Writing Program courses

The Writing Program specializes in courses geared towards the needs of writers who are experts in scholarly, research, and professional fields. We also introduce first year students to the study and practice of expert writing, and we offer graduate students and advanced undergraduates courses in special writing topics such as argument, style, legal writing, and non-fiction narrative. Looking for courses in fiction and poetry? Visit the Creative Writing program. Looking for courses in academic and professional writing or the rhetoric of persuasion? That's us.

Academic and Professional Writing (The Little Red Schoolhouse)

Do you want to write clear, effective academic or professional prose?  If so, the Writing Program has a course for you.  Academic and Professional Writing (aka "The Little Red Schoolhouse") offers principles of clear writing that will allow you to anticipate and to change how readers respond to your work -- whether those readers are professors, professionals, or the general public.

Because different writers have different needs, we offer several versions of this course. For more information, please click on one of the following links. (Please note: if you are taking a course to train for a writing program or humanities division job, you need to take one of our pedagogy courses instead.)

All versions of the course meet twice a week: once in a plenary lecture session, and once in small writing seminars during which students exchange and critique papers. To ensure that students receive individualized attention to their writing, enrollment is strictly limited so that there are no more than seven students per writing seminar. No exceptions!

For upper-level undergraduates: English 13000 (Winter 2009, Spring 2009, Summer 2009)
For graduate students: English 33000 (Autumn 2008, Winter 2009, Spring 2009, Summer 2009)
For MBA students in the Graduate School of Business: Business 32101 (Autumn 2008, Winter 2009, Spring 2009)
For continuing students and working professionals: Effective Writing (Autumn and Spring, 2008-9)

Special writing topics courses for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students

For upper-level undergraduates and MAPH students interested in advanced writing topics, the Writing Program offers a cluster of advanced writing courses. To ensure that students receive individualized attention to their writing, enrollment in each course is strictly limited to sixteen students. No exceptions! 

Courses offered in 2008-9

Writing Censorship (English 12703/32703) (Winter 2009)
This practicum writing course will explore the often dynamic interchanges between writers and censors. While censorship is abhorrent to many people, it imagines texts as powerful quasi-agents with the ability to bring about political change, steal intellectual property, and even transform readers' bodies with visceral reactions like arousal or disgust. The course readings will explore the rhetorical strategies writers use in response to these simultaneously repressive and empowering conditions of censorship. In weekly assignments, students will practice the kinds of writing produced under censorship, including rhetorics of evasion such allusion and parable, and rhetorics of confrontation that frame the censors' own texts as acts of aggression. Case studies will include coverage of the war in Iraq, feminist analyses of pornography, and disputes over digital rights management. Readings will include J. S. Mill, Catherine McKinnon, J. M. Coetzee, and Lawrence Lessig. Faculty: Tracy Weiner

Writing Law (Spring 2009)
A course not in legal writing but in the rhetoric of law; a full course description is forthcoming. Faculty: Larry McEnerney and Kathryn Cochran

Courses offered in 2009-11

Writing Description (Spring 2010)
What does it mean to describe something? Why is good description easy to read but difficult to write? How do good writers of description do what they set out to do? Why does bad description seem so superfluous to the purposes of a text? A descriptive passage might seem to be objective or to represent subjective experience. It might seem to be covertly or overtly supporting a claim, or it might appear to add detail and richness to a narrative. Throughout this writing-intensive course, we will not take the term "description" for granted, but rather we will interrogate what we mean when we say that a piece of prose "describes" something. Students will write weekly exercises to practice styles and techniques used by superlative writers of description such as John McPhee, Virginia Woolf, J.R.R. Tolkien, Tom Wolfe, Oliver Sachs, Ernest Hemingway, H.D. Thoreau, John Ruskin, and some texts of the students' choice. Faculty: Kathryn Cochran and Tracy Weiner.

