Fall 2026 Writing 120 Constellation Pairings
Constellation: What does it mean to be human?
WRITING AS A CREATIVE PROCESS
WRITING 120.40CN-120.41
Instructor: Hannah Davis
TUTH 8:30AM-9:45AM-TUTH 10:05AM-11:20AM
What does it mean to be creative? What does it mean to be a writer? What is academic writing? In "Writing as a Creative Process," we will explore these and related questions as we engage with both creativity and writing as academic fields of study. As composition scholar Wendy Bishop says, “Writing is, after all, a creative process; and like any such process, it depends on human connection.” As such, we will engage in discussions, writing workshops, and activities that help you explore and investigate the course questions and to learn about yourself, creativity, and writing. Throughout the course, you’ll practice creative thinking, invention, critical reading, drafting, workshopping, and revising as you complete writing projects that introduce you to writing as a mode of inquiry.
This semester, you will use writing as a mode of inquiry to explore myths about writing and creativity and to join academic conversations. Throughout the semester, you will write short responses and longer, researched papers (1500-2000 words). Each major assignment will receive feedback and undergo multiple revisions. We will spend class time working through the major assignments with a variety of activities that guide your ability to think creatively and engage with writing as a process.
The goal of this course is not to arrive at definitive answers about the course’s guiding questions but to practice critical thinking, reading, and writing as we explore new perspectives and form evidence-based arguments. If you are interested in learning about and discussing writing and creativity, then "Writing as a Creative Process" is the Writing 120 course for you.
ATTENDING TO ATTENTION
WRITING 120.15CN
Instructor: David Landes
TUTH 11:45AM - 1:00PM
Attending to Attention - The Secret Method of the Liberal Arts
A revolution is occurring in the ways we pay attention, demanding that we learn, unlearn, and relearn ways of attending across most aspects of contemporary life. To our aid, a liberal arts education trains students’ attention--liberally and liberatorily--to “cultivate and practice the kinds of attention that will make them intelligent observers, diligent critics, and thoughtful actors on the stage of human life” (Sullivan). This academic writing course teaches critical research and writing skills through exploring how different kinds of attention shape our various ways of knowing, thinking, and doing.
Our inquiry-driven writing within the liberal arts tradition will organize our survey of various conceptions of attention and will aid our building of cutting-edge vocabularies for attention’s situational dynamics from the experiencer’s point of view (e.g., the kind of attention you’re using while reading this). Guiding texts will span the humanities, sciences, arts, and the technological frontier, providing theories and case studies to help us ask: What are the means by which attention is formed in any given situation? How is attention constructed, structured, and variably reconfigured? Students will select situations of their interest where the type of attention used determines differences in outcomes. Writing and research assignments will scaffold the process of conducting attention analyses. The final essay culminates your work as a participant-researcher analyzing and creating modes of attention optimized for goals in a given situation. Ultimately, students will be learning two interrelated fundamental methodologies of the liberal arts: 1) the conventions of academic reading, writing, and researching, and 2) the foundational skills of attention that are implicit to all academic work, disciplinary knowledge, and social action.
WE ARE WHAT WE EAT?
WRITING 120.22CN-120.23CN
Instructor: Rhiannon Scharnhorst
MW 3:05PM - 4:20PM- MW 4:40PM - 5:55PM
Mark Menjivar's photo essay “You Are What You Eat” (Gastronomica, Fall 2012) captures diverse refrigerators alongside brief household biographies, reflecting Brillat-Savarin's insight that our food choices reveal our identity. Food practices are shaped by history, culture, and gender dynamics. This course explores how personal identity intertwines with food history, emphasizing women's contributions to food traditions. Through feminist scholarship in anthropology, history, and rhetoric, we'll examine how food symbolically defines who we are.
Course components include regular writing assignments to develop your critical voice, a collaborative research essay exploring feminist food history, and a student-designed class exhibit for the library titled "We Are What We Eat." Throughout the semester, you'll engage with diverse food writers, conduct primary research, and create work for public audiences while developing essential writing and analytical skills.
Constellation: What is the purpose of civil discourse in democracy?
LANGUAGE DIFFERENCE & WRITING
WRITING 120.31CN-120.32CN
Instructor: Charlotte Asmuth
MW 1:25PM - 2:40PM- MW 11:45AM - 1:00PM
What do linguists know about language, and how can this help us with our writing? How do our identities shape our language use/writing––and vice versa? What can we learn about language/writing from doing field research with people? How might generative artificial intelligence affect language difference in writing? How might we (as readers, writers, researchers, and language users ourselves) respond to language difference?
