Course Description
Students in this course will study science writing as a subgenre of nonfiction writing that seeks to communicate challenging, complex, and nuanced facts and ideas in clear, engaging prose. Exploring academic articles published in scientific journals and the writing of renowned science writers such as Carl Sagan, Bill Bryson, David Attenborough, and Oliver Sacks, students will learn to evaluate and synthesize the claims of scientists and intellectuals across various domains of inquiry. Students will also learn to identify the common writing conventions of the subgenre to craft their writing to produce data-rich articles that meet the expectations of scientific audiences, as well as informative essays aimed at being accessible and enjoyable to a broad, lay public.
Course Outcomes
- Develop a repertoire of diverse rhetorical strategies that will enable you to assess and appropriately respond to the conventions appropriate for a range of genres of science writing, adapt to the expectations of academic and public audiences, and meet a range of purposes from communicating scientific knowledge to educating the lay public on scientific topics of interest.
- Demonstrate in writing a strong command of critical thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, interpretation, and evaluation.
- Locate assignment-appropriate sources in the library and online.
- Synthesize ethically summarized, paraphrased, and quoted source material into academic arguments, public-facing essays, and digital, multimodal writing.
- Compose essays on various scientific topics by working through multiple drafts; participating in opportunities for peer and instructor feedback; applying that feedback in revisions; and, in general, treating the composition of any written text as a deliberate and recursive process.
- Employ grammar, punctuation, mechanics, usage, and citation and paper formatting in a manner appropriate to scientific genres and each assignment being composed.
- Reflect, in writing, on your own development as a science writer.
Major Readings
Robert Macfarlane's Underland: A Deep Time Journey
Gavin Francis's Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum.
Additional Readings
- Selected chapters from Joseph E. Harmon and Allan G. Gross's The Craft of Scientific Communication.
- Selected chapters from Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery & the Genius of the Royal Society, edited by Bill Bryson
- Carl Sagan's "The Other World Beckons"
- David Attenborough's Our Planet
- Isaac Asimov, "Science and Beauty" from The Sacred Beetle and Other Great Essays in Science, edited by Martin Gardner
- Oliver Sacks, "Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science"from The Sacred Beetle and Other Great Essays in Science, edited by Martin Gardner
- Rachel Carson's "The Sunless Sea" from The Sacred Beetle and Other Great Essays in Science, edited by Martin Gardner
- Selections from Best Science & Nature Writing, 2023, edited by Carl Zimmer