Fall UW Course Descriptions

Registration Transaction Forms (RTFs)

Please note that all Fall and Spring UW1020 sections are capped at 17 students and that this cap cannot be exceeded for any reason. UW instructors cannot sign RTF forms to add students to a section. The only way to add a section of UW1020 is through the GWeb system. If a section is full, you should either check GWeb frequently for open seats, select a different section, or plan to take UW the following semester.

Fall 2025

UW 1020 Courses:

Abbas, Nasreen - The Othering of Muslims: Contemporary Diasporic Literature

Can a person be Middle Eastern or is Middle Eastern purely a geographic entity? The texts we will explore together will allow us to investigate these questions and understand the perspectives from this diverse region. You might think that the authors of our assigned texts are "Middle Eastern" because they are (a) Muslim and (b) have their roots in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. Is that a fact or just an assumption? Using Edward Said's definition of Orientalism, we will learn that the term "Middle East" is just a catch-all phrase to talk about geographical areas or people that some living in the West are unfamiliar with. Through our texts we will explore burning topics such as “what is a migrant?” Is a migrant and an immigrant the same? Is there a difference between a migrant and a refugee? What kind of crises lead to people becoming migrants or refugees? You will also discover the intersectionality between this course and what you learn in your other courses, such as international affairs, comparative politics, psychology, history, economics and more.

Art, Andrew - Writing Through the Self

When is it okay to use “I” in an essay? You’ve no doubt been told to avoid using personal pronouns in your academic writing to remain objective, but in this course, we will examine and unpack the assumptions behind those conventions. Through readings in both creative and scholarly genres, we will begin the course by thinking about the rhetorical implications of “personal writing.” We will also consider the essay as a form and practice, examining its history and significance in inquiry and discourse.

The writing exercises and projects of this course will ask you to explore dimensions of your lived experiences and cultural identities; this will require a significant amount of self-reflection, analysis, and critical thinking. While we will often be in the realm of the “subjective,” this does not mean that we will abandon objectivity. The major research project of this course, an autoethnographic essay, will ask you to investigate, critically reflect on, and research aspects of your own personal experiences in order to arrive at new cultural knowledge and contribute to existing conversations with other scholars, artists, activists, and writers.

My aim in teaching university-level writing through these means is to encourage you to notice and integrate subjectivity and objectivity—the creative and the critical, the literary and the scholarly—within your writing, helping you identify and articulate the influences on your point of view. What might you discover when you are both the writer and the subject of your writing? 

Barlow, Jameta Nicole - Writing Science and Health

This community engaged course meets any student, STEM major or not, at the door of discovery. Recent political moments have attempted to sanitize and malign science in a way that can inhibit such discovery. We, as co-learners, will describe scientific discoveries so our audience could possibly replicate the experience.  This method offers you to consider multiple standpoints, interrogate their philosophy of science and consider alternative ways of knowing—all skills critical to introducing you to university writing and an academic learning environment, while exploring the District of Columbia. You will leave this class appreciating the discovery and application of science (STEM), improving critical thinking skills and communicating through multiple genres. Teaching students how to deconstruct research, as well as think critically about current events in STEM may encourage ongoing practice beyond the end of the course, You will engage in a comprehensive overview of the intricacies between objectivity, moral ethic, science and truth. This process will expand your approach to information—how you receive it and how you understand it—as well as inform your worldview.

Carter, Katharine - "I Did my Own Research: Writing Solutions to Systemic Inequity"

From federal and state laws to school rules and codes of conduct, systems have historically placed barriers to people’s freedoms and access to opportunities.

Additionally, these institutionalized drivers of inequity are often embedded in society, where they are far more subtle but equally as unjust.

Scholars have used examined theories, including critical theory, to explain these occurrences and write solutions to them.

In this course students will be introduced to sociology and social justice research through multiple theories by examining social problems within society that are rooted in inequality and maintained through social systems.

Students will develop research questions to explore a social problem and will review existing research on the social problems they’ve chosen to address. Research sources will include a combination of scholarly and non-scholarly sources, such as journal articles, social media posts, case studies, narratives, and government agency reports.

Students will also review publications from organizations that provide services to those experiencing students’ chosen social problem.

Students will then be prepared to use their analysis to create solutions for a social problem in society through social justice and service. Students will write research proposals, literature reviews, and a final research paper.

Counts, Benjamin - Conflict and Information Literacy

This course covers a wide range of current topics and events—with an emphasis on current. Our initial focus will be on the idea of political conflict as performance art, followed by branching out to cover other forms of conflict, several different styles of writing and public speaking, the dos and don’ts of academic integrity, a dozen or so different databases, and at least three analytical frameworks that will help prepare you for the world beyond the classroom. Through it all, we are going to see how conflicts operate at three levels: What is shown, what is hidden, and what goes unseen.

Major assignments will include two research papers, a policy proposal, a narrative essay, and a portfolio. Minor assignments will include accessing and making use of multiple databases, as well as learning and using structured analytical frameworks. While the course will revolve around comparing and understanding numerous conflicts, students will select their own research topics and materials from outside the assigned readings. Students will be required to take part in interdisciplinary conversation and engage in critical thinking.

Daqqa, Hanan - “Not Another Home Movie”: How Do You Research When the Subject is Yourself?

Be prepared to change what you know about writing, and maybe even what you know about yourself. This course will give you the opportunity to make an impact powerfully and artfully through the telling of that family story, hidden in the attic. Give it the attention it needs, so it can connect you to yourself. As we connect, we gain control.

Telling your story, you will be wearing three hats: the journalist, the researcher, and the filmmaker.

