>Rights Courses

This page includes course materials on social-justice movements for general-education students and upper-division majors. The gen-ed and upper-division courses evolved before, during, and after the pandemic. The syllabi and the assignments are available in two Google folders that you can access with the links below.

The syllabus folder includes a gen-ed syllabus that begins with a unit on the impact of the pandemic and two upper-division syllabi that are more historically oriented and more project oriented.

In the assignments, students move from an initial reflective essay through an intergenerational interview-based essay to multimodal assignments using design thinking for projects ranging from a short documentary to a magazine article. The upper-division version has more complex assignments and readings, particularly in the final unit.

Syllabi for General Education and Upper-Division Rights Rhetoric Courses

  • Social Justice Rhetoric: The syllabus, assignments and readings in this folder are for a general-education course with units on the pandemic as a human rights issue, civil rights and other rights movements, and migrant rights issues–with student composing essays on the impact of the pandemic, an interview-based intergenerational essay, and a website.
  • Social Justice Movements: This folder includes a syllabus for an upper-division course that focuses on the history of social movement rhetorics ranging from abolitionists and suffragists through feminist and civil rights movements to BLM and other intersectional movements that have been shaped by social media. A second syllabus

Major Assignments with readings and supporting materials

  1. Alternative Reflective Essay Assignments: To help students reflect on how rights issues have impacted their lives, families, and communities, I have developed three alternative approaches to the first unit: one asks students to reflect upon how the pandemic impacted them and a group they identify with, a second uses slave narratives and other testimonio to help students reflect on how they came of age in a particular demographic group. A third alternative is provided to those who would prefer not to write about such personal topics and would rather write a rhetorical analysis of the testimonios in the unit.
  2. Intergenerational/Intersectional Essay: This is the most successful assignment I have ever taught, and the process assignments should help to prevent AI-generated submissions. Students interview at least three people who come from different generations, gender identities, or religious or social affiliations about how their lives have been impacted by changes in assumptions about a particular sets of racial, gender, immigration, or economic rights.
  3. Multimedia Project: The syllabi included above use design thinking to help students turn their second essay into a multimodal project. Gen-ed students revise their second essay to create a magazine article with graphics and images using basic document design principles. In one upper-division course, I had students work in groups to create short documentaries on a set of rights issues. In an online-version of the upper-division course, students worked more on their own and consulted with groups that were organized by the type of project each student chose to work on: websites, magazine articles, and documentaries. In this unit, I have also focused the whole-class sessions on a particular rights issue such as mass incarceration, or we used design thinking to reflect on students’ career and life goals.