This FIG is about how stories and writing let others know who we are and how we see the world.
At our FIG meetings, we will work together on a research project about writing. You will also be supported in starting a portfolio to capture your best writing while at UO. Portfolios are one way to tell future employers the story of the effective communicator you become while in college.
Our work together will increase your ability to:
- Describe and demonstrate writing and speaking skills used at UO and in the community;
- Identify and analyze situations in which UO students can use writing and storytelling to make a difference;
- Develop goals to increase your effectiveness as a culturally responsive communicator in college, career, and civic life.
Students explore the intersection of topics by taking the following course package:
UGST 109 First-Year Experience Seminar - 1-credit
ANTH 163 Origins of Storytelling - CoreEd or major satisfying course, 4-credits
Why do humans tell stories? This course addresses this question by exploring the hunter-gatherer context in which storytelling emerged. Drawing on evolutionary theory and related disciplines, this course explores the origins of literature in terms of the information demands of ancestral human environments. The first part of the course outlines the social and ecological conditions under which storytelling emerged, the adaptations that make social learning and storytelling possible, and the foundations of cultural transmission. The second part examines cross-cultural themes in hunter-gatherer oral traditions—e.g., tricksters, monsters, warfare, mating—in relation to recurrent problems of forager life.
WR 121 College Composition I - CoreEd or major satisfying course, 4-credits
A course in written reasoning that presents writing as a means of exploring, developing, confirming, and communicating ideas. The ideas that students write about develop from their understanding of issues encountered in readings and focused discussions, responding to them in writing to represent them fairly and explore available responses. Essays explore the relationship of thesis to structure and audience. The course has a strong focus on the process of revising with regular work on editing.