Please find the Winter 2026 Course Themes.
Make sure to enroll in Composition courses as soon as your enrollment window opens!
| Instructor | WR Course | Theme | Description | Readings |
| Kat Eason | WR 40 | Food Fight | Everyone has to eat...and everyone has opinions about what they eat. Students will devour different genres of food-oriented nonfiction, both text and multimodal, from a wide group of authors, learn to identify arguments and argument strategies, and ultimately produce their own original argument imitating one (or a mix of several) model texts. | All materials will be available on Perusall. |
| Rick Sims | WR 40 | How Will You Use Your Voice to Influence Others? | Opinion Writing | Barbara Holland’s “Endangered Pleasures” & “Wasn’t the Grass Greener?” |
| Loren Eason | WR 40 | College Music | For this section of WR40, we are going to be writing about popular music – past, present, and future. I chose this focus because it is something I think most of us care about and relate to, so we have things we want to say. Trying to describe what we are hearing and why it makes us feel and think the way that we do about it requires skill and attention to detail – which are skills and habits we need to succeed no matter what we are writing. I want you to discover new (older) music and dig into what makes it speak to you. I want you to talk and write to each other about what makes music real and valuable, and think about the future of music and whether our technology is creating a new golden age or killing what makes our music meaningful and human. | All texts, other than the Anteater's Guide, are available to the general public and can be accessed for free on Perusall. |
| Lynda Haas | WR 45 | Superhero Genre | We work to answer rhetorical questions about the audience of superhero film | None |
| Michael Andreasen | WR 45 | Memoir | We will be examining genre conventions of memoir, micro-memoir, autobiography, and personal narrative. | N/A |
| Jennifer Geraci | WR 45 | Afrofuturism | Over the course of the quarter, we will focus on Afrofuturism, a genre that blends science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, activism and meditations on technology, time and space. In our explorations, we will trace the history of the term Afrofuturism by reading texts that predate the coining of the term in the early nineties, and we will investigate the many ways that the genre reclaims the past to imagine possible futures for Black communities. |
Besides the AGWR, all readings will be provided by the instructor on Canvas |
| Chieh Chieng | WR 45 | Science fiction | Short stories that involves issues of social hierarchies and discrimination. | Selected stories will be provided through Canvas. |
| Julie Schulte | WR 45 | The Poetics of Memory | What is the language of memory? How is the language employed in writing memory (our own, a family member’s, our culture’s, country’s) different than writing a memoir (a nonfiction work where a person uses narrative structure to tell their own life experiences)? How is our personal history and familial history inextricably linked with History (economic, political, social)? What is at stake with preserving the large and small moments of a life, a people, and a language? These are some of the pressing questions we will discuss together in Writing 45. In the next ten-weeks we will discuss together and decide upon a framework for the Poetics of Memory. How are the writers who wrestle with preserving memory making deliberate choices in their works that oppose and guard against physical and spiritual gentrification? How does a writer make rhetorical and artistic choices in writing that rises above the day-to-day placid narrating of our lives that happens for us, to us: codified discourse, popular media-framing, curated social media, algorithmic results? How are artists invested in writing toward memory also resisting a pleasant historicizing that threatens to diminish the impact of historical events, forgets communities, place, neighborhoods, movements, and the small but deeply human parts of people's lives. Through reading poetry, narrative fiction, essays, and theoretical writing concerned with documenting memories we will examine, wrestle with, and collectively arrive at the common conventions of memory writing and how these conventions serve as rhetorical devices to convey the more ineffable experiences when one recall's the past: the feeling of time passing, of nostalgia, longing for better days, bereavement, grief, outrage, beauty, loss, love, and the joyous wonders of life itself. The readings for the course will showcase varying positions on what it means to document and record the past and how in doing so delivers a larger message. Some with a desire to know from where we come, others with the urgency to fight against cultural amnesia, resisting the traps of romanticizing “the olden days”, and with a keen awareness of what's at stake in speaking memory for ourselves and what those we are close to have witnessed; others who actively fight against the bigger turns and upheavals of our moment (politically, ecologically) not merely about the inevitabilities of time’s decay, but against the destruction of peoples and language itself. No matter our shared or differing personal experiences we will see that analyzing these genre conventions in context and employing them in our own writing will allow us to describe more richly what happened to us, create room to document the experiences that mattered deeply, to keep alive and vibrant the moments, places, spaces, objects, beliefs, and people who shaped us and brought us to the place we stand today. In speaking our memories we continue to live more fully and embodied lives. We reclaim our lives and thoughts and impressions for the larger stories that seek to hijack and obliterate who and what we know. |
