WRIT 1000: Courses Current Offerings
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- Winter 2027
- Fall 2026
- Spring 2026
Winter 2027▲
See complete information about these courses in the course offerings database. For more information about a specific course, including course type, schedule and location, click on its title.
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - King, Emily
Ghostly visitors. Cursed places. Generational trauma. Really bad parents. This course explores the challenges of family through the lens of horror. Taking a transhistorical approach, the course engages a variety of films, essays, novels, plays, and poetry that include the work of Octavia Butler, William Shakespeare, and Claire Keegan. Shifting from an analysis of sensationalized depictions of violence in the family unit, we’ll examine how systemic inequities harm families but do not permit that violence to be registered as such. We’ll look at the impossible expectations of care demanded of certain groups and how their “failure” is made monstrous within the cultural imaginary. We will also move beyond the domestic sphere as we consider how the family is made into a placeholder for the nation’s stability. Concluding on a less ghastly note, we end with an exploration of alternative modes of kinship, care, and recuperation.
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - Wheeler, Lesley
What can literary werewolves, cyborgs, ghosts, and fire-starting bears teach us about personhood? What does it mean to write in a human voice, with human help, for other humans? Why do these questions matter? Students in this class consider the boundaries of the human through stories and poems by Martha Wells, Stephen Graham Jones, Lily Yu, Stephen King, and others. Note that this class requires physical books and old-school writing implements.
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - Dewey, Ady
New styles, cheap prices—click. Instant cool. What’s wrong with that especially given inflation and limited budgets? The United Nations, along with many nonprofit organizations, warn about the long-term impact of fast fashion and its various environmental and social issues, including pollution, waste, and worker exploitation. For example, according to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, a truckload of abandoned textiles is dumped in a landfill or incinerated every second—and largely not in the U.S. Concerns about fast fashion are not new; the issue overlaps three of the Sustainable Development Goals that were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015. We will analyze what’s being written and spoken about the topic, as well as consider appeals for changes in policies, commerce, and regulations. Through personal response papers to formal academic essays, you will develop a written argument, whether from a fashion, environmental, human rights or business angle, relying on critical analysis and reasoning to clearly convey your position on what, if anything, might be done about this issue.
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - Smout, Kary
In this section students will read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, an account of vital factors that helped concentration camp inmates survive, then study three key works that deal with major personal struggles healed through outdoor activities and adventures. The works are Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. We’ll connect these works to extreme sports, the outdoor recreation industry, environmental issues, mindfulness, and scientific studies of healing. Our goal is to study and discuss hope and healing in this and other troubled times.
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - Berlin, Michael
As recent regional events have brought into startling focus, the legacy of the American Civil War has retained its urgency. The primary focus of this course will be to unearth the causes of this conflict along with the immense, though often obscured, impact it has had on American cultural memory. At the same time, we will examine larger questions surrounding the history of civil conflict and what it means for a polity to declare war on itself. These questions open up onto related issues such as the relationship between civil war and conflicting definitions of civilization and its others. In answering these questions, we will read texts that range from the ancient Roman poet Virgil’s Georgics to the poetry of the English Civil War (1642-51), and texts from more recent conflicts such as the American wars on drugs (1971-?) and “terror” (2001-?).
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - Fuentes, Freddy
In our class we will study works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alejo Carpentier, Isabel Allende and others, who responded to government sponsored atrocities in Latin America through the literary form of Magical Realism. When confronted by political machines insistent on minimizing, denying and ultimately erasing brutal events, these authors paradoxically embraced the fantastical in order to accurately portray reality. With this as our starting point, we will continue on to consider other authors and different forms of media, including the contemporary and popular, to examine the role of fact in both showing, and shaping, reality.
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - Oliver, Bill
The title of the course leaves out a lot. If extended, it might include strangers, visionaries, fanatics, prophets, artists, lovers, criminals, transients, deviants, freaks, and monsters. We read stories and plays, as well as view films, about individuals challenging the status quo, either directly or indirectly, deliberately or inadvertently. We consider, among other things, what happens to the individual in the process, and what happens to the status quo.
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - Green, Leah Naomi
This seminar is an exploration of the human relationship to nature. How do writers and environmental thinkers understand their relationships to "the natural world"? How can we understand our own? We read widely within environmental literature. Walt Whitman, Annie Dillard, and Wendell Berry, among others, provide scaffolding for our discussion of "nature", "truth", "individuality", "community", "life", "death", "knowledge", and "mystery". We explore the implications of these ideas for an individual life as well as for a globalized world in which ecological concern is a matter of daily news and attention.
