Stockpiles of nuclear weapons, a surfeit of trash in landfills, record high accrual of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, eighty-five percent of global wealth concentrated in just ten percent of its occupants: these are just some bad collections that threaten the continued existence of human life on earth. The dangers that these collections pose are obvious, so why is it so hard to disarm, reduce, and redistribute? Why can’t we clean up the messes we make? What if we cannot clean-up because we are already incorporated into the bad collections that overwhelm us? To answer these questions, and meet the course goals, we will analyze and practice strategies for communicating ideas about excessive accumulation to a range of audiences across a variety of platforms. Using a WOVEN approach to communication that considers the interrelationship between Written, Oral, Visual, and Nonverbal modes, this course will give you practice in analyzing the rhetorical strategies for articulating your own ideas about mass production, hoarding, and waste. To identify the ways in which dangerous assemblages threaten our present and future, we will compare fictional texts such as William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World; analyze contemporary theory by authors such as Jane Bennett, Ian Bogost, and Scott Herring; and engage with community partners such as the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance and the Chattahoochee River Keepers. Students will compose an introductory video; design a poster that illustrates a bad collection of their choice; write a literary analysis essay; create an archival project on waste and excess in Atlanta; and curate all major assignments into a final, multimedia portfolio.