Perhaps it’s obvious by the course’s title (Writing about Writing) and its designation (W), this is a writing-intensive class designed to strengthen and evolve our relationship to writing and a larger communicative practice. Here, we’ll explore lots of writing strategies, focusing our attention on available choices in argument, language, tone, style, and all-around intentions when communicating our ideas. To support our navigation of these choices, we’ll be carefully and critically analyzing different discourses on and around the university.

A frequent topic for news outlets and cultural commentators, the university serves as a unique site, space, and subject because of how much it informs our perceptions of what knowledges we value and who gets to participate in knowledge making. This semester, we’ll dive deep into these questions and interrogate them in relation to academic writing.