CWR4B: The Meme and the Human: Digital Literacies
I teach CWR4B: The Meme and the Human: Digital Literacies, a four-unit reading, composition, and research course. CWR4B requires intensive revising and has a University limit of seventeen students. The seminar-size cultivates dialogue. This site builds on our conversations. In CWR4B we study how to be more digitally literate and thus better citizens. We practice active listening, mutual respect, Berkeley's "Principles of Community," and the communication skills that are "increasingly necessary in today’s hypermediated, globalized, conflict-filled world" (Fitzpatrick 17).
Cal Students' Experiences in CWR4B
Carmen creates a comfortable and inspiring classroom environment and for that I am so grateful! She is an amazing professor and human and I am fortunate to have been able to experience her contagious zest for life. She has changed my perspective on research for the better!
Taking R1A and R4B with Carmen is the best decision I’ve ever made at Cal! I was intimidated by reading and writing throughout my life, but Carmen always encouraged me and gave me tons of help during office hours. The skills I learned in these classes not only helped me with writing but also saved my life in research. Now I’m falling in love with writing, and thus joined the writing program at SLC because I truly believe writing is the best way for us to share our thoughts and connect with other people. Thank you for your inspirational teaching and kind caring!
Carmen’s class is the most inspiring and fruitful among all classes I have ever taken in L&S school. She structures her classes in an ordered, easy-to-digest manner that allows for substantial learning for all her students. Even now I still benefit from the researching habits formed during those wonderful days. She also teaches us how to seek help when we get stuck in academia or in life, and presents her own strategies to remedy the situations. I can proudly say that Carmen cultivated me to become who I am today, a thoughtful, well-organized researcher and entrepreneur who is willing to take risks to help solve real-life problems with my unique solutions.
Taking Dr. Butcher’s class in freshman year definitely set me up with a strong writing foundation that I could draw from in my later courses at Berkeley that were more writing intensive. It also helped me learn to organize and express my thoughts more clearly, which has served me well for both scientific writing and more personal things like writing personal statements for medical school applications. Outside of writing/English, Dr. Butcher also always devoted individualized attention to each of her students and made sure that they were well supported in their academic journey outside of her class as well.
After taking Dr. Butcher’s class, I started enjoying writing in my own free time. She taught me how to express myself and my thoughts cohesively in my writings about my life or topics that I’m interested in. The skills I learned from Dr. Butcher in her class also helped me immensely in my professional career, from research to founding a startup and managing teams of employees.
I was able to research an issue of my choice that I'm passionate about. It made all the difference in my motivation. I learned how to find what I need in the library both physically in that amazing space Main Stacks and also online. Librarian Corliss Lee gave a workshop that taught us many tricks and tips. She encouraged us to go into the stacks, and my partner and I found a misshelved book crucial for her project. I'm also now more critical of the primary sources I use for my research. I determine a source's credibility, and I have principles and a checklist to evaluate the legitimacy of websites. It's opened my mind to being more digitally literate. I feel this also makes me a more savvy citizen. Practicing the research process and then discussing what we found in class helped me understand that dead-ends are actually research and not a waste of time. Everybody has them. Engaging in academic inquiry like this all semester long showed me that many hours are spent simply reading sources tangentially related to my topic. I experienced the process of gathering data, taking notes, and then changing my topic's focus based on information I gained from my sources. My understanding of my project drastically changed over time.
University Requirements for CWR4B Work
This writing seminar satisfies the second half (Part B) of the Reading & Composition Requirement. It offers students structured, sustained, and highly articulated practice in the recursive processes entailed in reading and composing, as well as critical analysis. The seminar affords students guided practice through the stages involved in creating a research paper. Students read five thematically related book-length texts, or the equivalent, drawn from a range of genres, in addition to various non-print sources. In response to these materials, students craft several short pieces leading up to two longer essays—works of exposition and/or argumentation. Students also draft a research paper, developing a research question, gathering, evaluating, and synthesizing information from texts and other sources. Elements of the research process, such as proposals, annotated bibliographies, abstracts, "works cited" lists, and the like, are submitted, along with the final report, in a research portfolio. Students write a minimum of 32 pages of expository prose during the semester.