Penn Arts & Sciences Logo
 

Community Writing: Post-COVID University

ENGL 0051.401
also offered as: URBS 0051
instructor(s):
MW 12-1:29pm

The moment seems ripe for assessing and planning for the [post]COVID university. The epidemic has challenged the certainties that undergraduate students may have expected about the role and form of their engagements with the university. This class provides a way to analyze and communicate about this experience, while building the individual and collaborative skills students need to thrive. The course would open with a discussion of short articles on the [post]Covid university and a selection of literature and films set on college campuses (with a focus on underrepresented minorities). Then, in concert with peers at local universities (Lincoln, Drexel, and Temple), students, individually and in groups, would research different aspects of their home institutions in their university archives as well as other sources—the university’s founding, its funding, mission, composition of student body, athletics, libraries, dorms, clubs, history of English (or other majors), Black, LGBTQ, etc. student activism. Students would then translate their research into forms (scholarly essay, white paper, policy proposal, grant proposal, video, podcast, art project, exhibition, etc.) of communication to a clearly identified audience (prospective students, administration, local community, legislature, scholars, etc). Student work for the course would be presented at an undergraduate conference during the subsequent term and students invited to serve as undergraduate TAs for future courses. Assignments will be scaffolded in preparation for a final project.

 

fulfills requirements
Sector 2: Difference and Diaspora of the Standard Major
Sector 6: 20th Century Literature of the Standard Major