These are some of the questions we’ll explore in this section of Writing 120. Historically, language use marked as “different” in some way (e.g., slang, dialects, minoritized languages) has been treated by politicians, educators, and the general public as a problem to be fixed or eradicated. Our course operates with two assumptions, both of which make considering language in a college writing course interesting and useful:
- the ability to communicate in multiple languages and/or use varieties of English is an increasingly common asset in today’s world;
- given that you will need to write for a variety of contexts in college and beyond, it’s more useful to explore language patterns and options for what people can and do in their writing rather than for me to tell you what you can’t or shouldn’t do in your writing (Aull, 2024). After all, any proscriptions about writing (e.g., “don’t use I,” “avoid contractions”) are not generalizable to all writing contexts!
Our course texts will include academic pieces written by linguists and writing studies scholars, book chapters that demystify aspects of academic writing (e.g., achieving “flow” in writing, finding and managing sources, revising), the occasional opinion piece, as well as the writing you and your peers produce in response to these published texts. As we look at this writing, we won’t be examining it to see what is “good” or “bad” about it. Rather, we’ll examine it to hone our sense of how readers might respond to writing and to learn writing techniques. In other words, you’ll learn to read for writing techniques (for anticipating readers’ expectations and concerns, working with sources, defining and contextualizing key terms, summarizing texts, and taking a position in relation to others).
In addition to regular weekly writing assignments, the course will involve two major writing projects:
- Slang Analysis: ~1,200 - 2,000 words. For this project, you’ll explore a slang word or phrase that interests you by studying its use among family and friends, in current dictionaries, and through online tools to explore global usage.
- Research Project: ~2,500 - 3,500 words. You’ll get the chance to further explore language and writing through small-scale primary research (e.g., interviews, surveys) that relates to your interests. The project will be divided into manageable stages over the second half of the semester.
No prior knowledge of another language is necessary for the course. This section of Writing 120 may be of special interest to multilingual students, future educators, students curious about how writing/language works, and students who are interested in doing research or studying languages, linguistics, cultures, politics, and policies, but all first-years in this constellation are welcome.
WRITING CRIME: RHET & JUSTICE
WRITING 120.16CN
Instructor: Jessica Corey
TUTH 10:05AM - 11:20AM
Writing Crime: Rhetoric, Evidence, and Justice
Why are so many of us hooked on true crime? What does it mean to consume someone else's tragedy as entertainment—and who gets to decide which tragedies are worth telling? This course uses the wildly popular and critically contested true crime genre as a laboratory for developing your skills as a writer, researcher, critical thinker, and ethical reader of culture.
True crime is everywhere: in your podcast queue, your Netflix recommendations, your bookstore's front table, and maybe even your own neighborhood. But beneath the gripping narratives lies a web of urgent questions. Whose stories get told—and whose don't? How do genre conventions shape what we believe about guilt, innocence, justice, and resilience? Why do women make up the majority of true crime's audience, and what does that tell us? What are our responsibilities as viewers and listeners of content built from real suffering?
This course will immerse you in the genre across multiple media—books, television, documentary film, podcasts, and even a walking tour of Durham's own true crime history—while equipping you with the rhetorical tools to analyze and create within it. Through all of this, you'll practice the skills that define strong writing:
- Identifying and articulating the rhetorical choices that shape any text—written, visual, or audio
- Building and supporting arguments from multiple, sometimes competing, points of view
- Conducting and integrating research in a variety of forms
- Responding to others' ideas with both critical rigor and ethical care
- Adjusting your writing and designing for different audiences, purposes, and contexts
Assignments will include a multimodal genre analysis (group project), cold case file with your own true crime writing (group and individual components), and reflective essay (individual project).
A note on content: True crime, by nature, deals with violence, death, and injustice. Course materials will be handled with care and critical intentionality, but students should be prepared to engage with difficult subject matter thoughtfully and analytically.
Constellation: How does climate change affect our world?
ZEN, HAIKU AND OUR PLANET
WRITING 120.29CN-120.30CN
Instructor: Crystal Smith
WF 1:25PM - 2:40PM- WF 11:45AM - 1:00PM
Zen, Haiku and Our Planet
This course introduces the poetics of haiku, specifically the topic of Zen-inspired haiku relational to nature writing. This ancient form originated in Japan and is still practiced globally by contemporary poets. Many scholars have proclaimed haiku, the poetic form of the Holocene. By way of seasonal references known as "kigo" and haiku's impermanence, a concern with the present moment, climate change effects are consequently recorded through human encounters. Such effects have been chronicled from the 17th through 21st centuries by haiku poets in keen observation of the natural world. This informal "field work" documents abrupt shifts in normal seasonal progression and natural phenomena rendering a record of phenomenal consciousness or mental impacts that differ from standard data points. Our course readings and writing assignments will cover subjects of environmental stewardship through the contexts of Zen philosophies. We will examine the principals of deep ecology which align precisely with the Zen practice of interbeing, a regard and adoration for all life formations. We will further examine the concept of Zen Minimalism and its capacity to disrupt normative human behavior and thoughts, allowing for more compassionate perspectives on climate preservation and conservation.
