Course Description
Study of writing as transformative practice in incarcerated education programs and the role that democratic access to higher education plays in self and societal awareness. Students collaborate to create open access course materials/scholarship exchange with incarcerated learning communities.
Athena Title
Writing for Social Justice
Non-Traditional Format
Course includes a service-learning project during the semester that either employs skills or knowledge learned in the course or teaches new skills or knowledge related to course objectives. Students will be involved in the planning and implementation of the project(s) and may spend time outside of the classroom working with an incarcerated student population. Students will be engaged in the service-learning component for approximately 25-50% of overall instructional time.
Prerequisite
ENGL 1102 or ENGL 1102E or ENGL 1103 or ENGL 1050H or ENGL 1060H
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course explores concepts of social equity in relation to academic access through direct engagement with Georgia state prison education curricula. In this course, students will be asked to consider: What is education and how does it translate to personal freedom? How does writing foster classroom communities, and how does shared knowledge acquisition enhance individual scholarship? How does cross community collaboration foster self and societal awareness within community members? How can writers contribute to others’ learning processes through a reflection on their own? Writing assignments may include researched essays on topics of prison education reform alongside traditional academic topics such as literary, learning, and rhetorical analyses. Writing generated in the class will develop into publishable components of a cooperatively constructed course reader to be made available to incarcerated classrooms in the north Georgia area. Course readers will be compiled from student research and writing, faculty and student interviews, and collaborative learning assignments with incarcerated students. This course is a part of long-term scholarly exchange between UGA and Georgia’s incarcerated community. Goals and Objectives • Develop writing, research, and rhetorical skills with a focus on writing about, for, and with incarcerated education communities • Apply rhetorical knowledge by analyzing texts published by, for, and about incarcerated communities • Practice writing in a variety of genres, including personal narrative, bibliography, research papers, articles/book chapters, professional reports/correspondence/proposals, brochures, and multimedia texts • Create texts using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished product • Demonstrate the ability to constructively critique the work of others by providing feedback in peer review and workshop sessions • Work with community partners on written texts that will serve their needs and complete service hours with community organizations • Develop metacognitive skills by doing critical analysis of work done in the course and experiences with community partners
Topical Outline
The course is structured around a variety of writing projects, such as: • Community Analysis • Literary Analysis • Faculty Interviews/Pedagogical Research • Cooperative Book Chapter Writing and Editing • Cross-Community Peer Review and Editing • Service-Learning Project(s) • Final Course Reader Construction with Individual Reflective Analysis