Course Description

Writing and writers circulate across the globe in materially and virtually more than ever before, necessitating the negotiation of complex and shifting audiences and contexts. Writers today must think about how their writing will work across modes, technological interfaces, and international borders as they publish in most digital spaces (Rice & St. Amant, 2018). The course described here, “ENGL 1010: Writing Across Borders,” was designed under the assumption that this fact must fundamentally change the way that we write and teach writing. Students in this composition course partnered with nonprofit organizations dedicated to migrant and immigrant rights in the United States, producing multimodal promotional materials for these organizations.

ENGL 1010: Writing Across Borders was taught by Gabriel Morrison at the University of Connecticut during the spring 2020 semester. Halfway through the semester, the COVID-19 pandemic forced all in-person work to be conducted online. As a result of planned and unforeseen demands on it, this course focused on translation as a central theme, which prompted consideration of the ways student projects were adapted for digital and international contexts and also how learning was translated when the class was transposed to digital and community contexts.