Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence | Open SUNY Textbooks

Writing in College is designed for students who have largely mastered high-school level conventions of formal academic writing and are now moving beyond the five-paragraph essay to more advanced engagement with text. It is well suited to composition courses or first-year seminars and valuable as a supplemental or recommended text in other writing-intensive classes. It provides a friendly, down-to-earth introduction to professors’ goals and expectations, demystifying the norms of the academy and how they shape college writing assignments. Each of the nine chapters can be read separately, and each includes suggested exercises to bring the main messages to life. Students will find in Writing in College a warm invitation to join the academic community as novice scholars and to approach writing as a meaningful medium of thought and communication. With concise discussions, clear multidisciplinary examples, and empathy for the challenges of student life, Guptill conveys a welcoming tone. In addition, ...

Material Type: Textbook, Unit of Study

Author: Amy Guptill

Writing in Knowledge Societies

The editors of Writing in Knowledge Societies provide a thoughtful, carefully constructed collection that addresses the vital roles rhetoric and writing play as knowledge-making practices in diverse knowledge-intensive settings. The essays in this book examine the multiple, subtle, yet consequential ways in which writing is epistemic, articulating the central role of writing in creating, shaping, sharing, and contesting knowledge in a range of human activities in workplaces, civic settings, and higher education. Writing in Knowledge Societies helps us conceptualize the ways in which rhetoric and writing work to organize, (re-)produce, undermine, dominate, marginalize, or contest knowledge-making practices in diverse settings, showing the many ways in which rhetoric and writing operate in knowledge-intensive organizations and societies.

Material Type: Textbook

Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies: Contemplative Writing Pedagogy

In Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies, Christy Wenger argues for the inclusion of Eastern-influenced contemplative education within writing studies. She observes that, although we have "embodied" writing education in general by discussing the rhetorics of racialized, gendered, and disabled bodies, we have done substantially less to address the particular bodies that occupy our classrooms. She proposes that we turn to contemplative education practices that engages student bodies through fusing a traditional curriculum with contemplative practices including yoga, meditation, and the martial arts. Drawing strength from the recent "quiet revolution" (Zajonc) of contemplative pedagogy within postsecondary education and a legacy of field interest attributable to James Moffett, this project draws on case studies of first-year college writers to present contemplative pedagogy as a means of teaching students mindfulness of their writing and learning in ways that promote the academic, rhetorical work accomplished in first-year composition classes while at the same time remaining committed to a larger scope of a writer's physical and emotional well-being.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Christy I. Wenger

You, Writing! A Guide to College Composition

This text is meant to be used in any first year College Composition class or as a general guide to college writing. The book focuses on writing as a process, not a product. The goal is to help students discover their own writing process, trying out different methods and strategies to find what works best for them.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Alexandra Glynn, Amy Jo Swing, Kelli Hallsten-Erickson

American Women's Literature, 1847 to 1922

LibriVox recording of a collection of 20 short stories and long-form poetry by American women writers. (Summary by BellonaTimes) Includes selections from Mary E. Wilkins, Kate Chopin, Louisa May Alcott, Alice Dunbar, Willa Cather, Lola Ridge, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Fannie Hurst, Zitkala-Sa, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle, Elinor Wylie, Lucretia P. Hale, Edna Ferber, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Lydia Maria Child, Sara Teasdale, Susan Fenimore Cooper, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. For further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording. For more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit LibriVox.org. Download M4B (168MB)

Material Type: Reading

Authors: Alice Dunbar, Amy Lowell, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edna Ferber, Elinor Wylie, Fannie Hurst, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hilda Doolittle, Kate Chopin, Lola Ridge, Louisa May Alcott, Lucretia P. Hale, Lydia Maria Child, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins, Sara Teasdale, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Willa Cather, Zitkala-Sa

Argument & Critical Thinking

In this learning area, you will learn how to develop an argumentative essay and stronger critical thinking skills. This learning area will help you develop your arguments, understand your audience, evaluate source material, approach arguments rhetorically, and avoid logical fallacies. Here, you’ll also learn about evaluating other arguments and creating digital writing projects related to your argument.

Material Type: Module

The Black Arts Enterprise and the Production of African American Poetry

The outpouring of creative expression known as the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s spawned a burgeoning number of black-owned cultural outlets, including publishing houses, performance spaces, and galleries. Central to the movement were its poets, who in concert with editors, visual artists, critics, and fellow writers published a wide range of black verse and advanced new theories and critical approaches for understanding African American literary art.

