This course challenges traditional conceptions of what a writing class looks like. Through using a variety of media for rhetorical expression—including text, image, and sound—the course aims to teach students how to teach themselves the multimodal tools to more effectively communicate to a broad spectrum of public audiences.
SHARING STORIES
In this course, we will focus on what it means to tell someone else’s story about their quest for refuge. We will be interviewing community members from Rhode Island who are themselves refugees (or children of refugees). Drawing on these interviews, we will compose audio and visual essays to share their stories with the Roger Williams University community (through a curated exhibit at the library) and other public audiences in order to draw awareness to what it means to search for—and to find—refuge. Testing options here.
THE QUEST FOR REFUGE
"Why do people flee persecution and armed conflict? What happens to them once they have left their homes, their communities, their countries?Where does their journey take them? Who helps them, and who harms them along their path and when they reach their destination? How can we act, individually, and collectively, to ease their burden, help them adjust to new lives, and welcome them into our communities?
​
These are important questions of our time as millions of children, women, and men around the globe are displaced by force and fear of persecution, violence, and armed conflict. The numbers are staggering, the stories of loss and suffering tragic; but there are also stories of bravery, resilience, recovery, and rebuilding that need to be shared and celebrated."
Eye Refugee Fence. bykst. 1 Aug. 2016. CC0 Public Domain.
Refugee. nyphotographic.com. June 2016. CC BY-SA 3.0.