As a journalist, you will learn how to take risks and dig deeper into yourself in order to tell a captivating and impactful story, and you will conduct an important interview.

As a researcher, you will learn how to formulate your own research question and how to let your question drive the journey. Your question focus will be on how to tell your story on film.

Finally, as a filmmaker, you will learn how to use framing, camera movements and sound to tell a story. Your film will be screened during the last week of class. A keepsake for generations to come. 

Donovan, Julie - Text & Image

Concentrating on graphic novels and memoirs, this course examines the impact of the visual in literature, drawing out its aesthetic, political, and cultural implications. We’ll think about how words and pictures both elucidate and complicate meaning, particularly in terms of how women have historically been depicted when visuals combine with text. As graphic novels and books gain increasing respectability in academia, we’ll also consider distinctions, legitimate or arbitrary, that are assigned to culture.

Erfani, Kylie - TBD

TBD

Fletcher, Wade - Reading Without Words: The Image as Text

Note: Priority registration given to students in the Art + Design Living Learning Community

Are images texts? Can images be “read?” What does it mean to “read” an image?

As individuals, we are confronted with, interpret, process and ignore a multitude of images every day. Via these images, visual narratives and arguments manifest across many spectrums, from business, advertising, and politics, to popular culture, art, and fashion, with each image vying for our attentions. In this course, we’ll intersect with the study of visual culture and visual rhetoric, considering the role images play in our culture(s), while exploring what it means to examine something as an "image" and investigating how visual narratives and arguments are formed, composed, and realized. To this end, we’ll also examine images alongside written texts, exploring the parallels between the two forms.

Our subject matter will include two graphic novels, visual art (specifically the collections at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum) and iconic and cultural images, the latter of which will potentially comprise photographs, advertising, branding and marketing, iconic images, and much more. Assignments will include three essays of increasing length, each focusing on a particular image (or set of images) — a blog critique, an analysis of a visual argument and an argumentative research essay — as well as short visual projects and contributions to an online class discussion forum.

Francois, Emma - Fashioning Thought

“Fashion has to do with ideas,” Coco Chanel said, “the way we live, what is happening.” This course explores the fundamentals of writing by considering fashion. What can the principles of design teach us about our own writing and the writing we love? How can we fashion our writerly identities to produce meaningful texts engaging the world we live, dress, and write in?

We’ll start the semester exploring fashion writing across genres by translating a scholarly essay into an article for a popular media platform. As we write, we’ll experiment with skills from the designer’s toolkit (like social brainstorming, vision boards, and sketches) to disrupt and examine our own writing processes. Other major assignments include a “collage annotated bibliography” and a class field trip to a museum in D.C. to explore how writing, in conjunction with other mediums, exists beyond the page. Drawing on this experience and research conducted throughout the semester, we’ll write an 8-10 page object essay to discern—and communicate—how one sartorial text can change and reflect the world.

Friedman, Sandie - Solving Writing Problems (With Or Without AI)

Why struggle with writing problems when you can just turn them over to AI? On the other hand, if your aim is to learn to solve writing problems, why would you outsource the writing process?  Where do we draw the line between ethical uses of AI and inappropriate uses? In this seminar, we consider AI and its relationship to writing. In doing so, we address not only questions about the ethical uses of AI, but also the issues behind these questions: What is the purpose of college, and what do you hope to get out of it? In this first-year seminar, a gateway to college, we reflect on our reasons for working through writing and learning problems.

We begin the semester by writing a literacy narrative, which tells the story of how you learned to read and write and explains your reasons for coming to college. For the major project of the semester, students conduct primary research in the form of interviews or surveys to investigate an aspect of AI and writing. Finally, students create an argumentative piece (Op-Ed, manifesto, or video essay) about the principles for AI use they have developed over the course of the semester. As part of the research for these projects, we will read and discuss the most current scholarly articles about AI and writing. Along the way, we turn to Professor Shelley Reid’s Rethinking Your Writing, an online writing resource, which will help us consider how to address writing problems without AI. Through the work of the semester, we will not only develop our own set of principles to guide AI use, but we’ll also contribute to a broader conversation about the value of college and the role of AI in learning.

Gamber, Cayo - Legacies of the Holocaust 

Every UW 1020 course requires ‘finished’ writing, developed in a rigorous composition process often consisting of pre-draft preparation, drafts, and revisions based on instructor’s advice and classmates’ comments. In this course, the series of tasks you will perform — including writing a research paper that integrates both primary and secondary sources — are designed both to help you become familiar with an array of research efforts as well as familiar with writing an authoritative study of your chosen topic. In this course, we analyze primary documents from the Shoah — photographs and oral histories, in particular. I ask that we engage with these materials because such research encourages us to value the research findings of others; to acquire research skills; to recognize the ways in which primary materials are central to both the research process and the conclusions one draws; and, perhaps most importantly, to realize our analysis allows us to make meaningful additions to the academic conversation about a given topic. The range of research topics is wide, from the role art played in the Holocaust to the workings of a particular concentration camp; or from the role liberators played (or failed to play) to what is known about the "bearers of secrets," the Sonderkommando, who were eyewitnesses to the Final Solution. While we may not be able to make amends for the Holocaust, I believe that through the careful study of the lives of those who perished and the words of those who survived, we become witnesses for the eyewitnesses, witnesses who are willing to be bearers of the stories and history of the Shoah.

