Course Info
- Room: Gambrell 123
- Day/Time: M 5:50-8:35
- Professor: Byron Hawk
- Email: byron [dot] hawk [at] gmail [dot] com
- Office hours: HUO 316, MW 2:45-3:45 & 5:15-5:30
Description
This course provides an historical and theoretical introduction to professional and technical writing as a discipline with an emphasis on pedagogy. We'll inspect the rise of professional writing against the backdrop of rhetoric and composition as a scholarly field with a focus on key issues such as usability-design-users, genre analysis and rhetorical situation, networks-organizations-documentation, rhetorical ethics, and workplace ethnography. The course is conceptualized as seminar and practicum, challenging students to probe the theoretical issues being presented and applying them to pedagogical contexts to develop their own syllabi and assignments. These tasks will include: writing short weekly responses; developing assignments with resources to be presented to the class; producing a syllabus for an undergraduate class; writing a final paper that explains the research and theories behind the syllabus and its assignments.
Course Goals
Basic goals for the course are to:
- provide students with an introduction to professional writing as a disciplinary field,
- create a collaborative context for presenting and discussing pedagogical approaches,
- give students opportunities to apply research to the production of assignments and syllabi.
Texts
Required:
Bridgeford, Tracy, ed. Teaching Professional and Technical Communication: A Practicum in a Book. Utah State, 2018.
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[A great book for this class. Purchase a copy from Amazon. I'll provide a PDF of the intro for Week 1.]
Klein, Michael J., ed. Effective Teaching of Technical Communication: Theory, Practice, and Application. WAC Clearinghouse, 2021. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/tpc/effective/
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[A relatively new book from which we'll draw various chapters along the way. Also a good book for this class.]
Other Works:
Bibliography of Works by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in Technical and Professional Communication. Last Updated: September 9, 2022
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[Over the course of the semester I'll draw some articles from this list to build into the syllabus.]
Lauren, Ben. Communicating Project Management: A Participatory Rhetoric for Development Teams. Routledge, 2018.
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[A recent work that emphasizes participatory design. We'll look at a chapter or two, which I have in PDF.]
Swarts, Jason. Wicked, Incomplete, and Uncertain: User Support in the Wild and the Role of the Technical Communicator. Utah State, 2018.
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[A recent work that emphasizes users. We'll look at Ch.1, which I have in PDF.]
Spilka, Rachel, ed. Digital Literacy for Technical Communications. Routledge, 2010.
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[A collection that emphasizes technology. We'll use at least one chapter out of this one.]
Spinuzzi, Clay. Tracing Genres through Organizations: A Sociocultural Approach to Information Design (Acting with Technology). MIT, 2003.
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[A classic. Uses genre theory and activity theory in the context of organizational situatedness. We'll use a chapter or so along with other works by Spinuzzi.]
Henry, Jim. Writing Workplace Cultures: An Archaeology of Professional Writing. SIUP, 2000.
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[Another classic of the field. Uses feminist theory and Foucault to develop student workplace auto-ethnographies.]
Johnson, Robert. User-Centered Technology: A Rhetorical Theory for Computers and Other Mundane Artifacts. SUNY, 1998.
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[An old school classic text in the field that situates professional and technical writing in the context of rhetoric and users. We'll do a chapter.]
Grades
I will use this basic grading scale: A (90-95), B+ (85-89), B (80-84), C+ (75-89), C (70-74). Grades will be assessed once the final portfolios are submitted. See Writing for assignments and percentages.
Attendance
This is a small seminar course, so it's important to attend and be prepared to discuss the readings and any applications of them. If a student needs to miss a class, please submit any work due on that day via email and check the online syllabus for any potential changes in the schedule. In accordance with University policy, anyone who misses 25% of our scheduled class periods (4 of 16) will fail the course, and anyone who misses more than 10% (2 of 16) may receive a grade penalty.
Office Hours
I will have office hours on MW 2:45-3:45 & 5:15-5:30. In some cases I may have other meetings during that time, so be sure to let me know you are coming. Otherwise, we can schedule another time that is convenient for both of us. I check my e-mail several times daily and Zoom is always an option.
Accommodation
In keeping with the University of South Carolina's commitment to non-discrimination--based on age, race, color, sex, religion, national origin, and sexual orientation--and providing program accessibility for qualified students with disabilities, I am happy to provide reasonable accommodation through the Student Disability Resource Center office. Students wishing to make such arrangements should contact the office at 803-777-6142 or at sadrc@mailbox.sc.edu.