All readings provided as PDFs and links on Canvas. |
| Margaret Speer | WR 45 | Medical Horror | "Medical Horror" (WR 45/50) explores a specific subgenre of horror represented across a variety of media, and having to do with bodies, medicine. While some texts will be sci-fi or futuristic dystopia, medical realities of the past and present are sometimes scarier and grosser than fiction. | All texts provided by instructor. |
| Jackie Way | WR 45 | Rhetoric of Fairy Tales | Rhetoric of Fairy Tales | The Classic Fairy Tales, 2nd edition, edited by Maria Tatar |
| Greg McClure | WR 45 | Horror | This course examines the rhetorical strategies that horror texts use to create meaning, including specific media and genre techniques and common tropes. | Reading will be supplied. |
| Sheryl Barbera | WR 50 | Fairy Tales | In this section of WR50, we will explore what fairy tales are, how they work, and why they are so durably meaningful across different cultures. Fairy tales (or “wonder tales”) make up an ubiquitous genre—every society on earth tells fairy tales to adults and children alike. Unlike myths, fairy tales do not narrate the creation and ending of the world, nor the capricious deeds of the gods; and unlike legends, they do not focus on culture heroes like Robin Hood or the Monkey King. Instead they are stories of strange marvels that distill our primal fears and desires into hope that virtue can triumph over evil and that clever people can achieve the good life. Fairy tales center on anonymous character types who endure extraordinary ordeals reflecting the realities of life in specific times and places. They are versatile stories that play with us, creep us out, and enlighten us all at once. Our exploration of the fairy tale genre will center on a few of the most popular tale types: Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Bluebeard. Each week, we’ll read different versions of the same tale originating not just from Europe, but also Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Through our comparisons of these different versions of the tales, and of the tale types themselves, we will examine how different groups of people living in different cultural and historical contexts approach a set of related themes, motifs, and conventions: true love, the pleasures and dangers of emergent sexuality, righteous violence, curiosity and obedience, benevolent and wicked parents, and family life. In the second half of the course, we’ll look at Disney’s adaptations and remakes of fairy tales, and consider what it means for corporations to assume ownership over what was formerly common (shared, public) intellectual property. Along the way, we will also read classic fairy tale/folklore scholarship, view fairy tale art from the Golden Age of Illustration, and watch fairy tale films and other media. | The Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar (Norton Critical Edition, 2nd ed.) |
| Rachel Rose | WR 50 | Fairy Tales | Original Fairy Tales shell | Maria Tatar Fairy Tales anthology |
| Tagert Ellis | WR 50 | Immortality Projects | This course theme invites students to study ideas of human legacy and collective memory, considering how we're remembered after we die, and the ways that humans are attempting keep themselves (or at least their memories) alive for much longer. We also study attempts to communicate across enormous distances of time and space. This description sounds really boring but the course is actually pretty sick. For example, you will learn about a mad scientist who lived in a giant castle and tried to implant monkey parts in people to make them live longer. By the end of the course students will have written poetry that is put on a stone tablet in a salt mine in Austria-- an archive ominously referred to as "MOM." None of these other courses can say that. That salt thing puts them to shame. This description is over. | None |
| Emily Wells | WR 50 | Fantasy and Satire in Woolf's Orlando | Our class will examine Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography as our primary text to understand how genre functions and allows Woolf to transcend the limitations of her era. In our course, we will examine the ways Woolf satirizes the style of a classic biography giving her audience a story that is fantastical rather than historical and factual. We will discuss how Woolf contributes to revolutionizing the fantasy genre and thus expands the possibilities of identity and relationship to time. Orlando’s immortality and gender transformation challenge conventional notions of identity and gender roles and the novel is considered Woolf’s great love letter to the writer Vita Sackville-West, in a time when lesbian affairs were taboo and socially and culturally punished. We will read Woolf closely to identify the ways her stylistic choices aid in her exploration of the fluidity of gender and desire. Through our discussions, we will formulate claims about how Woolf's use of genre facilitates her message and how rhetorical choices allow her to traverse publishers’ censorship and public critique. Throughout the ten weeks, we will come to decide how subversion of genre conventions can provide new futures and better realities for marginalized persons and provide greater possibilities for identity and self. |
