Writing
Academic Program Introduction
Writing is a powerful tool for building knowledge and engaging with the world. All students take one semester of First-Year Writing (FYW), working closely with faculty who offer a lively, practical introduction to college-level academic writing. Courses are designed around a wide array of inspiring topics, and they provide a supportive community in which students share their ideas, practice writing and revision, conduct research, and develop speaking and presentation skills.
Beyond FYW courses, the program offers an advanced writing workshop and tutorial as well as a selection of upper-level writing courses. It also operates a thriving peer writing-tutor program.
Learning goals
Students who have completed a first-year writing course will be able to:
- Approach writing as an evolving process that requires brainstorming, drafting, sharing, reflecting, and revision.
- Understand the mechanisms of sentence structure and writing design that produce precise and reader-friendly prose.
- Write with an attentiveness to genre, medium, and audience.
- Make appropriate choices regarding language, register, evidence, and argument.
- Locate, analyze, and evaluate different types of sources, and integrate them into evidence-based writing.
- Write with purpose and have a stake in their ideas.
Research highlights
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In Expanding Natick History (2022–2023), a project directed by Lecturer Erin Battat in partnership with the Natick Historical Society, students researched the colonization of the town of Natick, created public activities at the Natick Farmers Market, and facilitated conversations with local residents about the past and how it is remembered today.
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Senior Lecturer Heather Corbally Bryant recently published her 11th collection of poetry, The Coffin Makers (Finishing Line Press, 2023).
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Senior Lecturer Justin Armstrong’s book Anthropology, Islands, and the Search for Meaning in the Anthropocene was published by Routledge in 2022.
Course highlights
Influence of Place
WRIT171
How does where you are affect who you are? Throughout the semester we will draw from important writings on nature and the environment that depict and rely on a strong sense of place. From the scientific perspective of Alan Lightman's Our Place in the Universe to Annie Dillard's laser-focused compositions on place, we will learn about different ways to understand and write about spatial identity. We will cross disciplinary boundaries in our examination of the interactions of both humans and non-humans with their environment. Students will actively engage with different locations around and nearby campus, exploring the environment and using current geospatial data and maps to more deeply investigate the powerful influence of place.
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Black Feminism and the Future
WRIT178
In this course, we will examine Black feminist essays and speculative fiction as resources for thinking about the future of feminism and its impact on the broader culture. These texts are helping to shift paradigms of what is understood by the term “feminism”. They also contain critical information that students need not just to survive but thrive in the future. We will discuss how these works offer new ways to think about kinship, gender, reproductive rights, abolition, and representations of selfhood. In addition, they will provide a springboard for looking inward to our own lives and perspectives, as we explore how writing, reading, and action are influenced by the personal. Indeed, if the “personal is political,” as Audre Lorde aptly stated, then what we write from our own experience can shape and change our world. -
Building a Better World
WRIT179
What makes a world? And what makes a world beautiful, sustainable, inclusive, or just? At a time when humanity faces myriad global challenges, we can seek insight in writing that reimagines the world and helps us change it for the better. Reading the work of activists, philosophers, fiction writers, and political theorists, we will examine how past worlds shape those of the present and future. In particular, we will investigate the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in these different visions of the world, asking questions such as: Who enjoys freedom, and when? What is a “human right,” and should those rights be the basis of social organization? In what ways has the nation-state been a force for emancipation, and in what ways a vehicle of empire? What would it look like to live in a world that was fully feminist in its design, or that was built on reparations for past injustices, or that prioritizes the health of the planet above all? What are the conditions necessary for individuals and societies to undergo transformation, improve, and thrive?
Opportunities
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Writing tutors
Students of all class years can meet with trained peer tutors to discuss any aspect of their writing or the writing process. Rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors may apply to work as a tutor and contribute to the strong writing culture at Wellesley.
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Internships
The Writing Program and the Department of English and Creative Writing jointly sponsor funded summer internships at Slate, W.W. Norton & Company, Maven Screen Media, Calligraph, and Speculum.
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Prizes
The Writing Program recognizes excellence through awards for first-year writing, and writing in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. These awards are generously endowed by the Three Generations Fund. The program also administers the Rebecca Summerhays Award for Growth in Writing.
Writing Program
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481