Fall 2026▲
See complete information about these courses in the course offerings database. For more information about a specific course, including course type, schedule and location, click on its title.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Fast Fashion, Slow Solutions
WRIT 1000 - Dewey, Ady
New styles, cheap prices—click. Instant cool. What’s wrong with that especially given inflation and limited budgets? The United Nations, along with many nonprofit organizations, warn about the long-term impact of fast fashion and its various environmental and social issues, including pollution, waste, and worker exploitation. For example, according to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, a truckload of abandoned textiles is dumped in a landfill or incinerated every second—and largely not in the U.S. Concerns about fast fashion are not new; the issue overlaps three of the Sustainable Development Goals that were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015. We will analyze what’s being written and spoken about the topic, as well as consider appeals for changes in policies, commerce, and regulations. Through personal response papers to formal academic essays, you will develop a written argument, whether from a fashion, environmental, human rights or business angle, relying on critical analysis and reasoning to clearly convey your position on what, if anything, might be done about this issue.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Memoir in Empire's Shadow
WRIT 1000 - Chowdhury, Lubabah
Is memoir fact, fiction or both? How does memoir challenge commonly held conceptions about literature and its relation to the truth? And how do memoirs expose structures of oppression, such as racism, sexism and empire? In this class, we will read recent memoirs by established writers such as Jesmyn Ward and Sarah Aziza and memoir by incarcerated and detained people around the world. Students will draft and redraft a personal essay and a literary analysis during the course of the term; the class culminates in a 2,500-3,000 word research paper on a topic of students’ choosing from our time together.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: The Healing Power of Nature
WRIT 1000 - Smout, Kary
In this section students will read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, an account of vital factors that helped concentration camp inmates survive, then study three key works that deal with major personal struggles healed through outdoor activities and adventures. The works are Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. We’ll connect these works to extreme sports, the outdoor recreation industry, environmental issues, mindfulness, and scientific studies of healing. Our goal is to study and discuss hope and healing in this and other troubled times.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Crime Novels & Film
WRIT 1000 - Adams, Edward
Crime or detective fiction emerged as one of modern culture's most popular narrative forms with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. This course focuses upon teaching analytical writing and argumentation through an investigation of this genre's key conventions and evolution from Doyle's Holmes and G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown through such subgenres as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers's English amateur detective novels featuring Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple and Lord Peter Wimsey; Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler's American hardboiled detective fictions starring Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe; and, finally, the police procedural developed by several Scandinavian novelists. This course further explores this literary phenomenon and expands the opportunities for students to hone their skills by highlighting how many of its most important stories and novels have been adapted into major films.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Misfits, Rebels, and Outcasts
WRIT 1000 - Oliver, Bill
The title of the course leaves out a lot. If extended, it might include strangers, visionaries, fanatics, prophets, artists, lovers, criminals, transients, deviants, freaks, and monsters. We read stories and plays, as well as view films, about individuals challenging the status quo, either directly or indirectly, deliberately or inadvertently. We consider, among other things, what happens to the individual in the process, and what happens to the status quo.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Marvel Comics and Civil Rights
WRIT 1000 - Gavaler, Chris
Marvel Comics published its first issue, Fantastic Four #1, in 1961, roughly the center of the 1950s and 60s Civil Rights Movement. The third incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan grew in opposition to civil rights during the same period. Responding to that political context, Marvel created two villains inspired by the KKK, the Hate-Monger and the Sons of the Serpent. The course follows the evolution of these characters and a range of Marvel superheroes from the 1960s and into the early 21st century.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Family Horror
WRIT 1000 - King, Emily
Ghostly visitors. Cursed places. Generational trauma. Really bad parents. This course explores the challenges of family through the lens of horror. Taking a transhistorical approach, the course engages a variety of films, essays, novels, plays, and poetry that include the work of Octavia Butler, Nadine Gordimer, Shirley Jackson, Claire Keegan, and William Shakespeare. Shifting from an analysis of sensationalized depictions of violence in the family unit, we’ll examine how systemic inequities harm families but do not permit that violence to be registered as such. We’ll look at the impossible expectations of care demanded of certain groups and how their “failure” is made monstrous within the cultural imaginary. We will also move beyond the domestic sphere as we consider how the family is made into a placeholder for the nation’s stability. Concluding on a less ghastly note, we end with an exploration of alternative modes of kinship, care, and recuperation. Fundamentally, this course aims to develop students’ proficiency in the skills fundamental to a liberal arts education: the ability to reason, to think critically, to communicate effectively, and to appreciate excellent writing and thinking. In this class, you will learn how to translate your ideas onto paper (or the computer screen). All writers, regardless of their abilities, can improve their skills, and a class specifically designed to foster those skills will serve you well, regardless of your academic interests.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Civil War
WRIT 1000 - Berlin, Michael
As recent regional events have brought into startling focus, the legacy of the American Civil War has retained its urgency. The primary focus of this course will be to unearth the causes of this conflict along with the immense, though often obscured, impact it has had on American cultural memory. At the same time, we will examine larger questions surrounding the history of civil conflict and what it means for a polity to declare war on itself. These questions open up onto related issues such as the relationship between civil war andconflicting definitions of civilization and its others. In answering these questions, we will read texts that range from the ancient Roman poet Virgil’s Georgics to the poetry of the English Civil War (1642-51), and texts from more recent conflicts such as the American wars on drugs (1971-?) and “terror” (2001-?).