Orlando: A Norton Critical Edition by Virginia Woolf ( ISBN-10: 1324044365 ; ISBN-13: 978-1324044369). You must purchase a physical copy of this edition of the book, and bring it with you to each class. |
| Gretchen Short | WR 50 | Sci-fi: Adapting to the Alien | This class will explore science fiction as a genre which uses the figure of the alien or unknown to explore human adaptability in the face of change. | Short stories by Octavia Butler, NK Jemisin, and James Tiptree, Jr. |
| Na'amit Sturm Nagel | WR 50 | Fairy Tales | In this section of WR 50, we will explore what fairy tales are, how they work, and why they are so durably meaningful across different cultures. Fairy tales (or “wonder tales”) make up an ubiquitous genre—every society on earth tells fairy tales to adults and children alike. Unlike myths, fairy tales do not narrate the creation and ending of the world, nor the capricious deeds of the gods; and unlike legends, they do not focus on culture heroes like Robin Hood or the Monkey King. Instead they are stories of strange marvels that distill our primal fears and desires into hope that virtue can triumph over evil and that clever people can achieve the good life. Fairy tales center on anonymous character types who endure extraordinary ordeals reflecting the realities of life in specific times and places. They are versatile stories that play with us, creep us out, and enlighten us all at once. Our exploration of the fairy tale genre will center on a few of the most popular tale types: Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Bluebeard. Each week, we’ll read different versions of the same tale originating not just from Europe, but also Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Through our comparisons of these different versions of the tales, and of the tale types themselves, we will examine how different groups of people living in different cultural and historical contexts approach a set of related themes, motifs, and conventions: true love, the pleasures and dangers of emergent sexuality, righteous violence, curiosity and obedience, benevolent and wicked parents, and family life. In the second half of the course, we’ll look at Disney’s adaptations and remakes of fairy tales, and consider what it means for corporations to assume ownership over what was formerly common (shared, public) intellectual property. Along the way, we will also read classic fairy tale/folklore scholarship, view fairy tale art from the Golden Age of Illustration, and watch fairy tale films and other media. | The Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar (Norton Critical Edition) |
| Gema Ludisaca | WR 50 | Dark Fairytales | Dark Fairytales explore the shadowy, unsettling, and sometimes grisly roots of "traditional" fairytales, contrasting sharply with their often sanitized modern versions. These stories draw on motifs of death, betrayal, moral ambiguity, fears, violence, and the supernatural, frequently upending the typical “happily ever after” resolution in favor of more complex, morally ambiguous, or downright disturbing conclusions | The core textbook is Maria Tatar's Classic Fairytales and supplemental readings like "Fairytale and Gothic Horror" by L. Hubner, and excerpts from Jack Zipes' The Irresistible Fairytale. I provide pdf's of all readings to students on our Canvas course space. |
| Jaya Dubey | WR 50 | Witches and Fairy Tales | Witches and Fairy Tales | No |
| Patrick McBurnie-Nicolay | WR 50 | Manifestos | In this course, we will focus on the genre of the manifesto.The English word "manifesto" is borrowed from Italian, itself derived from the Latin "manifestus," meaning to make public in some contexts, and simply clear or conspicuous in others. A good working definition for manifestos, then, is a declaration in writing in which a person, group, government, or organization conveys their intentions, motivations, and/or opinions. Associated with politics, art, literature, pedagogy, film, and new technologies, the manifesto involves the taking of an engaged position that is tied to the moment of its enunciation. The manifesto's individual or collective authors seek to provoke radical change through critique and the modeling of new ways of being though language and images. Together, we'll read through the history of the manifesto, and you'll be expected to compose your own writing, including an essay and a manifesto of your design. | Included on the syllabus will be anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other manifestos of the 18th through 20th centuries from throughout the world. |
