3.0

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Applying for a research grant; suggesting a project that can help your community; starting a new business; asking someone to marry you. What do these activities have in common? They all tend to take the form of a proposal. Proposals are integral to many of life’s most important undertakings. In this writing course, we will explore the idea of proposing and read, analyze, and write different kinds of proposals. We will think about proposals with an eye to how they may create communities, enable change, and mark points of new beginning, but also with an eye to how they are institutionally or socially shaped and limited. We will study the contexts in which they are made, their purpose, their audiences, their conventions, their modes of preservation. Over the course of the semester, students will have the opportunity to design a proposal or bring to class their own proposal that they would like to work on. The course does not require special knowledge or experience in the writing of proposals.