126: Community-Engaged Writing

English 126: Community Engaged Writing serves as an introductory overview to writing for academic and non-academic communities in a stance of self-reflection, humility, and respectful listening.  Through collaboration with the Edward Ginsberg Center, the class will collaborate with a community partner and practice applied, community-engaged writing. 

Learning Goals for English 126:

1. Explore and identify examples of personal values, beliefs, and social identities influencing learning, decisions, and actions, including cultural and epistemological values.
2. Understand and critique the power and privilege embedded in the practices, values, and ways of knowing in U.S. academic culture, including academic writing genres.
3. Examine and produce non-academic writing genres at the service of a community in order to understand and value different ways of knowing.
4. Read deeply, sympathetically, and critically. Develop sympathetic, respectful dialogue with a range of perspectives and apply sympathetic rhetoric in community contexts.
5. Through the practice of cultural and personal humility, craft respectful questions and dialogue; listen to others in order to understand if and how the needs, goals, perspectives, interests, etc. of all group members are being addressed in the group’s decision-making and activities.
6. Use writing to develop reflective practices through reflective writing genres.  Both in the course and beyond it, understanding how personal decisions contribute to the overall care, well-being, or positive functioning of individuals, groups, organizations and communities that are a part of one’s life.
7. Form an equitable relationship with a community partner, by understanding root causes and systems that create inequalities in society and acknowledging power dynamics.
   

Contact

Emily McLaughlin

Lecturer II

Email:  emilymcl@umich.edu