The Writing & Rhetoric Major

Writing emphasizing the sharing of information. Varieties and strategies of expository writing for differing audiences and situations. Genres may include reports, proposals, letters, reviews, and websites.

Introduction to locating and evaluating a variety of sources and integrating them into papers. May include observations, interviews, surveys, key word and reference data base searches, and traditional library research culminating in a final research project.

Concepts, methods, and ethics of argumentative and persuasive writing. Writing argumentatively to examine complex issues, define values, resist coercion and seek common ground among diverse publics.

Basic business communications forms, group reports and presentations, effective use of electronic mail systems, and design of graphic aids for successful visual communication.

Examine, investigate, and practice digital writing. May include Web design, blogs, wikis, social net- working technologies, presentation software, and construction of a digital portfolio. Requires out-of- class technology practice.

Focuses on the expressivist tradition of writing, including memoirs, medical narratives, nature meditations and informal essays.

Experience with non-canonical writings that sustain or reshape culture. May include profiles and biographies, reviews, food and fashion writing, linear and exhibition notes.

Writing in the public sphere, emphasizing civic literacy, democratic discourse, and writing for change. May include letters, public documents, activist publications, and legislative texts. Requires sustained fieldwork.

Study and practice of writing in community service organizations. Requires community service outside class, research, writing, and design. May include grant proposals, brochures, websites, or reports. Requires sustained fieldwork.

Writing about places both new and familiar. Emphasizes descriptive techniques, the use of facts, and different cultural perspectives. May include travel essays, place journals, guidebooks, query letters. Requires sustained fieldwork.

Explore the ways we experience, label, and politicize health and disability in our culture. Writing may include narratives, cultural critiques, persuasive essays, and policy proposals.

Practice in specific forms of writing in the scientific and technical fields.

Practice and theory of one-to-one instruction emphasizing varied writing situations and multiple learning styles. Covers approaches to collaboration, learning, writing, and responding. Offers strategies for making appropriate writing choices.

Examines historical and contemporary theories of composing and rhetorical canons: writing processes, style and arrangement, and relationships among writing, learning social contexts, technology and publication. Field research on professional writers. Pre: WRT 201 and another WRT course at the 200-level or above.

Supervised field experience tutoring in the Writing Center or in the undergraduate peer consultants program.

Practice and direct supervision in workplace writing. Placement options include community-based, governmental, technological, health services, military, educational and non-profit organizations.

Study emphasizing audience, composing processes, and rhetorical theories, including issues relevant to writing professionally.

Capstone for WRT Majors. Readings in electronic writing technologies and portfolios. Preparation of a substantive collection of representative writings. Culminates in an electronic portfolio and a public writing showcase.

About the Writing Major

Requirements

Course Listing

The Writing Minor

Major Learning Outcomes

Internship Opportunities

Scholarships and Awards

Student Profiles

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