. ENGL1150 is a small, studio-based course, which means you will spend considerable time writing, workshopping drafts, and discussing writing and related concepts with your peers and your instructor. The course progresses through a series of “projects.” We refer to them as projects because they involve a gradual build-up among many different components, much of which will be assembled into a portfolio at the end of each unit and at the end of the semester. The three major projects for the course are 1) Literacy Narrative, 2) Reading Spaces, and 3) Worknets. Each project will accompany an Invention Portfolio–a collection of in-class writing and shorter pieces you prepared as you developed the project. The course portfolio will include a reflective essay that introduces its contents, recounts striking moments of learning and insight, and draws explicit connections between the work of the course and course outcomes.

CRN 52944 | WRTG326: Research Writing (EMU)
Online | Summer 2 2018 | Mueller
In the course of a written research project’s development just how much can its trajectory drift, its shape shift? This section of WRTG326 will introduce enduring tensions in research writing between generating and focusing, between drifting and anchoring to a narrow and well-set purpose, between reading for invention and transitioning from reading to writing. The course emphasizes researchable questions, gathering and annotating scholarly sources, and drafting and revising a research proposal and literature review.