In this presentation, I describe how my Writing Chicago course introduced students to rhetorics of the city and supported them as they worked on their own academic, creative, and community-based writing projects. Writing Chicago—an English course taught in Woodlawn in the spring of 2019 in partnership with the Wheaton-in-Chicago program—invited students to (1) analyze the literature of Chicago writers from 1893 to the present, (2) conduct research on Chicago-area discourse communities and sites of writing, (3) take advantage of the rich programming available to Chicago-area writers (e.g., at the American Writers Museum, Poetry Foundation, and Newberry Library), and (4) work on a grant proposal for a local not-for-profit organization. The presentation highlights specific pedagogical strategies for teaching place-based writing and research.
James E. Beitler (Wheaton College)