| Darby Price | WR 50 | Rhetoric of the Devil | Throughout this quarter, we will engage with a wide range of literary texts that use or respond in some way to the symbols, tropes, and character(s) of the Devil. In the process, we will work to understand relevant historical contexts and literary tropes, paying particular attention to the way that rhetorical uses and depictions of Satan have developed over time. Human beings have always been interested in qualities of goodness and of evil, and Satan is a compelling character that has drawn writers and thinkers across the ages to say something not about cosmic forces outside of human control, but the very qualities that define what it is to be human. Course readings will be supplemented with scholarly works and other articles that situate the character of Satan within changing philosophical and political movements. We will also discuss the reasons why these tropes, symbols, and characteristics remain so compelling—and useful—for more contemporary rhetors. |
N/A |
| Zak Buczinsky | WR 50 | Horror | This class will explore genre conventions and rhetorical devices attached to the horror. Through our exploration we will uncover the central themes and qualities that attach themselves to our oldest emotion. We will work to understand what makes something scary, and why it matters. | Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House." |
| Sarah Goeppner | WR 50 | Autoethnography | Autoethnography is a genre that combines personal writing with social, cultural, political, historical, and other forms of analysis. We will read a selection of autoethnographic writings before writing autoethnographies of our own for the final project. | All readings will be provided by the instructor. |
| Caitlin Sanchez | WR 60 | Animal ethics | Our theme for this course is animal ethics. We will be reading texts about how much (if at all) we should consider animals. How should we treat animals? Why? Should certain animals be considered more than other animals? To what extent should we consider an animal’s life, feelings, or ability to feel pain? Our core texts will be The Anteater’s Guide to Writing and Rhetoric (AGWR) and philosophical texts concerning animal ethics. As you read the philosophical materials, you may agree with the authors or you may vehemently disagree. Either way, your critical engagement with the materials and with others will be most significant. Our hope is that these texts will challenge you to deepen your arguments and claims through discussions and constructive feedback. Our goal is to help you communicate your perspective in a clear, concise, and persuasive manner. | no, I will provide a few supplemental readings |
| Roy Cherian | WR 60 | Medical Humanities and Abolition Medicine | I am going to teach an introduction to argumentation in medical humanities through the framework of abolition medicine, drawing on postcolonial, Black, and Indigenous studies | Articles |
| John Comerci | WR 60 | Deaths of Despair | This section considers the systemic failures that drive increasing morbidity and mortality in the world's richest nation. | The core paper that the theme was built on before I picked up the gauntlet is this: Case, A. & Deaton, A. 'Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century.' (2015). We will read this paper first, and then we will read recently-published papers that complexity and challenge Case & Deaton's assertions (e.g., Zheng, H., Choi, Y. ‘Reevaluating the “deaths of despair” narrative: Racial/ethnic heterogeneity.’ (2024); Friedman, J. et al. 'Trends in Deaths of Despair by Race and Ethnicity From 1999 to 2022.' (2024)), papers that will form a basis for discussions about research integrity and demographic scope. We'll also review research on rising income inequality and the neurological/psychological mechanisms of addiction |
| Jack Fixa | WR 50 | Speculative Fiction | The genre of "speculative fiction" might best be framed as a question than a definition: it asks readers, "What if the future were this way?" And in class, we will ask precisely this question as we read of many different futures, ones that imagine climates collapsing, genetically-enhanced humans, or AI companions. | Besides the AGWR (10th ed.), Kazuo Ishiguro's "Klara and the Sun" and Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" will be required course materials. All other secondary readings and fillms will be made freely available and uploaded to Canvas. |
| James Vitiello | WR 60 | Mass Incarceration | We will look at various perspectives on mass incarceration to support the W60 curriculum | New Jim Crow by M. Alexander, and other readings (pdf) |
| Jamie Kim | WR 60 | U.S. Immigration | No human being is illegal. Yet U.S. government policies continue to sanction human rights violations against immigrants. This course challenges the assumption students may have that harsh immigration enforcement and anti-immigrant rhetoric are solely the inventions of the Trump administration. Together, we will take a closer look into the U.S. immigration system, a long-standing institution whose operation has been dependent on criminalization of immigrants (especially non-white immigrants) since at least the 19th century. | N/A |
| Carolin Huang | WR 60 | Rhetoric on the Mother | This course will examine a range of social, political, and economic issues through the figure of the mother. The substratal position of the mother in relation to society opens up questions on work, violence, ethics, and particularly, the structure of our social order. | Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty by Jacqueline Rose |