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Magic, Realism and Alternative Facts
WRIT 1000 - Fuentes, Freddy
In our class we will study works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alejo Carpentier, Isabel Allende and others, who responded to government sponsored atrocities in Latin America through the literary form of Magical Realism. When confronted by political machines insistent on minimizing, denying and ultimately erasing brutal events, these authors paradoxically embraced the fantastical in order to accurately portray reality. With this as our starting point, we will continue on to consider other authors and different forms of media, including the contemporary and popular, to examine the role of fact in both showing, and shaping, reality.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: (Un)Reliability
WRIT 1000 - Buckley, Emmett
Many of us have encountered “unreliable” narrators in fiction, but what would it mean for a narrator to be reliable? And how can we come to understand the world through literature when our own perception is limited, shifting, and occasionally unreliable itself? This seminar will explore themes of (un)reliability and uncertainty in various poems, short stories, and essays by writers like Brian Blanchfield, Robert Browning, John Keats, Carmen Maria Machado, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, Zadie Smith, and others. We will engage with texts that prompt us to question the relationships among voice, style, and fact. This course will emphasize active reading, argumentation, and the development of effective academic writing. Rooted in our classroom discussions, we will work to develop our own voices while positioning ourselves in ongoing conversations without misrepresenting the truth or the opinions of others.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Homeward Bound
WRIT 1000 - Millan, Diego
“Home” is an enduring topic in literature, in part, because of its broad appeal and applicability. It can refer to a literal structure, to the emotional bonds that hold us together, and to the practices that generate and safeguard both. Building on these meanings, homes become symbols for broader social configurations—the unit whose protection represents the security of the nation, for instance. Moreover, imaginings of home, literary or otherwise, offer us a window through which to consider how normative and so called “non-normative” families take shape. In this course, we explore varying, often contradicting, expressions of home and the domestic. We will explore how “home” intersects with markers of identity, such as race, class, and gender. Possible topics include kinship, sexuality, alienation, homelessness, and memory/nostalgia.
Writing Seminar for First-Years: Playwrights and Personhood
WRIT 1000 - Gray, K. Avvirin
With Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark as a central critical text, this course will hone your writing composition and critical reading skills. Our conversations and shared writing practice will unfold around the related themes of performance and personhood. Through texts that range from Adrienne Kennedy’s experimental one-act The Owl Answers to Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, we will explore the myriad ways that playwrights infuse their work with biographical and psychic aspects of their lives and in turn become shaped as individuals through the writing process. Recognizing that both academic and dramatic writing takes place in social contexts that are often fraught, we will foreground an array of social worlds from 17th century England to late 20th century Native America.
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - Ramirez, Alexander
Students will analyze the writings of twentieth and twenty-first century cultural critics and endeavor to confront contemporary sociopolitical forces in their own writing.
Writing Seminar for First-Years
WRIT 1000 - Walkes, Christian
In recent years, an unprecedented number of books have been banned in public schools across the nation. This course explores the education of African descended people in the United States to trace the roots of such prohibitions to anti-literacy laws that forbade African American communities from reading and writing across the antebellum South. In doing so, we emphasize how in this context black people developed an agenda for education that was grounded in ideas of human freedom. Reading contemporary and historically banned texts written by black authors, historical scholarship, and primary source documents that evidence the past, we will engage in writing activities that focus on critically analyzing historical narratives, using historical research methods, and developing skills for “thinking historically” about the past, present, and future(s) of education. While this course is about studying the past, students are also expected to develop an inquiry and analytical piece of writing that is relevant for understanding present-day book bans and other forms of censorship in American schools.
Spring 2026▲
We do not offer any courses this term.