Ten Course Themes

As you're developing your portfolio cover letter, you might consider reflecting on one or more of the following themes of the class:

1. Writing badly.  We've used this phrase to stand in for the idea that sometimes when we follow our words in writing rather than trying to muscle them into obedience, writing can be a mode of discovery and learning.  Frequently, this requires lower our standards enough to get some writing done.
2. Research as conversation.  Knowledge in a field is the product of an on-going conversation among people with authority to speak.  As novices and outsiders, we are obligated to first listen in to what has been said but ultimately to add in some small way to this on-going conversation.  We should extend this conversation metaphor to our reading as well, listening in and talking with sources when we encounter them.  Writing "in the middle" of research can help with this
3. Academic inquiry.  In much school writing, we're taught to figure out what we think before we see what we say.  This leads to the rush to a thesis, nailing things down as quickly as possible.  But this rush to judgment is the antithesis of academic inquiry, whose purpose is discovery.  In academic inquiry we begin with questions, not answers, and in the process try to figure out what we think.
4. Essaying.  A verb that describes the process of writing to find out.   
5. Essay.  A genre that encourages essaying.  Meanings emerge later in an essay rather than in a billboard thesis in the introductory paragraph.  We write essays to find out. We write papers to prove.
6. Narrator.  Strong writers always narrate, even in formal writing.  Readers look for the guiding hand to lead them through the material, and if they sense it's missing, they'll stop reading.
7. Narrative.  The four elements of narrative--time, place, character, and causality--are often used in researched writing to keep readers interested.  We anchor larger questions and ideas to particular people, places, and times, and in this way make concepts and claims less abstract and remote.  
8. Narrative thinking.  Logical thinking is a powerful way to work with larger ideas and concepts by stripping away concern about context. We write about how a problem affects "society." Narrative thinking foregrounds context.  This is how the problem affects this person or this particular community.  
9. Genre.  Genre is not an inert container into which we pour information but a dynamic one.  It changes the information and the information alters the form.  Genre is something we see through, that influences what we see and how we see it.
10. Rhetoric.  Persuasive writing depends on the appropriate balance of ethos, pathos, and logos, and this balance is determined by analyzing one's audience and the writer's purpose.  

The  cover letters are a key part of the portfolio. I encourage you to spend time writing and thinking about your takeaways from the course, including how you've come to understand one or more of these themes.