| Sarah Hanson-Kegerreis | WR 60 | Climate Justice in the U.S. | The concept of climate justice grew out of the environmental justice movement, which redefined “environment” by moving away from traditional conceptions of a far-off wilderness to include populated areas and urban surroundings. Climate justice addresses the inequities created and intensified by climate change and calls attention to the intersection of social, racial, economic, and environmental factors. This quarter, we will evaluate the causes and responses to the wide-reaching and devastating repercussions of climate change, focusing in particular on frontline communities in the United States. From the very start of the term, we will consider the range of information used to diagnose and call attention to climate injustice. In particular, we will consider the extent that the lived experiences of affected communities are given authority in both identifying climate problems and deciding how to address them. In examining potential solutions to climate injustices on multiple scales of action, we will consider not only the effectiveness and feasibility of the available plans but also the extent that those plans address immediate, local injustices and include the perspectives and "embodied knowledge" of the communities most vulnerable to the problem. | All materials beyond the AGWR will be provided on Canvas |
| Melissa Stevens | WR 60 | Disability Access | This course explores how people with disabilities are accommodated, excluded, celebrated, and politicized across various contexts. Disability is not only about limitation; it is also about creativity, community, resistance, and the radical work of imagining more inclusive futures. In that spirit, this course invites participants to grow as writers, researchers, and advocates. | All other readings will be posted to Canvas. |
| Michael Corbin | WR 60 | Labor and the Economy: Temp | This course considers the way people work in the 21st century, the kinds of jobs they do (or don’t do) as well as the wages, benefits, and levels of job security they receive (or don’t receive) for their labor. Much of the discussion focuses on the rise of “gig work” and the “gig economy,” which is to say, the increasing prevalence of work that is temporary, precarious, subcontracted, contingent, casualized. For some experts and scholars, the growth of this kind of work—which, according to one study, represents 94 percent of net new jobs created in the U.S. between 2005-2015 (Katz)—is a good thing, since it gives workers greater “flexibility” and “autonomy” in their lives. For many others, however, this transformation of work represents a dangerous trend, since it leads to a loss of the security and stability on which many workers—though, as we will see, by no means all workers—could formerly depend. | Louis Hyman, Temp: The Real Story of What Happened to Your Salary, Benefits, & Job Security. New York: Penguin, 2019. (ISBN 9780735224087) |
| Isabel Mesko | WR 60 | Deaths of Despair | American health crisis | No |
| Noah Jerge | WR 60 | Climate Justice | Writing 60: Argument and Research, is the second of UCI's two required writing courses that together fulfill the Lower Division Writing Requirement. Like WR 50, WR 60 focuses on critical reading and rhetoric and teaches you intellectual strategies for identifying, understanding, and then using various genres and rhetorical situations for important communicative purposes. WR 60 deepens your understanding of rhetoric and communication by teaching you how to conduct research and evaluate and use various types of evidence. The reading, composing, and researching practices you'll learn in this course, and the various skills and strategies you'll develop, will help you to succeed in your other courses, prepare you to engage effectively in the university community and in your chosen discipline, and deepen your sense of civic engagement. To help guide our exploration of research and argumentative writing, this course will be centered around the broad theme of "climate justice." Throughout the quarter, you will be introduced to a wide range of issues impacting the natural environment today, as seen from both local and global perspectives. As we discuss and critically examine this complicated topic through shared course readings, videos, and multi-media presentations, you will identify particular areas of personal interest (which will provide the foundation for your quarter-length research project). |
No, though supplemental readings will be provided to students through Canvas. |
| Peter Cibula | WR 60 | Generative AI and Bullshit Jobs | This course investigates the nature of work, labor, and economic activity in the 21st century. We will begin with David Graeber's suggestive argument in Bullshit Jobs, where he claims that we are being prevented from reaping the benefits of automation as a society. Rather than working a 15 hour work week, salaried workers remain at the office for 40 hours, spending a significant portion of that time on facebook or pretending to work. Meanwhile, workers in jobs that require either care or physical labor – teachers, nurses, janitors, for instance – remain underpaid and work longer and longer to make a basic living. The inequalities of both the distribution of work and the kinds of work we compensate (or do not compensate) will thus be the broad theme of this class. With the rise of Generative AI models (such as ChatGPT), we will also use Graeber's theory of bullshit to investigate the kinds of jobs that these algorithmic technologies purport to replace. Alongside Graeber, we will listen to the podcast Citations Needed, where the hosts discuss the issue of AI hype and labor, the use of child labor over paying workers more, or the use of "anti-racist" policies by Silicon Valley companies to sell exploitative business models. This course thus considers all forms of work and the structural forces that fill this fundamentally human activity with more and more "spiritual violence" and the role of AI technologies and their "slop" in this "bullshitification" of the economy. | Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon & Schuster, 2018. |
