Learning Goals

Students will:

• become rigorous thinkers and writers who can construct arguments that matter, craft prose that resonates with their intended audience, and understand writing to describe and define both learning and knowledge.
• explore a particular theme or field of study while emphasizing writing as a means of inquiry, analysis, and persuasion.
• analyze readings, engage in discussion, and work on all aspects of academic writing, from constructing thoughtful arguments to crafting an effective prose style.
• advance critical reading and analytical writing skills, and explore the broad range of thematic interests inherent in these traditions, sharing as they do common roots in the history of our language and its influences.
• develop the vocabulary, skills, and knowledge necessary to understand not only how to decide what texts mean, but how texts generate and contemplate meaning.
• engage with different exercises in speaking with the understanding that this is a rhetoric commensurate with writing in demonstrating sustained critical inquiry.

Curriculum

The Writing Program administers the first-year writing seminars, which all first-year students take. Taught by faculty from across the College, the first-year writing seminars explore a particular theme or field of study while emphasizing writing as a means of inquiry, analysis, and persuasion. Different seminars extend intellectual inquiry into:

• visual and aural cultures.
• the interrogation of the literary canon.
• Quaker history and ethics; categories of difference (racial, sexual, religious, and national identity).
• medical humanities.
• engaged social practice. 

The intensive writing seminars (WSI) prepare students who need extra exposure to academic writing.

Seminar topics reflect the range of expertise of the faculty, and small classes encourage close student-faculty interaction. In each course, participants analyze readings, engage in discussion, and work on all aspects of academic writing, frequently in small tutorial groups, from constructing thoughtful arguments to crafting an effective prose style. Students can expect to write frequent, short essays as well as other kinds of informal writing assignments during the semester.

A list of seminars for each incoming class is posted on the Writing Programs website each June, along with information about how incoming students are to register for them.

Creative writing courses are listed under the English Department.