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Writing 310

Marketing Communications

This workplace writing course focuses on the creation of marketing materials produced by corporations, agencies, or non-profit organizations to interact with the public. The course teaches research and assessment, project management, and professional editing. Students will create an Industry Analysis, Creative Brief, Press Releases, and Social Media Blog promotional materials. To effectively write these forms of communication requires students to understand how different audiences impact rhetorical choices, to learn the conventions associated with each genre, and to engage in the writing process from drafting, revision, and the creation of a final product. 

WRIT 317

Foundations in Legal Writing

WRIT 320

Travel Writing

Travel is typically identified as physical movement to unfamiliar places, but can we travel in imagination instead? Or can we travel to routinized, mundane destinations, such as grocery stores, gas stations, or our bedroom? These questions indicate that what shapes our travel experience is not where we travel but how we interpret that travel experience. Shifting focus from travel destinations to the travel mindset, this course asks students to produce their own travelogue and situate it within the conventions of the travel writing genre. Major writing assignments include a restaurant review, a nature review, and a cultural event review. 

WRIT 323

Writing for Archive

Writing 330

How to Read an Essay

An essayist can transform a personal experience, like growing up listening to a Tribe Called Quest, into a meditation on music, race and creativity or take a topic that seems specialized like immigration policy or indigenous medicine and bring it alive for a reader who may never have understood its importance. In this course, you'll study essays that live at the intersection of the popular and academic, the personal, political and the critical. Your goal is to write powerful essays of your own.

Writing 332

Write Your Art

This class is designed to help students become familar with various genres of writing in the fields of the arts, develop relevant critical and analytical writing skills, and express their artistic identity in writing. Students will select a type of art based on their interest – examples include but are not limited to music, visual arts, theatre, dance, and cinema – and attempt to communicate their artistic vision in writing. A special emphasis will be laid upon a CV/resume, artist statement, and program notes. All assignments culminate in a web portfolio in which students introduce themselves as an artist and present sample artwork that they have produced with written explanations. Students are not required to be currently enrolled in any arts programs. This course is open to all students who are interested in the arts and engage in artistic endeavors in everyday life.

WRIT 341

Writing About Happiness

Research has proven that we can become significantly happier through small changes in our daily lives. But experts have very different ideas about how to achieve this. From "treat yourself" to the “one-minute rule,” we will examine the techniques of happiness writers/podcasters including Laurie Santos, Tal Ben-Shahar, Tonya Mosley, Gretchen Rubin, and Shawn Achor. After analyzing podcasts, blogs, TED Talks, and TikToks, writers will produce content that integrates both research and lived experiences focused on themes such as habit formation and relationship building. Emphasis will be placed on writing as a process and publishing with an online audience in mind.

Writing 342

Writing For Laughs

Writers in this course will read and produce humorous online list-based articles (listicles) that appeal to a wide readership. Students will read articles from successful humor writers on online repositories for comedy writing such as Cracked, College Humor, The Onion, and Medium. Based on our analysis of these articles, we will establish criteria for successful comedic writing, and apply these criteria to our work. Major assignments include a written analysis of a humorous online article of each student's choice and two original, list-based humor articles. Thoughtful prewriting activities, independent research, and extensive revision through independent review, peer critique, and extensive workshopping (modeled on Cracked Writer's Workshop) will be required.

Writing 344

Reading and Writing Blogs

This seminar will familiarize students with the history, theories, and practices surrounding blogging while offering an overview of some of the tools and sites available for publishing blogs like WORDPRESS, ATAVIST, TUMBLR, and TWITTER. In this course, students will consider how blogging has evolved, discuss the presentation of self, examine how the personal is political, read and respond to blogs, and to create and post their own blogs. At the end of the course, students will be able to speak about the origins and evolution of blogging, reflect on theories surrounding blog writing, speak about cyberactivism and its role in driving social change, and create and critique blogs. Students will submit a final portfolio of revised work including critical, creative, and reflective writing.

Writing 345

Writing and Producing Podcasts

Podcasting is an exploding medium that gives a platform to many previously unheard voices and narratives. In this course, students will examine a variety of genres, formats, and styles to help determine how they want to present their own voices. After analyzing existing shows, students will work individually, with a co-host, or on a small panel to build their own podcast from the ground up. Throughout the course, students will learn the podcast development process: content brainstorming, researching, writing, interviewing, recording, editing, producing, and publishing. Students will leave with a finished pilot episode with the option of publishing online. 

WRIT 346

Writing For and About TV

In the past decade, the number of TV shows has more than doubled. With more platforms and modes of consuming content than ever before, screenwriting has become a showcase for the world's best writers. In this course, we will watch and analyze contemporary shows in a variety of genres to explore themes such as identity, friendship, rivalries, romantic relationships, competition, race, socioeconomic status, and gender. Students will conduct close readings of shows, analyze the craft of writing for the screen, construct original arguments about the writers' choices, and practice industry skills such as pitching. Students will learn the behind-the-scenes of screenwriting and will then write their own show pitch intended for a digital media platform of their choosing. At the conclusion of the course, students will have the chance to learn about continuing in the industry through internship opportunities, screenwriting competitions, and entry-level jobs.

WRIT 352

What To Do If Writing Is Hard

This course asks how writers, psychologists, editors, and educators have answered the question in its name. We’ll also ask the question, “When is writing hard?” as we investigate the creative process, as a cognitive activity, and a socially constructed experience, as well as “When does writing go well?” We’ll pay special attention to procrastination, blocking, and writing as a craft of executive function. You’ll use your own experience as a starting point to test out the strategies that are recommended to help writers who experience writing difficulties.  

For more information on any of these classes, contact Sean Fenty, Director, The Writing Institute and First-Year Writing, or Angie Pelekidis, Associate Director of First-Year Writing.