Composition I
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​In this first semester composition course, students learn to make the transition from high school writing to college level writing. By deconstructing some of the habits students developed as they were first learning to write in an academic setting—such as defaulting to the five paragraph essay and using falsely elevated but meaningless language—students learn to think metacognitively about their own writing and begin to develop positive habits of mind required for deep, sustained analytical thinking. Students come to see academic writing as a genre that varies from discipline to discipline, but which generally encourages tempered language, use of sufficient evidence, and understanding of its place in a larger scholarly conversation. Students gain an understanding of the relationship between deep and careful reading, clear thinking, and strong writing. Through a mix of complex, theoretical readings by scholars such as W. K. Clifford and Michel Foucault and works by diverse and contemporary authors, students develop their sustained reading skills, and learn to be comfortable in the discomfort of tackling challenging pieces. The course implements current research on grading practices, including contract grading and labor-based grading, allowing students freedom to take risks while maintaining academic rigor.​
Australian Writing & Culture
Australian Writing and Culture (Composition II) is an opportunity for students to understand the relationship between writing and identity: national identity, group identity, personal identity. Using Emily Dickinson’s “tell the truth but tell it slant” approach, the course presents a context with which most American students are unfamiliar, helping students examine the way that myths and realities of national identity are created and sometimes clash and what it would take for a nation to live up to its own ideals. Students read both canonical and outside voices, focusing on marginalized figures throughout Australian history. For example, a unit on Aboriginal voices—including works by David Unaipon, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Sally Morgan and others—allows students to read first hand of the experiences of colonization. As this is the first time that many students are learning about colonization and its concomitant marginalization and oppression, the unit is an opportunity to introduce students to theory by W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, and other theorists of race and colonization.
A student begins his final presentation with an
Acknowledgement of Country
Students also read works that focus on the experiences of women in the Outback, such as Barbara Baynton’s “The Chosen Vessel.” A frequent favorite section of the class includes a viewing of the classic film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, introducing a discussion of queer theory, gender, and the very Australian idea of “mateship.” Students learn and practice a variety of analytical and composition skills, including close reading, theoretical lensing, and scholarly research, and they present their work through written and multimodal projects.
Writing for Architecture Students
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Writing for Architecture Students (WRS 107) is an original class, initially proposed and designed in 2023, based on a real need coming from professional architecture firms: many architects had technical and theoretical knowledge, but could not write up their ideas in ways that were clear and coherent for co-workers, clients, and other members of the architecture and non-architecture communities with whom they had to communicate. Responding to the evolution of the field of architecture from a practice to a field with its own body of scholarly knowledge, the class helps students understand architecture writing as falling along those two lines: the practical, technical, and daily writing of an architect, and the scholarly, research-based, and theoretical writing. Students gain understanding of the way their writing changes depending on audience; they examine and analyze real examples of well- and poorly-written documents particular to their field, especially project descriptions. Students gain deep understanding of the research process, and, as such, see the real relationship between the theoretical and the practical in their field. Students produce analytical essays as well as a multi-part research project culminating in a multimodal presentation.
Oceanic Studies
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Oceanic Studies: Human Life on the Water is an originally designed class for both the First Year Research Seminar and the Da Vinci Honors Program. Using the scholarly field of oceanic studies as its underpinning, the class helps students understand the real, lived experiences of those who went to sea, both voluntarily and under duress. By understanding this space of the world—one not bound by national identity, but so closely tied to nation, colonization, human movements, immigration, and exile—students can begin to understand the constructedness of nation and the ways that the globe is more connected than it is separated. The class focuses on three main oceanic experiences: sailors, enslaved peoples, and refugees.​
Field trip to a Royal Caribbean cruise ship; the First Mate explains how the ship operates on the bridge.
Readings help students hear the real voices of those who went to sea, starting with Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, a text which helps students understand everything from the intersection between commerce and American westward expansion to the need for advocacy of the rights of workers. Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage, as well as selections from Olaudah Equiano and others, helps students to see the time on the ship itself as a horrifying part of the slave trade. Finally, J. Joaquin Fraxedas’s The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera, about the dangerous crossing of the Florida Straits undertaken by three Cuban men via a makeshift raft, is an excellent opportunity for students to engage in the archives available to them here in Miami, and is taught in collaboration with the Cuban Heritage Collection.
The History & Culture of DRAG
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"We're all born naked and the rest is drag" – RuPaul.
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This originally proposed and designed course explores the history of and cultural phenomenon that is drag. Drag is a rich art form that simultaneously embodies fun, joy, and creativity while challenging dominant systems of oppression. Drag means many things to many people, and there is no simple definition of it. By exploring a variety of fictional texts, media representations, and theoretical readings related to drag, the class will help students look into larger questions of identity, community formation, freedom, and cultural norms and their disruption. Some readings will include Roger Baker’s Drag: A History of Female Impersonation in the Performing Arts; Esther Newton’s Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America; Damien W. Rigg’s Priscilla, (White) Queen of the Desert: Queer Rights/Race Privilege; Vasu Reddy’s “How RuPaul works: Signifying and Contextualizing the Mythic Black [Drag Queen] Mother” from The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality in Black Communities; and many other texts and multimedia representations.
Students will explore the ways that identities are policed and what that means for our society, as well as the way that drag has moved into the mainstream. This is an important class to offer at this especially critical time for the LGBTQ+ community globally and nationally, and very particularly in the state of Florida.
American Literature I
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American Literature I is an introduction to American literature from the colonial era to 1865. Through a study of the fiction, poetry, essays, and political documents written over this period, students consider the formation of an American identity and discuss broadly the interplay between writing and national identity. Students engag with contemporary theory about nationhood and consider what it means to be a nation and to be “American”. Primary readings included Bradford, Bradstreet, Paine, Jefferson, Wheatley, Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Hawthorne, Truth, Douglas, Whitman, Melville, alongside many secondary, scholarly readings.
Visit to UM's Special Collections
at the Kislak Center
