Research Seminar (394-DL-20)
Instructors
Megan Griffith Bernard
Megan has been teaching with Northwestern’s School of Professional Studies since 2012. She studied at Trinity University, Indiana University, and earned her PhD in Rhetoric and Public Culture from and Northwestern University. She strives to provide learning opportunities that are relevant, productive, engaging and accessible for all students. She was raised in Colorado and lives in Chicago with her family.
Meeting Info
Online: TBA
Overview of class
"College" is a complicated cultural concept with several dimensions that blur together in our common understanding. College is a site where knowledge is generated and shared, an industry, a symbolic stage of life, and a system for reproducing and marking social stratification. This course will focus on distinguishing those dimensions, diagnosing how those dimensions influence people's engagement in postsecondary education, and critically evaluating current events that activate different elements of those dimensions. Investigating relevant texts will provide students with opportunities to identify patterns in discourse and analyze communication practices in different contexts. Each student will choose one case of their own as the subject of a quarter-long research project. The final major research paper will include both a description and a critique of the discursive patterns and rhetorical strategies present in the selected case.
The course is conducted completely online. A technology fee will be added to tuition.
Class Materials (Required)
Texts may include the following. Visit the course Canvas site or the University bookstore website to confirm materials for the course.
Required: Booth, W.C., Colomb, G.G., Williams, J.M., Bizup, J., and Fitzgerald, W.T. (2008). The Craft of Research (third edition). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Required: Birkenstein, C., and Graff, G. (2016). They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
And Student's Choice of Textbook (also required). See Canvas site or contact instructor for details.
Class Attributes
Asynchronous:Remote class-no scheduled mtg time