Writing Argument (English 11701/31701) (Winter 2011)
Writing Argument is a pragmatic course in the rhetoric of arguments. The emphasis on "rhetoric" means that we won't be asking whether an argument is internally valid; instead, we'll look at what's on the page, and ask why it is more or less successful in persuading readers. The emphasis on "pragmatic" means that we'll focus mainly on your own arguments.

Students in the course can expect three kinds of work: writing new arguments, analyzing arguments, and revising. The central goal is for you to use a method of analyzing arguments that will enhance your ability to write arguments, arguments that succeed with your readers, in your field. And you'll revise the argument you make for your field, probably many times.

In most weeks, we'll spend each Tuesday in small groups, discussing your exercises. We'll spend each Thursday in a plenary session, one in which we expand upon, refine (and criticize) the rhetorical analysis of argument. In the final week or so of the course, we will look at arguments that class members have chosen for discussion, and we'll look at other approaches to argument. Faculty: Kathryn Cochran.

Writing Styles (Spring 2011)
This is a practical course in understanding and writing non-fiction style. We will look at some of the ways that powerful writers of English have constructed their sentences and paragraphs; and students will write weekly exercises imitating and exploring these stylistic patterns. Each week we will devote one class session to examining styles and one session to discussing students' exercises. In the final weeks of the course, we will look at the work of writers whom class members have suggested. Course grades will be based on the weekly exercises and a short analytic paper. Faculty: Larry McEnerney.

Writing Biography (English 12700) (Autumn 2010)
Writing Biography is, as its name implies, a course in writing biography. Our goal will be to identify successful biographical writing techniques in the class readings and then practice these techniques in frequent assignments. Texts will include Janet Malcolm on Sylvia Plath, Joseph Ellis on Thomas Jefferson, Quentin Bell on Virginia Woolf, and Malcolm X's autobiography. We'll practice the techniques biographers use to transform into a coherent whole the diverse and often contradictory materials of biography - letters and diaries, media reports and previous biographies, gossip and government records, the fond (but sometimes misleading) memories of friends and the malicious (but occasionally illuminating) accounts of enemies. We will construct narratives that aspire to do two things: represent another person's life, and make that life represent something beyond itself - a historical period, a social group, or a particular kind of achievement (admirable or otherwise). Faculty: Tracy Weiner.

For first-year undergraduates: required writing sequence

Humanities 19100-19200-19300. Humanities Writing Seminar. These seminars are available in combination with either a two-quarter or a three-quarter general education sequence in the Humanities. They introduce students to the analysis and practice of expert academic writing. The seminars do not repeat or extend the substantive discussion of the Humanities class; they use the discussions and assignments from those classes as a tool for the advanced study of writing. We study various methods for the construction of sophisticated and well-structured arguments, but also for understanding the complications and limits of those arguments. We also address issues of readership and communication within expert communities. As students present papers in the seminars, we can use the reactions of the audience to introduce the techniques experts can use to transform a text from one that serves the writer to one that serves readers. All University of Chicago graduate students must complete two quarters of this course for graduation; you are registered automatically when you register for your Humanities Core course. (Available every year, Autumn, Winter, Spring).

Pedagogy courses for graduate students

The Writing Program offers two courses in writing pedagogy for graduate students who have been hired to teach for the Writing Program or who are training to teach within their own department or program. Pedagogies of Writing (Humanities 50000, offered in Spring and Summer quarters), is for graduate students who will be working as Writing Interns in the Humanities Common Core and for students who plan to work as CAs in Humanities Division courses. Principles of Teaching Writing (English 50300, offered in Autumn only) is for graduate students who have been hired to teach The Little Red Schoolhouse. Contact your division administrator to see if you are eligible for payment or teaching credit for taking these courses.

Fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction

Fiction and poetry courses are available through the Creative Writing Program.   For further information, contact Kate Soto in Walker 411: (773) 834-8524 and creativewriting@uchicago.edu.