Writing Intensive Courses

In order to fulfill the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree, students beginning Eckerd College in Fall 2024 must pass (with a C-or better) TWO courses designated as writing intensive course. To see each semester's writing intensive course offerings, go the Registrar's Course Schedules, choose your desired semester/term, select "Writing Intensive Course" from the Specialized Search and search. 

All composition courses fulfill the Writing Intensive Course requirement; only composition courses (those with a CO designation) fulfill the requirements that all students who submitted inadequate portfolios must take a composition course in order to resubmit. 

Composition Courses

CO 121: Writing Processes

As the title of this course suggests, the primary focus of Writing Processes is the development of effective, staged responses to all kinds of writing assignments.  This semester we will explore, learn, and practice the several steps in the production of written work: invention, drafting, revising, proofing, editing, and presentation.  We’ll study elements of essays, such as the thesis, focus, paragraphs, and use and documentation of sources.  We will also work with some commonly employed composition schemes including narrative, definition, and comparison/contrast.  As a result, you will become more aware of and able to choose appropriately the strategies best suited to a variety of college-level writing assignments, and you will become more proficient at producing quality writing under deadlines.

CO 122: Analytic and Persuasive

This writing course serves as an introduction to rhetoric—the civic art of effective communication and critical thinking. As a civic art, rhetoric is a key means of negotiating social conflict among citizens who hold sometimes radically different values and beliefs. Rhetoric trains us to do the following things we already do with greater awareness of how (and how well) we are doing them: reasoning with greater deliberation and imagination; analyzing rigorously and evaluating charitably competing claims and assumptions about ethical and other matters; reflecting earnestly on our own assumptions and commitments; empathizing more fully with others, especially in an effort to understand better not only our common ground but also our differences; and discovering and testing ways in which we might more hospitably share the world with others, if only to counter ignorance and deception and to prevent unproductive hostility and unnecessary violence. 

Through careful analysis and construction of arguments, you will hone your critical thinking skills while practicing various forms of academic and public writing. Much of the course focuses on researching, analyzing, and evaluating others’ arguments; yet, you will also craft your own arguments on relevant and controversial social and ethical issues. In effect, ours is a semester-long process of inquiry, collaboration, and debate, with numerous occasions for reflection and expression, and numerous opportunities to refine your writing while adapting it for different purposes and audiences. 

CO 201: Writing in the Garden

In this reflective service-learning course, the garden is our teacher and classroom. Through reading, writing, and discussion, we consider questions such as: What do we learn about the natural world, the community, and ourselves through gardening? What is service-learning? How do our readings and our work in the garden complement and/or challenge one another? What does it mean to know a garden through discourse? Through the body? 

CO 200E: Writing the Environment

This course explores some of the ways, through language and imagination and experience, we make sense of the natural world. Together, we will examine the works of storytellers and scholars who, in diverse ways, “write the environment” into being, shaping their beliefs, observations, and experiences into stories and arguments and meditations—narratives of exploration and inquiry rich with insight, beauty, mystery, wonder, adventure, and controversy, about issues ranging from animal rights to outdoors exploration. 

We examine a number of works (books, short stories, newspaper editorials, scientific journal articles, and non-fiction essays)—all of which we will use to raise questions about the natural world and our relationships with the environment. We will examine these texts (films included) critically—that is, closely, analytically—by interrogating what their authors say, how they say it, what they might hope to communicate and with what effects, how readers might respond and how readers might be changed. These texts will serve also as models for your own writing: forms to imitate, from their overall structures down to their sentences, words, and even punctuation. 

CO 202: Writing for Social Change

A reflective service learning course, Writing for Social Change pairs students with local non-profits in the researching and writing of a grant proposal. Students will write a "letter to Uncle Dan" to explore persuasive techniques when engaging with dissenting viewpoints and create a social media portfolio.  

CO 203E: Writing Ecological Resilience

Writing Ecological Resilience explores the ways in which “resilience” is defined, how the process of defining it has significant, tangible impacts on the environment we inhabit, and how definitions continue to change. We will also examine applications of the term “resilience” in media, the natural world, and rhetoric. Tracing and interrogating examples of “resilience” through environmental programs, including success and failures in Florida, uncovering thinking and practice, all while sampling a variety of approaches, will broaden our understanding of the relationships between language, rhetoric, and the environment. 

Students will compose two papers during the course of the semester, each of which can be used to satisfy requirements of The Writing Portfolio. The first paper we will write will trace the history of the term “resilience” by asking the research question “How have definitions of ‘resilience’ changed over time?” This research paper will satisfy the objectives of the Paper Three portfolio requirement. Lastly, students will choose an environmental initiative or project proposed or enacted within Florida (currently or historically), determining whether it qualifies as “resilience.” This argumentative paper will satisfy the objectives of the Paper Two portfolio requirement. This course also fulfills the E-perspective. 

CO 233: Environmental Rhetoric

CO 263: Professional Writing

Professional writing involves effectively communicating technical information to diverse audiences, each with varying objectives and levels of expertise. This course blends practical insights and theoretical foundations of professional writing, delving into the field’s practical and conceptual aspects while addressing the ethical considerations that arise. 

In this course, students analyze an array of communication strategies and writing genres pertinent to specific professional domains. Students collaborate to produce professional writing products, including emails, memos, and proposals. The course culminates in a digital professional writing portfolio where students can display their skilled writing. Ultimately, the course equips students to adeptly respond in writing to intricate rhetorical situations, priming them for joining their future professional communities. 

CO 328: Research, Writing, and Technology

This course helps students develop the ability to negotiate different digital spaces as a writer even as it challenges them to critically engage with them. 

Winter Term Courses

Satire and the Art of Social Protest 

This course explores how people employ language in creative and potentially humorous ways to make often intensely serious arguments about society, culture, and politics. Satire is a form of expression that seeks often to expose ignorance and injustice, sometimes by raising taboo subjects, and sometimes by pushing the boundaries of taste and decorum. Still, many believe that it’s an invaluable tool for promoting and protecting democracy, by provoking thought and even disagreement, and by keeping people honest. 

Satire has a rich history, ranging from classic literary works by Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift to popular television shows like South Park and The Daily Show. Our chief goals in this course are to explore satire as a mode of civic discourse while honing your academic writing and critical thinking skills. Using a variety of mostly contemporary works, we will examine how irony, parody, sarcasm, and wit can be crafted into a powerful art of social protest. You will also create your own satires. My hope is that by studying and practicing the art of satire, we may more creatively engage in critical thinking, developing empathy for others and finding new ways to see the world around us—always good for our democracy. This course serves as a composition course; it fulfills also a Humanities area requirement.