Gretes, Andrew - Absurdity, Anxiety and Authenticity (oh my!): Exploring Writing Through Philosophy

In this class, we’ll use philosophy to approach critical thinking and composition. More specifically, we’ll dive into one particularly moody (“emo”?) movement in philosophy called existentialism. After sampling a variety of dramatic and angsty concepts—absurdity, freedom, “hell is other people,” mass-man (aka, “sheeple”), and authenticity—we’ll use our newfound philosophical understanding to think through some issues and dilemmas in our own culture. Boldly put, one of the goals of this class is to shift your relationship to writing. Writing is a visual-form of thinking. Writing is not just a dictation-device; it’s also a discovery-device. To remix an old philosophical truism: I write, therefore I think. Throughout the semester, we’ll interact with a variety of genres: e.g., biographies, plays, self-help books, manifestos, YouTube videos (existential influencers, anyone?), and aphorisms. Students will engage in a variety of writing projects, including a research-based essay that will take a specific concept from existentialism and use this concept as a tool to explore and re-think an issue in our own culture.

Hayes, Carol - “How Writing Works”

To write is to convey your thoughts on paper in a traceable form that others can then respond to. Writing is thus both a challenge (are you able to put what you mean into words on the screen or page?) and an act of vulnerability (you are opening yourself to response from your readers, whatever those responses might be). Very, very few people find writing “easy” (I am not among them). Your past experiences with writing and language, whether good or bad, will have shaped your emotions, your writing process, and your view of your own writing identity.

This UW class is designed to give you a space to explore your experiences and challenges with writing, with the goal of increasing your writing knowledge in ways that will support your transitions to writing in other contexts, such as other GW courses, internships, and beyond. Drawing upon writing studies research (yes, scholars research writing!) and research in educational psychology, you’ll use that research to help prepare you to write in new contexts. 

Hijazi, Nabila - Contested Bodies: Beyond a Standard Refugee Narrative 

Note: This is a service learning course. Learn more about service learning courses.

Mainstream migration and refugee discourses often depict refugees as living in limbo, with women framed through narratives of fragility, passivity, or even violence. This course challenges such representations by reexamining refugee women as historical actors, resilient individuals, and agents of change. Rather than reinforcing the dominant narrative of refugees as victims or objects of rescue, we will explore their lived experiences, agency, and strategies for survival and economic mobility. Engaging with a range of texts, ranging from scholarly articles and personal narratives to TED Talks, guest lectures, and documentaries, students will critically analyze the social and cultural positioning of refugee women. As a community-engaged course, this class moves beyond theoretical inquiry, providing students with the opportunity to collaborate with nonprofit organizations working directly with refugee communities. These partnerships offer hands-on experience in public scholarship, advocacy, and ethical engagement. Throughout the semester, students will develop essential rhetorical skills, including summarizing, analyzing, researching, inquiring, reflecting, and arguing, necessary for rigorous academic scholarship, ethical public engagement, and professional practice. By integrating classroom learning with direct community involvement, this course challenges students to question assumptions, engage deeply with the complexities of migration, and recognize writing as a powerful tool for social change.

Hijazi, Nabila -  Feeding Hope: Writing, Food, and Refugee Agency in the DC Community

Aligned with the policy, innovation, and humanity pillars of the Global Food Institute (GFI), this course encourages students to consider the broader social, political, and humanitarian implications of food systems in a globalized world. This course examines the intersections of food, culture, and refugee empowerment, focusing on refugees resettled in Washington, DC. Through traditional culinary practices, students explore how food preserves cultural identity, fosters resilience, and supports economic sustainability amid displacement. Students will develop critical thinking and research skills by analyzing food literacy’s role in storytelling, adaptation, and empowerment. Writing assignments will emphasize summarizing, analyzing, researching, and constructing well-supported arguments, key skills for ethical public engagement, academic scholarship, and professional practice.

Experiential learning is central to this course, with community-based projects involving local organizations that support refugee communities. Students will conduct ethnographic research, participate in cultural events, and engage directly with refugees to understand how food shapes identity and community. Through inquiry, reflection, and hands-on engagement, students will gain a deeper understanding of food’s transformative role in fostering sustainable and inclusive communities.

Hijazi, Nabila - Writing with Threads: Textiles, Embroidery, and the Narratives of Refugees

In partnership with the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Center at the George Washington University Museum and the UNHCR MADE51 project, a craft-based platform designed to create economic opportunities for refugees, this course explores the art of writing through the rich cultural and historical lens of textiles and the lived experiences of refugee women. The course incorporates hands-on exploration at the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Center and examines real-world applications through the MADE51 project. Students will engage with various literary and visual texts that highlight how refugees use fabric and other textile traditions as forms of storytelling, resistance, and cultural preservation. By analyzing these material artifacts, alongside refugee narratives, students will develop their writing skills in critical analysis and argumentation. Students will explore the intersections of gender, migration, and tradition, examining how refugee women preserve and transmit their stories through needle and thread. Through a blend of research, academic writing, and reflective essays, the course will emphasize how textiles serve as both metaphor and method for expressing identity, displacement, and resilience. By the end of the course, students will not only sharpen their writing abilities but also gain a deeper appreciation for the ways in which material culture informs and shapes refugee experiences.

