First-Year Writing Seminar (101-8-3)

Topic

Storytelling

Instructors

Katherine Elizabeth Hoffman
847/491-4565
1810 Hinman Ave., Room #206, EV Campus

Meeting Info

2001 Sheridan Anthro Lab 1410: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

Stories can communicate information or entertain, but they also connect, persuade, and mobilize people. This seminar explores storytelling as communicative practice, individual creation, and anthropological subject. We will look at diverse oral traditions in the US and abroad and personal narratives. Just as importantly, we will study how organizations, governments, and activists use stories to raise awareness, inspire action, shape public opinion, and mislead. Along the way, we'll ask how stories are shaped by power and resistance to it and what stories reveal about identity and community. Students will experiment with crafting their own personal narratives, analyzing those of others, and discovering how narrative connects people across time and space.

Registration Requirements

WCAS first-year students only

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, students will be able to:
1. Read and critically analyze ethnography.
2. Engage with diverse storytelling traditions and their cultural significance.
3. Understand the brain science behind human memory in storytelling.
4. Develop true personal history-based stories and deliver them to an audience.
5. Collaboratively explore storytelling in diverse contexts (for instance, law, healing from trauma, collective identity formulation, NGO advocacy and fundraising, advertising, and propaganda).
6. Participate in class and small group discussion, class exercises, peer reviews, and rewrites of your own work.
7. Develop comfort, confidence, and modesty in presenting ideas, commenting on class readings by experts, responding to others' ideas without fear or favor, and receiving constructive feedback with gratitude, humility, and grace.

Class Materials (Required)

Paper hard copies provided by professor.

Class Notes

Please note that student screens are not allowed in class, and no AI for any part of work/assignments. Bring a notebook, a pen, and the printed readings to class.

Class Attributes

WCAS Writing Seminar

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Weinberg First Year Seminars are only available to first-year students.
Add Consent: Department Consent Required