ENGL 120A Advanced Composition

SPORTS MATTERS. In this course, we will focus on sports as a cultural phenomenon as a means to develop sophisticated critical reading, thinking, and writing skills.  We will follow up on the centrality of sports and its rhetoric in modern multi-ethnic U.S. culture, allowing us to examine our own assumptions and ideas along with varieties of arguments and questions posed in the readings. We will consider how issues of race, gender, and class are worked out through the rhetoric of sports—for example, in such concepts as the “good sport,” the “level playing field,” or “three strikes.” By the end of the semester, students will have produced 16 polished pages of argument and analysis regarding issues of national identity and international relations portrayed and contested in the arena of sports. Emphasis will be on the writing process and will include drafts and revisions and a variety of analytical essay formats.