Expository Writing (105-0-21)
Topic
Travelling in Africa
Instructors
Yuan Chih Yen
Meeting Info
University Library 3370: Mon, Wed, Fri 11:00AM - 11:50AM
Overview of class
Part travelogue, part memoiristic musings, and part photo essay, A Stranger's Pose (2018) traces Emmanual Iduma's travels around the northern and western parts of Africa. Iduma's protean text will ground our conversations this quarter about approaches to Africa and African cultural production as well as our interrogation of borders, race and questions of movement. Along the way, we will also look at journalism, personal essays, theoretical articles and photographic work by writers, thinkers and photographers such as Nanjala Nyabola, Ashraf Jamal, Teju Cole, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Aïda Muluneh and Santu Mofokeng. Throughout the class, we will be asking: what does it mean to see and read Africa? What different modalities of thinking about and understanding of race, borders and mobility do writing and photography offer? What does it mean to be a traveller and to encounter others ethically? At the same time, we will be asking: what does it mean to read critically and to write effectively? You will thus not only learn to cultivate strategies for critically approaching different types of texts, but you will also learn to approach writing as a dynamic process, as a tool for thinking and for communication. In addition to learning how to develop and construct compelling arguments through the effective use of evidence, you and your classmates will learn to support each other by giving and receiving constructive feedback in peer review. While this class will mostly ask you to write in conventional academic genres, I hope that you will leave the class feeling equally equipped to think precisely and to communicate effectively in other professional and/or informal modes.
Class Materials (Required)
1) Emmanuel Iduma. "A Stranger's Pose." Cassava Republic, 2018. 9781911115496
2) Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein. "They Say/I Say": The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. 5th ed. Norton, 2021. 9780393538700