Janzen, Kristi - “Beyond the Numbers: Economics, Business, Money & Markets”

This course aims to deepen students’ understanding of economics and business, while introducing them to university-level research and scholarly/academic writing. By examining writings on economics, business and finance (e.g., inflation, the cost of higher education, corporate earnings, interest rates, mortgages, antitrust laws, wages, taxes, economic growth), students will both broaden their practical understanding of these topics and hone their ability to write about them. Students will read about the discipline of writing and examine different styles and genres. We will discuss research techniques, context, information sources, and methods of evaluation, while analyzing why and how particular choices are made about what data or information to include or exclude. The class includes numerous smaller writing assignments, an OpEd, and a scholarly article following the format of a typical economics journal article. The students’ scholarly articles must incorporate peer-reviewed journal articles and other appropriate scholarly sources and data. Students will choose article subjects within the realm of business, finance or economics. Over the course of the semester, students will share and discuss their writing in class, not only to improve their writing, but also to enrich everyone’s understanding of the topics. They will also edit their peers’ work. 

Kristensen, Randi - Africa and the African Diaspora

Black Panther. Black Panthers. Black Lives Matter. Slavery. Colonialism. Modernity. Afro-futurism. Critical Race Theory. These and other signifiers of Black life in the 21st century circulate widely. What do they mean? Why do they matter? Why is their teaching being outlawed in some places in the United States? In this course, we will bring our critical reading, thinking, and writing skills to bear on these and other questions. We will also strive to discern the many and complicated versions of Blackness that co-exist, sometimes uneasily, in the US and worldwide. We will also question the implications of doing research within and across cultures; for example, what is the significance of our research and writing for those about whom we research and write? What are the effects of our choices of language and form?

As readers, writers and thinkers, we will develop our skills in recognizing and articulating these complexities, and will produce original and effective writing that reflects our close attention to the research questions that engage us, and sources that inform us. Major assignments include an autoethnography, and a carefully researched, documented, and argued research paper on a writer-selected topic that increases our understanding of contemporary Black life. In addition, we will develop a public-facing version of our research for each other and the wider community.

Mantler, Gordon - From Abolition to Home Rule: Writing D.C. Movement Histories

What do historical social justice movements in Washington, D.C., tell us about not just the nation’s capital but the nation itself? Whether it was the movement to abolish slavery, activism to establish women’s right to vote, or the District’s own struggle for home rule, social movements have a storied history in Washington, D.C., despite – or perhaps because – the capital has never enjoyed full-fledged democratic rights in its nearly 250-year existence. In this community-engaged class, you will begin to think like historians by analyzing the activism that shaped the city and region you live in today. In the process, you will visit parts of the city with which you may be unfamiliar, including communities and archives not in Foggy Bottom. And you will begin to – or continue to – develop university-level research and writing skills, including understanding disciplinary differences in writing genres, audiences, and conventions, exploring GW’s vast library resources, recognizing the clear limitations of generative artificial intelligence, and seeing writing as inherently a social act.

Marcus, Robin - With Words and With Pretty - Joy and Resistance in Expressive African American Traditions

This course title argues that Black American Artistic expression can also be understood in contexts of resilience, exuberance and joyful determination. We will examine Afro-centric often camouflaged or submerged in plain sight, traditions that sprouted when the first Africans to survive their harrowing Trans-Atlantic journey set foot on American soil. We'll trace the artistic path their transplanted traditions forged. Finally, we will also look for primary source material that reveals intention, find cross genre conversations and connections, and learn how these traditions have endured while shape-shifting into new, contemporary art forms. The traditions studied in this survey course may include, but will not be limited to dance, visual art, photography, fiction and song produced by both known and obscure artists. Guest speakers who have expertise in related genres may compliment our classroom instruction. Students will write short essays throughout the semester, will present original work produced by the A.A.S.P. and a final multi-media research paper that demonstrates an evolving understanding of how such expressions can be "read" within contemporary spaces.

McCaughey, Jessica - From Reels to Reports: Exploring Meaningful Writing at Home, Work, and School

In a world where we are writing and reading in some form all day most days, what makes a text “meaningful”? Further, what does “meaning” have to do with improving as a writer and researcher? Many of us think of personal writing–our text messages, childhood stories, social media exchanges, diaries, and such–as unrelated to the “serious” writing of the university and the professional world. But are they? In this writing and research class, we’ll learn how scholars understand the ways in which writers develop and improve over a lifetime. In doing so, we’ll interrogate experiences of personal writing not only for the related writing skills they allow us to build on, but also for the meaning we find in these experiences. Further, we’ll look at the individual characteristics and actions that the scholarship tells us can aid in our development as writers, such as “habits of mind,” dispositions, and self-regulation.

We’ll also ask questions about what we don’t know; as a class, we’ll consider: What changes when we shift from writing for ourselves to writing for others? What are the stories we tell about ourselves as writers? What does it mean to “identify” as a writer? How does literacy morph as we mature? What does the writing you create in childhood have to do with research papers in college or–further still–with emails you will write in the workplace? Through these explorations, we will compose texts in a variety of genres, with an emphasis on rhetorical context, writing process, and the acts of giving and receiving feedback. We’ll consider the word “text” as expansively as possible, engaging with scholarly texts, as well as popular, digital, and purely image-based texts in an effort to make sense of our past and present writing lives and also to look ahead. 

Michiels, Paul - The Rhetoric of Physical Health and Fitness

What does it mean to be physically fit? What does it mean to be physically healthy? How have definitions of physical health and fitness evolved, and how do they vary across cultures, communities, and historical contexts?

In this course, we will critically examine the discourse surrounding physical health and fitness, analyzing how various stakeholders—from scientists and medical professionals to fitness influencers and wellness brands—shape public perceptions through language, arguments, and persuasive strategies. We will explore how the fitness industry markets body ideals, how social media influencers promote health and workout trends, and how public health campaigns define and promote physical health. By comparing the rhetoric of medical research with self-help fitness books, gym advertisements with athletic apparel branding, and wellness influencers’ narratives with scientific discourse, we will investigate how different voices frame fitness across disciplines and contexts. Through this analysis, we will consider the motivations behind these messages, their impact, and how these definitions shift across contexts.

