Summer UW Course Descriptions

Registration Transaction Forms (RTFs)

Please note that all Summer UW1020 sections are capped at 15 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.

Summer 2026

Session I

UW 1020 Courses:

Francois, Emma - Writing Down Obsession

Some of the best writing comes from a place of love, or passion, or obsession. Whatever your preferred word is for that instinctual curiosity that encourages you to keep digging, in this class we’ll practice our research, reflection, and investigation skills to produce writing that is specific—and specific to us—about food, travel, fashion, nature, and more. We’ll read a variety of genres, including researched essays, oral histories, and personal narratives, that catalogue the obsessions of writers like Annie Dillard, Mathew Salesses, and Robin Givhan. Later, you’ll have your own opportunity to research and write through a fascination of your choosing, modeled after a narrative we’ve read in class.

This class will equip you with rhetorical and research tools you can rely on throughout your entire academic career—and beyond. Together, we’ll discover texts that complicate our ideas about writers and the writing process, as well as offer insights into how we ourselves might write with complexity about the vast and varied world around us.

Presser, Pamela - Cultures, Consciousness and Community Engagement

NOTE: This course will be taught via remote instruction.

What is good writing?
Are some genres more equal than others?
What do our ideas about writing enable or restrict?
Can writing help improve your state of mind, or impact on the world?
Questions like these, which we will discuss in this class, are part of a long standing conversation about the nature of education. In this course, you will be encouraged to explore your own research interests and will also have the opportunity to work with the Smithsonian Institution or a community non-profit. { This work will be virtual and could be asynchronous.} 
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.

Upper-Level UW Courses:

Gamber, Cayo - Introduction to Women/Gender/Sexuality Studies (UW 2020W)

Note: This course will satisfy a WID requirement. This is a distance learning course. This class is cross-listed with WGSS 2120W.

Designed to give students with diverse backgrounds and disciplines a basic understanding of the debates and perspectives discussed in the field of WGSS as well as the larger theoretical scope of feminism, the course asks: What is feminism? What role do gender, sexuality, and intersectionality play in terms of understanding the varieties of human experience? How are issues of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality constructed and defined? In order to answer those questions, we will interrogate our responses/relationships to various texts – including academic arguments, personal narratives, advertisements, films, YouTube videos, celebrities, consumer goods – as they are inflected by our evolving understanding of feminism and social justice.

Troutman, Phillip – Images of Race in U.S. History (UW 2020W)

Note: This course will satisfy a WID requirement. This class is cross-listed with HIST 3301W.

History is visual as well as textual, and race in the United States is a concept and category of human experience that is frequently expressed and manipulated through visual means. In this WID course, you will engage in interdisciplinary approaches to visual analysis and apply those to historical images in digital collections and local physical archives. You will draft and revise throughout the term and participate in a peer review process highlighting readers' responses and your choices as a writer.

Session II

UW 1020 Courses:

Barlow, Jameta - 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.

Upper-Level UW Courses:

Carter, Katherine -  Solving Social Problems Through Research and Social Justice (UW 2020)

Note: This course will satisfy a WID requirement. This class is cross-listed with 
SOC (Number TBA).

This course is designed to introduce students to sociology and social justice 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.

Gamber, Cayo - Introduction to Women/Gender/Sexuality Studies (UW 2020W)

Note: This course will satisfy a WID requirement. This is a distance learning course. This class is cross-listed with WGSS 2120W.

Designed to give students with diverse backgrounds and disciplines a basic understanding of the debates and perspectives discussed in the field of WGSS as well as the larger theoretical scope of feminism, the course asks: What is feminism? What role do gender, sexuality, and intersectionality play in terms of understanding the varieties of human experience? How are issues of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality constructed and defined? In order to answer those questions, we will interrogate our responses/relationships to various texts – including academic arguments, personal narratives, advertisements, films, YouTube videos, celebrities, consumer goods – as they are inflected by our evolving understanding of feminism and social justice.