*Please note that English courses will have new 4-digit numbers effective Spring 2025. ENGL 114 will become ENGL 1014.
English 114: Writing Seminars teach students to compose well-reasoned and nuanced academic arguments through their engagement with a variety of perspectives in cross- disciplinary readings and multimodal texts. The courses offered each semester address topics as diverse as Black and Indigenous ecologies, complementary medicine, food and culture, the politics of childhood, rebellion, and travel and tourism. By focusing the courses on complex questions, each seminar encourages students to approach writing as a mode of inquiry, explore subjects meaningful to them, and learn valuable research skills as they intervene in scholarly and public debates. Through seminar discussions, class workshops, and individual meetings with their instructors, students are invited into a community of writers and thinkers wherein they learn to value and use their individual voices. They practice giving and implementing feedback and learn to think metacognitively about the composing process. As students explore deep questions and experiment with different modes of argument, they practice skills they can transfer to contexts beyond English 114, and they are encouraged to develop the habits of mind that support intellectual curiosity and creative thinking.
In English 114, students compose
Essay 1: Close reading for argument
Students create an argument based on the close reading of a single essay.
Essay 2: Controlled research-based argument
Students make an argument by placing multiple texts in conversation.
Essay 3: Research-based argument
Students develop an argument that makes a scholarly intervention on their topic.
Essay 4: Public argument and/or Creative Project
Depending on each course, students practice writing for the public or compose an argument in a new genre.
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