Engaging the Polis: August 2008

Our Fall 2008 Semester begins on September 2nd, and I hope to have our blog community up and running by the end of the second week of classes.

Please check back soon for more updates!

Welcome to Engaging the Polis

Engaging the Polis: Rhetoric and Forms of Public Argument was a course offered by the English 201: Intermediate Composition Program at the University of Wisconsin--Madison during the Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 semesters. The team blogs, below, associated with this site were designed and maintained by the students enrolled in the course, and now serve as a repository for student writing in process. The students enrolled in this class proved to be some of the brightest, most dedicated, and innovative I have encountered, and I have left this blog intact as a record of their work. I look forward to the next opportunity I have to teach this couse, or some iteration of it.

The driving force behind designing and using this space was twofold: to write beyond the classroom walls, beyond the so-called ivory tower, and engage an authentic audience AND to not only talk and learn about rhetoric and public engagement as a theoretical construct but to actually act as civic participants.

As such, you are invited and encouraged, as you read, to respond to writers in this community, to become a part of the community; after all, there is nothing more important in thinking and writing than exchanging ideas with an audience, and "there is nothing more dangerous to an author as silence" (Samuel Johnson).

Engaging the Polis

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Getting Started

Welcome to Engaging the Polis

Spring 2009 Cohorts

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