Through analysis of these texts, videos, and media, students will develop skills in rhetorical analysis, critical thinking, and interdisciplinary inquiry. Through writing and discussion, we will challenge assumptions, reflect on our own understandings of health and fitness, and gain a deeper appreciation for how language and persuasion shape our beliefs and behaviors.

Mullen, Mark - The Grateful and the Dead

In the US especially we have a conflicted relationship with the idea of death.  On the one hand, our entertainment media serve up regular doses of the most spectacular and inventive forms of death imaginable.  Our news offers a steady drumbeat of stories that testify to a peculiarly US tolerance for large numbers of mostly preventable citizen deaths: gun violence, automobile fatalities, and of course, the national scandal of the highest COVID-19 death toll in the world. But while our culture has—until recently—hesitatingly moved toward a greater openness when talking about issues like sexuality and mental illness, we remain curiously reluctant to talk about what is, after all, the one certainty in all our lives.

Part of the problem, of course, is the cultural belief that death is a grim and depressing topic.

This course, however, takes its lead from a counter-intuitive set of research findings from the field of positive psychology.  Researchers were surprised to discover that one thing positively correlated with long-term human happiness was in fact regular contemplation of death. Not a morbid obsession with death, but rather regular brief reminders of mortality, both our own and that of others.

This course will challenge students to engage imaginatively with death by exploring an array of writing and research styles while investigating different approaches to the contemplation of death. A major component of this course will be to explore locations associated with death in DC, particularly lesser-known cemeteries, memorials and historical sites.

Myers, Danika - Poetry + Research

“There is no telling this story; it must be told” – NourbeSe Philip, Zong!
“When I write comma I come closer to people I want to know comma to the language I want to speak” - Layli Long Soldier, Whereas

Are poetry and research opposing forms? Is poetry always subjective, while research is strictly objective? How does poetry seek truth? How can poetry become the medium for research and exploration? In this class, we will analyze books of poetry obsessed with communicating truth and documenting evidence.

NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! dwells on the events of a 1781 massacre, when 132 of the 470 enslaved Africans held captive on the British ship Zong were thrown overboard. By drawing legal language into fractured poetics Philip subverts it to convey horror and grief. Layli Long Soldier’s book Whereas is a response to the 2009 Congressional resolution of apology to Native Americans that draws on historical documents to critique the contemporary legacies of settler-colonialism. C.D. Wright's One With Others is a poetry collection that uses interview and historical research to revisit the role of her mentor, V, in the March Against Fear in Arkansas in 1969. By using poetic forms as an analytical method for understanding evidence compiled through meticulous research, works like these challenge dominant narratives and offer new ways of understanding history and identity.

This section of UW1020 invites you to use texts that combine research + poetry as a starting point to explore research, writing, documentation, and the production of knowledge. It seeks to support you in developing a new understanding of the infinite ways sources can be engaged or critiqued, subverted or celebrated, and see how it feels to adopt such techniques in your own writing. We will also consider what these texts reveal about how other, more familiar, forms of research-based and academic writing operate. How might traditional academic research –supposedly an objective form– silence particular voices or perpetuate systems of power? How can poetry transform our understanding of research and what research values? Assignments will include a documentary poem, a group presentation, and a research-based poetry sequence. Homework will frequently require you to attempt archaic or byzantine poetic forms or ask you to render the conventions of academic genres in verse.

Pollack, Rachel - Dutch Painting at the National Gallery of Art

In this course we will develop writing skills through careful observation and analysis of 17th Century Dutch painting. Each student will write 2 polished catalogue entries (2-3 pages each) of works from the National Gallery collection, a short exhibition review (3-5 pages), a short research paper (5-7 pages) and a larger research project (15-20 pages). Artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Frans Hals will be the central focus of class discussion, as well as various landscape and still life masters. We will explore issues of technique (i.e. materials and methods) and art historical interpretations. Why do we consider Rembrandt a "genius?" Did Vermeer use the camera obscura? How did the new wealthy middle class affect art patronage? Together we will read a selection of scholarly articles related to each subject, as well as visiting the museum collection firsthand. Through critical writing, class discussion, and individual research, each student will learn to see and appreciate the art of the Dutch Golden Age.

Pollack, Rachel - Art in the Age of Shakespeare

In this course, students explore the visual arts created during the Shakespearean Age. From a rich array of mediums spanning Elizabethan and early Jacobean portraiture, book illustrations, tapestries, sculpture, clothing, jewelry, and armor, students visually reconstruct the world that inspired Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Neil MacGregor’s book Shakespeare’s Restless World: A Portrait of an Era in Twenty Objects is central to class discussion and serves as a model for students to develop their own research and related group exhibition projects. Writing assignments will include catalogue entries on selected art works ( ~2-3 pages), a shorter research paper (~8 pages), a final research paper (~10 pages) on material culture and art from Shakespeare’s time. 

Presser, Pamela - Writing Lives: Composing Consciousness and Community Engagement 

This is a service learning course. Learn more about service learning courses.

Note: This course will be taught via remote instruction.

Feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun wrote “Out of old tales we must make new lives.”

Can we repurpose the texts which surround us, and utilize writing to create a more just, more inclusive world? Could reading Mary Shelley’s 19th century novel Frankenstein help us understand 21st century climate change? Does an evaluation system which requires grading need an overhaul? How can we responsibly interact with our communities?

