English 1000 both prepares you for and engages you in new writing and rhetorical situations, especially those you will encounter in academic and public contexts. At its core, English 1000 offers you instruction and practice in inquiry, writing as a process, thinking rhetorically, engaging with sources, and giving and receiving feedback. You will learn to ask questions about complex issues, to find ways of investigating those questions, and to shape your findings for a variety of purposes and audiences. You will also practice different ways of approaching writing projects, including ways of gathering and contextualizing sources, taking notes and finding patterns, and producing texts that meet different rhetorical goals.

This course will explore what it means to live in the Anthropocene.  The Anthropocene is a scientific term invented to describe our contemporary ecological moment (and we will spend time learning its definition), but living in the Anthropocene is not merely a scientific definition, but a matter of how we live in the environment now, how it has shaped our past and how it affects our sense of our future.  Readings and assignments will help us to define the Anthropocene, consider different responses to it, explore what it means for us live in it, and research some aspect of it and/or its effect upon some aspect of contemporary life.