In addition to weekly writing assignments, students will write, analytically, producing two major writing projects that consider: poetry and ecological awareness, human-nature relationships, and nature documentation. Simultaneous creative and theory-based small projects will allow students to engage in haiku writing techniques that form "notes on a problem" and forest bathing in Duke Gardens. Some questions to consider for this course are: What is your relationship with nature? How does poetry interpret the world in ways other writings cannot?
BIOPHILIC CITIES
WRITING 120.17CN-120.18CN
Instructor Lindsey Smith
TUTH 11:45AM - 1:00PM- TUTH 1:25PM - 2:40PM
In the 1980s, biologist E.O. Wilson popularized the concept of “biophilia,” that humans have an innate desire to connect with the living world. Yet, 60% of the global population now lives in urban areas that are more gray than green. Humans are increasingly disconnected from our inner biophilia, and that shift is negatively impacting our physical and mental well-being as well as the health of our cities. However, there is a movement underway to transform our concrete jungles into “biophilic cities,” filled with innovative greenspaces, wildlife-friendly design, green infrastructure, and habitat restoration that seek to reconnect humans with nature, increase biodiversity in cities, and make our urban centers more climate resilient.
Through a blend of seminar-style discussions, research, and writing projects, we will examine nature’s vast benefits and explore what it takes to design thriving biophilic cities. Our course materials will come from environmental science, urban planning, psychology, and conservation journals, popular magazines and books, and documentaries. You will gain experience writing an op-ed, an argument essay, and a proposal for a project that seeks to make an urban space of your choice more biophilic. Throughout the semester, you will also take part in a fundamental element of academic writing: exchanging feedback with peers on your works in progress. And, of course, we will get our dose of nature by holding class outside as much as possible and practicing shinrin-yoku (a.k.a. forest bathing) in the Duke Gardens.
Constellation: How do people resist colonialism?
MEM AND RESIT IN LAT AME FILM
WRITING 120.42CN-120.43CN-120.44CN
Instructor: Sandra Sotelo-Miller
WF 8:30AM - 9:45AM- WF 11:45AM - 1:00PM- WF 1:25PM - 2:40PM
Memory and Resistance in Latin American Film
Since the introduction of cinema in Latin America at the end of the 19th century, film has played a significant role in exploring and shaping collective understandings of history, identity, and culture in the region. Latin American movies have grappled with the legacy of colonialism, modern imperialism, dictatorships and state violence, the "War on Drugs," migration, and social justice movements. In this class we will explore some of these themes and the ways in which Latin American filmmakers have grappled them. We will consider questions such as: What role does cinema play in constructing or challenging official historical narratives? How does film reimagine the past? In what ways can cinema offer counter-narratives to dominant historical discourses? How do films participate in shaping collective memory?
This course is designed to offer both a broad engagement with these questions and opportunities for in-depth analysis through oral presentations, class discussions, and writing. Seminar discussions will help you develop the ability to analyze films and express your insights clearly with your peers. The various writing assignments will help you practice articulating your personal perspective and voice clearly; learn how to identify, evaluate, and use secondary sources to deepen your analysis; and produce public and academic facing texts that take purpose, genre, and audience into account. Through writers' workshops and reflective exercises, you will learn to critique peer work and revise your own. These writing skills—combined with careful observation, vivid description, and critical analysis—will prepare you to clearly articulate your ideas in writing at Duke and beyond.
TOPIC: TBD
WRITING 120.54CN
Instructor: TBD
TUTH 4:40PM - 5:55PM
Constellation: How do people, identities, cultures, and languages cross borders?
WISDOM IN COMPARATIVE RHETORIC
WRITING 120-08CN
Instructor: Yan Li
MW 11:45AM - 1:00PM
Confucius Meets Aristotle: Wisdom in Comparative Rhetoric
What can we learn when Aristotelian and Confucian wisdom traditions meet in conversation? How do different cultural frameworks shape what it means to speak, write, and live wisely? This course invites students to explore rhetorical traditions across time, language, and geography, with a particular focus on how Eastern and Western conceptions of rhetoric reflect and inform broader worldviews.
We will engage foundational thinkers—such as Plato, Confucius, Zhuangzi, Aristotle, and their intellectual descendants—alongside contemporary scholarship in comparative, cultural, and decolonial rhetoric. Together, we’ll examine how rhetorical practices are shaped by values, ethics, relationships, and social roles, asking: How does one speak with authority in a Confucian context? What does ethos look like in classical Greece? And what happens when these traditions encounter each other in today’s global contact zones?
Rather than viewing Greco-Roman rhetoric as the sole origin of rhetorical theory, this course builds a more expansive and inclusive framework for understanding how people across cultures persuade, deliberate, and cultivate voice. We’ll ask:
- How do traditions define rhetorical wisdom?