In this class, we will ponder these questions, drawing on theorists such as Inoue, Freud and Marx. Students will be expected to complete several short assignments each week. Major assignments will include developing an annotated critical bibliography and an accompanying research paper, and students will also engage in an intensive peer review process.

The class includes a community engagement component which will require students to work with a local non-profit organization. 

Quave, Kylie - Dining on the Past: Writing about archaeology and food

How did the ingredients in your meal get to your plate? How do meals connect you to a culture or distinguish you from others? At what cost do we achieve abundance and who pays the price in scarce times? What we eat says much about us in the present and in the past. This course focuses on archaeology, a humanistic science, to reconstruct the past as relevant to the present. Writing about the archaeology of foodways can offer insights such as 1) how stereotypes of hunter gatherers shapes notions of nutrition, 2) why food producers are alienated from the labor and exploited, 3) how humans adapt to changing environments, and 4) what role humans play in degrading or enhancing food production capacities.

In this course you will develop research skills to analyze how knowledge of these phenomena is constructed by archaeologists and others. Social values and norms shape how we know what we “know” about foodways in the human past. You will seek to understand where misunderstandings, essentializations, and falsehoods may be introduced into the scholarly record, whether through unintentional means—misconstruing evidence—or through subterfuge or unmitigated biases. And you will engage with examples of slow science, in which archaeologists may eschew feigned certainty to allow for ambiguity and vagueness. Using the archaeology of food as an example, you will develop skills for critically examining claims and evidence in other disciplines, using sources responsibly, and conveying complex scientific research to diverse audiences. Assignments include a major research paper, genre analyses, and multimodal writing for nonexpert publics.

Richter, Jacob - Writing for Social Media

When you scroll social media, you are inundated with writing, rhetoric, images, sounds, GIFs, hashtags, videos, captions, and other forms of communication. Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Twitter/X, and TikTok are full of writing and media that shape our world in increasingly vital but often poorly understood forms. Writing is a technology that enables us to share ideas, express ourselves, connect with others, and build momentum for the causes that we care about, but it also is rapidly evolving in a digital age in ways that are not always positive. In this endeavor, writing’s capacity to generate consequences in the world is helped along by seemingly free digital platforms, by algorithms that reward emotion and sensationalism, and by a digital ecosystem that is geared toward profit far more than it is toward transparency, the emotional health of its users, or even democracy.

In this course, we’ll approach both academic writing and writing on social media as an opportunity for intervention in a contemporary world where writing and communication online saturate our lives more than they ever have before. In individual class sessions, we’ll discuss academic writing, but will also discuss how writing and rhetoric on social media impact varied topics like democratic elections, corporate responsibility, the emotional health of teenagers, and even the types of writing and communication that emerging professionals (and thus college students) benefit from expertise in. We’ll learn together through in-class activities that involve creating pretend Starbucks and Dunkin Instagram posts to enact visual rhetoric, will write pretend Kickstarter pages to practice tailoring a message for an audience in a particular rhetorical situation, and will remix major research projects into a social media campaign using tools like Zeoob and Hootsuite. We’ll also conduct extensive academic research to probe important questions about topics like ubiquitous data collection online, social media’s impact on the mental health of teens, how political campaigns are leveraging social media influencers to win elections, and how platforms are increasingly enabling misinformation, science denial, authoritarianism, social movements, and both political polarization and revolution. The extensive research students will conduct in this course will culminate in two projects, the “Social Media Rhetorical Analysis” and the “Public Recommendation Report” projects, that generate original knowledge about social media’s role in our contemporary information ecosystem and offer recommendations for future action society should take to address these opportunities.

Russ, Ebony - Anti-Racist STEM Writing in the 21st  Century

Understanding the importance of amplifying the voices of underrepresented groups in academia, publications, private industry, media as well as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is key to contributing to anti-racist STEM writing. Our writing skills and style are informed by the subject matter of which we partake. Intentional  approaches to anti-racist STEM writing can be pivotal to your success as a well-informed scholar. Exercising inclusivity can be superficial  and deceptive if one does not possess the foundational knowledge of the interplay of race, racism, and scholarship in academia. Anti-racist STEM writing is a function of scholar activism which is a component of social justice which can contribute to overall equality.

In this course, we will examine components of anti-racist STEM writing in the 21st century while comparing the similarities and differences  in social justice from past centuries. Our examination of anti-racism will be guided by exploring race and racism in scholarly writings. This will involve critically reading and writing about scholarly and popular text authored by African American authors as well as many other Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Assignments include identifying scientific evidence, original research writing, responses to readings and peer writing, collaborative and independent revision, and graphical display of information (tables, charts, and infographics), and critiquing Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI).  Students will rhetorically evaluate scientific arguments and respond to them in socially relevant ways for both expert and broader public audiences. 

Ryder, Phyllis - Writing for Social Change

This is a service learning course. Learn more about service learning courses.

Learning to “write well” means learning to wrestle with power. “Writing for Social Change” is a space where we will work with local DC nonprofits to confront social inequities, study how to use writing to build community, and convince people that a more just world is possible. We also will wrestle with the power of “writing well” at a more meta level: the rules for “good writing” are themselves tools that can include and exclude people from power. By the end of the semester, you will have your own toolbox for developing complex, meaningful writing projects and a philosophy of writing that reflects your personal values and engages diverse audiences.

Over the semester, you will build on the writing strategies you learned in high school to become stronger, more deliberate writers. I will challenge you to reflect on your own values and identity, so that you can connect with your readers. I will push you to think more fully about the sources you draw on, so that your essays are complex and compelling. I have high expectations, but you will have a great deal of support. The assignments are divided into manageable pieces and you will receive a lot of feedback along the way. If you do all the work, you will get a good grade.