Material Type: Reading, Textbook

Author: Howard Rambsy II

British Literature I: Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century and Neoclassicism

The University of North Georgia Press and Affordable Learning Georgia bring you British Literature I: From the Middle Ages to Neoclassicism and the Eighteenth Century. Featuring over 50 authors and full texts of their works, this anthology follows the shift of monarchic to parliamentarian rule in Britain, and the heroic epic to the more egalitarian novel as genre. Features: Original introductions to The Middle Ages; The Sixteenth Century: The Tudor Age; The Seventeenth Century: The Age of Revolution; and Neoclassicism and the Eighteenth Century Over 100 historical images Instructional Design, including Reading and Review Questions and Key Terms Forthcoming ancillary with open-enabled pedagogy, allowing readers to contribute to the project This textbook is an Open Access Resource. It can be reused, remixed, and reedited freely without seeking permission. Accessible files with optical character recognition (OCR) and auto-tagging provided by the Center for Inclusive Design and Innovation.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Bonnie J Robinson, Laura Getty

British Literature Through History

This is an OER textbook with historical background on many great works of British literature, from the Anglo-Saxon period through the twentieth century. It contains links to free online versions of the texts, but the actual texts are not included in this book.

Material Type: Textbook

Celebrating women’s writing: the pen in their hands

This collection presents a small, miscellaneous set of resources related to women's writing and writing women.

Material Type: Interactive, Reading

Composition and Literature

This book is divided into two parts. Part I is a Composition Handbook designed to teach students the components of the writing process and the conventions of various forms of school and college writing assignments. Part II is an Anthology of Literature designed to help students read actively, analyze, understand, enjoy, and appreciate stories, poems, and plays by a diverse and inclusive group of exceptional writers.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Derek Soles, James Sexton

DALA Digital American Literature Anthology

The Digital American Literature Anthology is a free, online textbook that surveys American literature from its beginnings to the early twentieth century. It is available in multiple digital formats, though specifically designed for tablets, laptops, and e-readers. The textbook has links to unit introductions, and multiple supplemental online resources.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Michael O'Conner

Dickens in Context

These resources will allow you to investigate the key themes of Dickens's novels alongside original source material from the British Library. Literary manuscripts, newspapers, letters, workhouse menus and other collection items will help students open up the social, cultural, and political context in which Dickens was writing. This website includes performances by Simon Callow and discussions by Professor of English, John Mullan, filmed at the Charles Dickens Museum, London.

Material Type: Reading

Author: British Library

Discovering Literature: 20th century

Discovering Literature brings to life the social, political, and cultural context in which key works of literature were written. Enjoy digitized works from the British Library's collection, newly commissioned articles, short documentary films and teachers’ notes. Explore the ways in which key 20th-century authors experimented with new forms and themes to capture the fast-changing world around them.

Material Type: Reading

English Composition 2

Composition 2 is an expository writing course requiring more advanced writing skills than Composition 1, yet reviewing and incorporating some of the same skills. This course teaches research skills by emphasizing the development of advanced analytical/critical reading skills, proficiency in investigative research, and the writing of persuasive prose including documented and researched argumentative essays. A major component of this course will be an emphasis on the research process and information literacy.

Material Type: Full Course, Textbook

English Literature: Victorians and Moderns

English Literature: Victorians and Moderns is an anthology with a difference. In addition to providing annotated teaching editions of many of the most frequently-taught classics of Victorian and Modern poetry, fiction and drama, it also provides a series of guided research casebooks which make available numerous published essays from open access books and journals, as well as several reprinted critical essays from established learned journals such as English Studies in Canada and the Aldous Huxley Annual with the permission of the authors and editors. Designed to supplement the annotated complete texts of three famous short novels: Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, each casebook offers cross-disciplinary guided research topics which will encourage majors in fields other than English to undertake topics in diverse areas, including History, Economics, Anthropology, Political Science, Biology, and Psychology. Selections have also been included to encourage topical, thematic, and generic cross-referencing. Students will also be exposed to a wide-range of approaches, including new-critical, psychoanalytic, historical, and feminist.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: James Sexton

Freedom's Story: Teaching African American Literature and History

The National Humanities Center presents this collection of essays by leading scholars on the topic of Freedom's Story: Teaching African American Literature and History. Topics include the effect of slavery on families, slave resistance, how to read slave narratives, Frederick Douglass, reconstruction, segregation, pigmentocracy, protest poetry, jazz, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and more.

Material Type: Reading

Great Writers Inspire: Emily Dickinson

Great Writers Inspire presents an illuminating collection of Emily Dickinson resources curated by specialists at the University of Oxford. It includes audio and video lectures and short talks, downloadable electronic texts and eBooks, and background contextual resources.

Material Type: Reading

Great Writers Inspire: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Great Writers Inspire presents a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald resources curated by specialists at the University of Oxford. It includes downloadable electronic texts and ebooks, and background contextual resources.

Material Type: Primary Source, Reading

Great Writers Inspire: Geoffrey Chaucer

Great Writers Inspire presents an illuminating collection of Geoffrey Chaucer resources curated by specialists at the University of Oxford. It includes audio and video lectures and short talks, downloadable electronic texts and eBooks, and background contextual resources.

Material Type: Lecture, Reading