English 215 is an advanced interdisciplinary writing course emphasizing critical reading and thinking, argumentative writing, library research, and documentation of sources in an academic setting. Practice and study of selected rhetorics of inquiry (for example, historical, cultural, empirical, and ethnographic) employed in academic disciplines, preparing students for different systems of writing in their academic lives.

Throughout this course, students will:

• significantly improve their academic writing;
• develop an understanding of how members of a particular discipline conceive of and engage in the rhetorical practices of that discipline;
• demonstrate understanding of the key conversations, the forms, and the conventions of writing in a particular discipline;
• gain experience in the construction of knowledge within a discipline and practice using its discourse;
• read critically and analyze rhetorically writings from a particular discipline and use those lenses to frame their own discourses;
• write in the different forms and styles of a particular discipline; and
• develop techniques for conducting research on the Internet and with other electronic databases.