Sauer, Beverly - Risk Communication

The Shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters, the submersible Titan, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Maui fire, Boeing accidents, and heat domes over much of the US demonstrate that communication plays an important role in risk management. Since the beginning of 2020, we ourselves have struggled to make sense of risk information about COVID as we consider whether to travel, see our families, party with friends, or mask (or not) in public spaces.

Risk demands action. But facts alone may not persuade stakeholders to act. What kinds of evidence can we draw upon to persuade people to act in what we perceive to be their best interests? Who can we trust? What does science tell us—or fail to tell us—about how to act in the face of uncertain and contradictory data? Can effective communication make a difference?

Writing assignments in this class are designed to help you construct persuasive fact-based ethical and logical risk communication messages for particular audiences. Although the disasters presented in the class are interesting from a technical point of view, you will focus on communication strategies (visual, verbal, graphical, and written) that influence the outcomes of the disaster.

In this class, you will summarize and critique previous communication failures; construct a research-based assessment of a risk of you own choice; learn to construct a ‘mental model’ of what audiences know or believe (audience analysis) about a particular risk; explore the challenges of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary risk communication; and produce a short research paper in which you apply the skills you have learned to persuade specific audiences to act to reduce risk.

Ultimately, you will develop critical thinking skills that enable you to identify and mitigate communication failures before, during, and after a crisis. No technical experience is required.

Schell, Heather - Data Driven

We inhabit a data-driven world. While people may disagree on what constitutes data—or even if data is plural or singular—"showing someone the numbers" is now our most valued method of proving something is true. It's "hard evidence," which could explain why it “crunches” when we "crunch the numbers." Personal experience—our most direct source of knowledge about our world—is sometimes rejected as "anecdata." In this class, we'll learn to be more critical data consumers and ask hard questions about what numerical data can and cannot do. For example, what is the connection between data and fact?  Where does data come from?  Can data exist without humans to collect it, and if not, can it ever be objective?  What does it mean for each of us as humans to have so much data about our “private” lives—our educational record, our health, our politics, our phone calls, our driving record, even our food preferences—so easily accessible for data brokers and those they serve? 

We’ll explore these topics through three projects: Understanding Polls, a series of assignments that ask you to unpack a poll, analyze how news articles use polls, and teach classmates what to look for when they assess polling data; an empirical research project that will challenge you to gather new data, and a data visualization project using the data your collect.  

Smith, Caroline - Communicating Feminism

Most of us have probably seen the iconic image of Beyoncé in front of a giant screen on which the word FEMINIST is emblazoned. You may even be familiar with the feminist author Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s speech “We Should All Be Feminists,” which Beyoncé samples in her song “Flawless.” But, have you ever considered what Beyoncé means by feminism? Or how her feminism might be similar or different to Adichie’s? What does the term feminism actually signify?

In this course, we will study the history of the feminist movement and consider the various strategies that feminist writers use to educate and inspire their audience. Students will have an opportunity to explore a range of feminist issues from different disciplinary angles. We will also produce our own feminist writing in a variety of genres. Students will work in partnership with the Wiki Education Foundation to create and revise content about feminists and feminist issues on Wikipedia in order to help close Wikipedia’s gender gap. Students will also research and write on the feminist topic of their choice for an independent research project. The skills we will work on in this introductory course will prepare students for other academic challenges throughout the remainder of their college career.

Smith, Caroline - The (Identity) Politics of the Kitchen

In the summer of 2009, the movie Julie and Julia, which intertwines the tales of chef, cookbook author, and television personality Julia Child and food blogger Julie Powell, opened to complimentary reviews and positive public reception, grossing $20.1 million at the box office on opening weekend. The film, which is based on two memoirs (Child’s My Life in France and Powell’s The Julie/Julia Project) reveals the public’s fascination with the food we eat, the way we prepare it, and the stories of people like Julia and Julie who find pleasure and fulfillment in both.

In this course, we will study the genre of food writing – from food histories to local eating manifestos. More specifically, we will focus our discussions and writing on the topic of identity and food. What might a selection from Gordon Ramsay’s Playing with Fire reveal about masculinity? In The Sexual Politics of Meat, what does scholar Carol J. Adams uncover about the connections between the treatment of women and animals? What does the cookbook For the Culture: Phenomenal Black Women and Femmes in Food teach us about intersectionality in the kitchen? How, in writing about the tangible act of preparing food, do these writers encourage readers to reflect upon the intangible identity politics of the kitchen? Throughout the semester, we will also produce our own writing from a variety of disciplinary angles. For the capstone project of the course, you will complete an independent research project – reading, researching, and writing about the food and identity topic of your choice. The skills that you will develop in this introductory course will prepare you well for other academic challenges throughout the remainder of your college career.

Svoboda, Michael - Imagining a Sustainable Future

Humans have been imagining different possible futures for millennia. So many and so different are these futures that we have sorted them into types or genres: revolutions and apocalypses, utopias and dystopias, rebirths and redeaths. But which if any of these, we are now asking, is sustainable?

In “Imagining a Sustainable Future,” we will try to answer this question by analyzing how past writers have imagined the 21st century, by sampling how contemporary writers are imagining this century and the next, and by engaging with current research on sustainability, climate change, and human behavior. 

