Writing With Power

From the archives of TiPWiki, the unofficial Duke TIP Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Also known as "WPOW" or "WPOW!" A course centered around writing various forms of the essay, including narrative, personal, and college. Study of the history of the essay and grammar may also be included. It is rumored to have been offered on East Campus since the inception of TIP.

At East

During East II 2003, this course also included the viewing of Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, Michael Moore's first documentary, and a Woody Harrelson narrated documentary about marijuana. What, exactly, those had to do with essay writing has yet to be determined. During East l 2011, movies such as The Last Unicorn and the Princess Bride were watched and analyzed by the tipsters.

The final project for some terms is a research paper. Each student is able to pick their own topic and must write a paper about 10 pages in length. Some topics that have been used include: Pearl Harbor Conspiracy Theories, Illegal Immigration, and Bhangra. Another final project is to write your own monologue from a fairy tale character's point of view and preform it for the class. The character must be someone ill-represented in fairytales or at least an archetype with not much background information.

In WPOW during Term 2 2007, the final project was making a satirical televison show, and one of the highlights during this project was Alexis Kim Desire interviewing the Llama. This movie was shown at the talent show.

This class was also offered in 2008 at KU term II.

'A few teachers for this course have been Mr. Ray (no year given, East), Melissa (2008, KU) and Mrs. G (2011, East).

At WPOW Term I East 2009, Heather taught it. She was epic, and was very mad when the class was kicked out of the West Library. She encouraged us to complain. She also used many curse words and some of her quotes are: "Culture......wtf?" "The door is having an identification crisis." and..."Megan rhymes with Warren." All of which was received with a very confused silence. But seriously, she was awesome. Her TA for 2009 was James Hicks, a student at Emory. He was awesome too.

At WPOW! Term 1 East 2011 the TA was TA Cherae, otherwise known as "TA Fantastique" who was known for her awesome dancing skills and general awesome-ness.

For Term 1 2014, the teacher was Abbie and the TA was Abby. At first, the class was very awkward and didn't talk to each other but then they realized how cool they were. Notable things from that class were playing soccer at break, the bench under the tree where they met for lunch, fitting 15 people at one table, and singing songs from frozen. Quotes include, "wait what", "eyes like cheese graters", and "I struck it rich!" This class was very close and they were extremely sad when they had to leave each other.

At Georgia Tech

In Term 2, 2014, in Georgia Tech, the teacher was Mark Collins and the TA was Elizabeth Anderson. The class's theme was "Monsters, Cyborgs, Freaks: Writing Against Power." Although it took a while, Nathan Grindle began praising Satan in every class, Julia Edmunds and Elizabeth Anderson became best friends, and the whole class became very close friends. Notable things from the class include:

  • WIDGETS!
  • The bubble screensaver
  • The Oreo as a metaphor for the patriarchy

The only relationTIP in this class was between Genie(Nathan) and Stella, although towards the end of the class there was a growing bond between Erik and Mary Helen.