In this course, students will study literature, movements, and writers within their cultural contexts and in relation to modes of literary production and circulation. Students will hone their skills as attentive readers and will engage with literary analysis and cultural criticism. The class will incorporate various literary, cultural, and interdisciplinary theories--such as psychoanalytic theory, feminist and queer theories, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory. Using these theoretical frameworks in order to study texts, students will gain a strong foundation for analyzing the ways literary language functions and exploring the interrelations among literature, culture, and history. In doing so, they will engage issues involving culture, identity, language, ethics, race, gender, class, and globalism, among many others.

Writing Seminar is a three-credit course limited to 19 students per section. The course is designed to develop first-year students’ proficiency in analytical and rhetorical reading and writing, and critical thinking. Students will read, understand, and interpret a variety of non-fiction texts representing different cultural perspectives and/or academic disciplines. These texts are designed to challenge students intellectually and to stimulate their writing for a variety of contexts and purposes. Through inquiry-based assignment sequences, students will develop academic research and literacy practices that will be further strengthened throughout their academic careers. Particular attention will be given to the writing process, including an emphasis on teacher-student conferencing, critical self-assessment, class discussion, peer review, formal and informal writing, research, and revision. Small class size promotes frequent student-instructor and student-student interaction. The course also emphasizes the principles of intellectual property and academic integrity for both current academic and future professional writing.

This course facilitates an in-depth exploration of academic and disciplinary writing and composition. Emphasis is placed on student inquiry and primary research in a supported workshop format, where students determine research and writing goals that align with their majors and interests. Concepts from the field of Writing Studies that will be covered may include disciplinary writing, discourse communities, identity and ideologies, language difference, and multimodality. Through several scaffolded low- and high-stakes writing assignments incorporating effective drafting, revision, and workshopping strategies, students will further develop effective writing and composition approaches that communicate their emerging expertise as academic writers in a range of disciplinary genres. This course extends the composition concepts introduced in UWRT 150: Writing Seminar.