In these sections of UW 1020, you can join the ever-increasing number of scientists and journalists, artists and activists, and, yes, concerned citizens who are trying to imagine a sustainable future. Through the readings and viewings we select, you will participate in a broad interdisciplinary conversation about our future. And through the critical thinking, creative research, and reflective writing you will practice in the writing assignments for this course, you will be able to make an original contribution to this ongoing work.

Tomlinson, Niles - Fake News and Ironic Views: Satire as Social Critique

While satire has a long history of exposing social/political excess and human folly, never has it been so prevalent as in our current cultural moment. From The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight to the Netflix series Bojack Horseman to the mockumentaries of Sasha Baron Cohen to the films Don’t Look Up and They Cloned Tyrone, satire is a potent and sometimes dangerous rhetorical tool for illuminating the absurdities of extremist views and partisan propaganda. This course starts with the question of why satire has become such a pervasive phenomenon and then moves towards an exploration of the value of, and potential problems with, satire as a lens for social criticism. 

This course will include assignments like a self-written and performed satire that critiques a relevant current issue, a rhetorical analysis of a scholarly article on satire, a critical reading of a satirical film or novel, and a capstone research project which will give students a chance to explore in depth a particular example of satire in contemporary culture. In all, this course will make the larger points that the language of satire and irony is our language, and that laughter and seriousness are not mutually exclusive.

Troutman, Phillip - Visual Past: Race, Gender, Sexuality

Historical images pose writing problems. Images say things, they want things. All images–cartoons, paintings, films, maps, photographs–interpret, idealize, and shade the truth. They generate their own truths, and they lie. They are both damaging and empowering, especially in issues of  race, gender, sexuality, where images often portray mutable qualities of human behavior and identity as apparently essential and unchanging. But images also challenge the status quo and generate new ideas. Images do not speak for themselves; despite appearances, their meanings are not self-evident, and scholars of visual culture have created specialized concepts, terms, and methods that you will need to adopt and adapt in order to do your own interpretation. You will gain hands-on experience with archival and digital primary sources, analyzing and interpreting them in light of historical questions important to you and to other scholars. Since writing about images requires description, translation from the visual to the verbal, it will help you hone your critical thinking, research, and analytic skills. But you will also have to approach historical images with some imagination and creativity, finding new words and phrases to rise to the task, especially as you handle dated and potentially offensive historical documents. In this class, you will work as a visual historian, framing research questions in response to existing scholarship, pursuing those questions through archival research, acquiring specialized analytical vocabulary and conceptual frameworks, and honing your analytical voice by anticipating reader expectations through a peer response process.

Wolfe, Zachary - Law as a force for social change

This course uses the theme of law and its role in progressive social movements to introduce students to university-level research and writing. Understanding that law is an important means by which we structure social relations consistent with shared values, this course will examine historical and contemporary social movements that have used the language of rights and turned to legal systems for solutions. We will explore how advocates for social change — in the streets, in courtrooms, and in academic journals — have challenged and redefined foundational concepts, invoking history and law in order to challenge the status quo. Throughout all of this, we consider how to evaluate arguments, what makes for effective advocacy, and the ways in which thoughtful analysis contributes to our understanding of contentious social issues.

Each student’s own research and reflection will form a major part of this course, particularly in the final weeks. This course culminates in a research paper on a subject for which advocates today employ law to advance their cause. Within those general parameters, the specific topic is selected by each student, so this course will reflect intense research on a variety of subjects. While finalizing the research paper, each student will contribute to the others’ understanding of their respective topics through participation in an in-class conference.

Zink, Christine - The Stories Bodies Tell: Researching and Writing Narrative Medicine

A birthmark. A wrinkle. A tattoo. A scar. We carry our stories–and histories–on our bodies. But there are deeper, interior narratives as well, and the story of how health or illness fits into a person’s larger life story has often been ignored by modern medicine. What is a body even good for? Who gets to decide whether it is desirable, ugly, able, broken, or even useful? Such questions about the worth of bodies and the defining limits of the human have long been the province of writers, artists, and scientists alike, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; to Kazuo Ishiguro’s robot Klara, who serves as an “Artifical Friend” to a sick girl; to the consortium of scientists who authored the Human Genome Project. 

Challenging the biomedical model that aims to “fix” a person, narrative medicine uses the tools of the humanities, such as crafting stories, critical reading, and analysis of texts, alongside medical science to uncover the complex realities of health and illness, so that we may reconsider what healing actually entails. When we listen to a rich range of voices and stories, our understanding deepens for what caring for health and for each other could mean. In this course, we’ll pay special attention to perspectives that have traditionally been left out of, or even purposely excluded, from medical expertise. Writing projects will engage your individual, intellectual curiosities within a community of writers willing to explore questions of body and mind, self and soul, with the human being centered at the heart of the story. 

Upper-Level UW Courses:

Wolfe, Zachary - UW2031 Equity & the Law: Introduction to legal research and writing

This course offers an introduction to how lawyers and legal scholars research and write about specific disputes that arise in the context of complex social issues. It is one of the required courses for the minor in law and society and satisfies a WID requirement.

Legal writing, like all forms of scholarly writing, is best understood in context and in practice. In this course, we have the opportunity to explore an ongoing challenge to our society in general and the legal system in particular: the promise of equality, and how government relates to it. We do so by examining judicial decisions, statutes, regulations, and law review articles concerning matters related to race, sexual orientation and gender, disability, and others issues that continue to advance major challenges to the system’s ability to realize legal and civil equality. That examination requires an understanding of legal audience expectations as well as the ability to use specialized research techniques and craft written analysis in particular forms, so students will learn about the nuances of argument in the interdisciplinary field of law and the unique requirements of legal research and writing.