Business and Art in Florence
Course: English 420 (Business Writing)
Instructor: Dr. David Blakesley
Dates: May 13 — June 25, 2005
This specially designed section of English 420 (Business Writing) focuses on “Business and Art.” Florence is the birthplace of the Renaissance, which brought forth not only great works of art but also new ideas for business and global commerce. Art becomes a commodity, and ever since the Renaissance, enormous resources have poured into making art into a big and lucrative business. In the Florence context, students will study the rhetorical principles and writing practices that foster effective communication. They will conduct field research in museums and consider how Florence and the Tuscany area is constructed through visual and verbal media as a commercial, tourist culture. Students will also read and discuss Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and some brief excerpts from Dante’s Inferno to consider the ways that business and art might form ethical alliances. Course writing will include an employment project, a case-based project focusing on verbal and visual representations of art in business, and then a collaborative project involving work with clients in the Florence community.
Course Materials/Supplies
Course readings will be made available on the course website, which will be hosted on a Purdue server. Students will be able to access the course calendar and readings on-site in Florence. There are some things you will need to complete the course more easily:
1. Pens, paper, and other materials for preparing and publishing high quality documents: Legal tablets will be good for drafting.
2. Camera: we will be taking lots of photographs to use for Projects 2 and 3. We’ll need to have some of these photos developed or printed at Oxford during the course, so a digital camera will be useful if there are services that will print from digital cameras.
3. USB Pen Drive (a 256 MB drive costs about $30 and will be great for storing course projects).
While we won’t rely too heavily on electronic communication, it’s important that you have your Purdue email address set up to work with Purdue Webmail (see http://webmail.purdue.edu).
Course Goals
Writing in Context
Analyze professional cultures, social contexts, and audiences to determine how they shape the various purposes and forms of workplace writing, such as persuasion, organizational communication, and public discourse, with an emphasis on
• writing for general audiences and decision makers
• understanding the ethical dimensions of workplace communication
Writing Process
Develop and understand various strategies for planning, researching, drafting, revising, and editing documents that respond effectively and ethically to professional situations and audiences.
Collaboration
Learn and apply strategies for successful collaboration, such as
• working and communicating online with colleagues
• setting and achieving project goals
• responding constructively to peers’ work
• working as part of a writing team and/or with a client organization
Research
Understand and use various research methods to produce professional documents
• analyzing professional contexts
• assessing and using information resources
• using primary research methods such as interviews, observations, focus groups, and surveys to collect data
• working ethically with research participants
Technology
Select technologies appropriate to the generic conventions of various types of workplace communication, including email, memos, letters, reports, online documents, and white papers.
Document Design
Learning the generic conventions of the design of workplace documents including
• understanding and implementing various principles of format and layout
• interpreting and arguing with visual information.
Course Projects
Daily Writing: For 5-10 minutes at the start of each class session, I’ll ask you to write a short response to a prompt that I provide and that may focus on readings, films, or exccursions. You’ll receive either a + (excellent; 2 pts.), a √ (okay, but focus better; 1 pt.), or a - (too short, way off-topic, or not turned-in; 0 pts). (10% of course grade.)
Employment Project: You will be asked to locate a job for which you are qualified and apply for it. Step 1 of the project asks you to learn about and use various web-based and print resources for job seekers and ultimately to select one job to pursue. Step 2 asks you to prepare the all-important cover letter. Step 3 asks you to prepare a print resume suitable for such a position. In Step 4, you will assess your experience in a “Project Assessment Document.” In the process of completing each step, you will work closely with your peers and me to shape your writing so that it represents you and your experience fully and effectively. Given our context, you are encouraged to cite your experience in the Study Abroad Program and to stress your (newly developed) backgrounds in intercultural ommunication. Employment Project Preparation: You should bring with you to Florence a copy of your “best” resume so that you’ll have one to work from, as well as complete information for any jobs and school experience that will be useful in developing your resume and application letter. (Individual; 30% of course grade.)
Field-Based Project: For this project, you’ll focus on researching and analyzing marketing strategies for advertising art-related venues (such as for museums or other cultural organizations). The stress will be on collecting and analyzing existing materials as ethnographers. You’ll write an analytical essay focusing on representations of art in Florence from a business perspective. The project will involve taking pictures, collecting material from sites you visit, interviewing,and then analyzing the visual and verbal elements of this material using guidelines provided. This project will draw on our experience on sponsored and personaltrips. There is no advance work necessary for this project. (Individual; 30% of course grade.)
Client-Based Project: Students will work in teams of four with a client in the Florence community with the goal of writing a recommendation report involving multimedia, field research, and document analysis. (Collaborative; 30% of course grade.)
Grading
The three major projects in the course will be comprised of several components, each worth a percentage of your final grade. For the collaborative project, students will complete a required Collaborative Evaluation Form.. All major assignments will be graded on the standard letter-grade scale: A=100-90 B=89-80 C=79-70 D=69-60 F=59 or below.
Collaborative Work
Collaborative work is a required component of the course. You and your project team members are responsible for updating one another and me about assignment development and progress. In addition, you also are responsible for negotiating together all aspects of your work, including planning, drafting, revising, file managing, and scheduling of assignments. I will also ask individual group members to complete Collaborative Evaluation Forms.
Attendance and Late Work
Attendance is required at all scheduled meetings. Since you will be working in project teams much of the semester, you also will be required to attend any scheduled out-of-class meetings with your team to complete course assignments. Two absences may result in your final grade being lowered by as much as a letter grade. More than three absences can result in a failing grade for the course. Excused absences may be granted for religious holidays or Study Abroad-sponsored events. The majority of missed class assignments cannot be “made up.”