| Agnik Bhattacharya | WR 60 | Climate Justice in the United States of America | Climate change is not just a scientific or policy problem—it is a profound moral, social, and epistemological challenge. This course explores how ideas of justice intersect with reasoning in the context of the climate crisis. Students will develop tools of critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and argument analysis to evaluate debates about responsibility, policy, and knowledge. Through diverse readings, case studies, and structured debates, students will learn to reason clearly, argue persuasively, and think ethically about the climate crisis. | Journals and Blogs which deals with different legal issues related to climate change. There will be no core textbook apart from AGWR. I will dealing with different multimedia sources, helping the students to visualize the after affects of climate change and the requirement to work on the problems. We will refer to documentaries, archival reports, and public data along with related academic sources. |
| John Nieman | WR 60 | Mass Incarceration | In this class, we will interrogate the structures and pipelines that create the current incarceration system in the United States. We will study problems like police brutality, and connect those problems to larger historical contexts to understand how various justice system issues are connected to one another. Anteaters will isolate one such problem to research for the entire quarter, first defining and contextualizing their problem and subsequently advocating for action to mitigate the harm created by this problem. | No. |
| Shelby Clipp | WR 60 | Medical Humanities | The theme of our course is Medical Humanities. Our guiding assumption for the course is that modern medicine has in some way become dehumanized. Our course will examine issues related to our contemporary medical practices and the social world that contextualizes such practices. | No additional textbook, thematic readings will be posted on Canvas |
| Chen Gu | WR 60 | Mass Incarceration | This course focuses on the pressing issues surrounding mass incarceration in the U.S., through the rhetoric perpetuating existing structures and the rhetoric of proposing alternative futures. We will read Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete? as a core text, supplemented by various excerpts from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Tony Messenger’s Profit and Punishment. Through these readings, we’ll examine the intersections of class, race and gender in the prison system, making connections between policing, bail systems, and the prison industrial complex. To gain a fuller picture of individuals and families impacted by mass incarceration, we will also focus on first person memoirs and interviews from incarcerated people, highlighting the ethos of lived experience in addition to a range of research and data-driven material. In examining possible solutions to these injustices, students will be encouraged to look at the full ecosystem of advocacy that includes the communities directly impacted by mass incarceration. Building a skillset of pinpointing specific harms, evidence integration, and nuanced analyses, we will create the foundation for a deep understanding of rhetoric that leads toward a more equitable society. | Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis |
| Jo Sweetnam | WR 60 | Education Privatization | This course covers 1) student debt, 2) the rise of tuition, 3) endowments, 4) defunding of instruction, 5) cuts to arts/humanities, 6) recent attacks on NSF/NIH | We read excerpts from Malcolm Harris Kids These Days, Melinda Cooper's Family Values, and various articles that are all provided as pdfs. |
| Spencer Seward | WR 60 | Contemporary Housing Problems: What Are They and What Can We Do About Them? | Our course focus is the complex problem of housing in the 21st century, asking both “Where are we now, and how did we get here?” and “Where do we go from here?” We will use our course textbook as an imitation model for our own research writing and rhetoric. When it comes to time to choose and define your own research problem, you may choose any housing problem anywhere in the world, as long as that problem is narrowly and specifically defined and meets the assignment requirements. Housing problems exist in a variety of forms globally, apply to all of us in one way or another (often more than one!), and as such, you’ll have a chance to follow your own interests, passions, and curiosities, and if you so choose, research any of the housing problems that exist in the communities around you (which I very much encourage!). | Homelessness is A Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns by Gregg Colburn and Clatyon Aldern |