- What is considered effective—and for whom?
- Whose voices have been elevated or silenced in dominant rhetorical histories?
- How can we reimagine rhetorical education for an increasingly interconnected world?
To explore these questions, course readings will pair texts across traditions, fostering comparative insights and cultural awareness. Students will develop critical and creative approaches to writing by practicing recontextualization, rhetorical analysis, and reflective inquiry.
Course Goals and Objectives
This course contributes to a larger movement in rhetorical studies that challenges the boundaries of tradition and canon, aiming to prepare students to write, think, and act with intercultural and ethical awareness.
- Engage with Voice and Identity: Explore how rhetorical traditions shape notions of the self, audience, and ethical persuasion.
- Build a Global Rhetorical Framework: Compare and synthesize diverse traditions, from Confucian moral persuasion to Aristotelian logic and beyond.
- Apply Theoretical Frameworks Thoughtfully: Use rhetorical theories to analyze writing, speech, and representation in complex cultural contexts.
- Develop Culturally Sophisticated Writing: Create work that is rhetorically nuanced and sensitive to differences in intercultural communication.
- Reflect on Ethics and Power: Consider how rhetorical practices are tied to social roles, hierarchies, and resistance across time and place.
- Write for Specific Audiences: Builds on the importance of communicating effectively in varied cultural and intercultural contexts.
ASIAN AMERICAN NARRATIVES
WRITING 120-19CN
Instructor: Susan Thananopavarn
TUTH 3:05PM - 4:20PM
Asian American Narratives: Literature, History, and Activism
What does it mean to be Asian American in the twenty-first century? How are Asians and Asian Americans represented in popular culture, and how do writers and activists resist and complicate these narratives? Asian American writers have employed various genres to make meaning of their lives and the lives of others, including fiction, autobiographical essays, creative nonfiction, graphic memoirs, and film. Through these texts and your own writing, we will examine the choices people make in framing Asian American experiences. We will also explore how literature, history, and theory can help us better understand key issues in Asian American studies such as the “model minority” myth, gender and sexuality, international adoption, refugee experiences, and anti-Asian violence. Our reading and weekly writing about these topics will culminate in three major projects for the class. In the first project, a 3-4 page essay, you will explore the issue of Asian American representation in a text of your choice. The second project will consist of a 4-6 page literary analysis that considers how a text responds to a key issue in Asian American studies. The final assignment is an exploration of Asian American oral histories through narrative. For the last project, you will decide the best form—essay, multimedia presentation, graphic novel, etc.—in which to convey an aspect of Asian American history through the lens of a single person’s story.
TOPIC: TBD
WRITING 120.55CN
Instructor: TBD
WF 8:30AM - 9:45AM
Constellation: How can my education cause trouble and joy?
WOMEN, LEADERSHIP, PURPOSE
WRITING 120.60CN
Instructor: Jennifer Ahern-Dodson
TUTH 1:25PM - 2:40PM
What does it mean to live a life of purpose? What is the role of purpose in women’s leadership? How have women who’ve led lives of purpose navigated the course of their lives and careers? How might their stories and strategies inspire you to reflect on your own?
The first half of the semester includes informal written responses to course readings that help us explore the stories of women leaders in a range of contexts, and 2 essays focused on a key course concept related to leadership and purpose.
In the second half of the semester, each of you will pursue an individual project that helps you consider your own intentional next steps at Duke that reflect your commitments to what you care about. You will identify something important to you that relates to your future plans, goals, or aspirations. You will develop and explore a central research question about it, learn about it, and resource yourself as you make it a part of your future. Project culminates in a research talk and 10-12 page essay.
COMING OF AGE & HAPPINESS
WRITING 120.26CN-120.27CN-120.28CN
WF 11:45AM - 1:00PM- WF 1:25PM - 2:40PM- WF 3:05PM - 4:20PM
College is one of the many turning points in your coming of age. It is a time when you separate from your family of origin, and thus are in a unique position to be able to reflect on your identity. The questions - “Who am I?”, “Who do I want to be?”, & “What do I want?” – are often daily challenges as you navigate being more independent and living a good life. Together, we will explore your personal and academic identity development, especially in relation to your happiness. In particular, we will reflect on emerging adulthood & student development theories, as well as scientific research on happiness, to help us understand how various factors - such as socioeconomics, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, and culture - shape the development of your authentic self.
By using a variety of sources about coming of age and happiness, we will engage with the work of others, learn to articulate a position, and situate our writing within specific contexts. To begin, we will read, discuss, and write about our classroom treaty and student learning and other identity stories using both our personal experiences and existing theories on coming of age and happiness. Informed by these theories, we will write reflect on our own experiences to further our understanding.
The final projects will be an in-depth exploration about some issue(s) significant to your coming of age and happiness. The topic, and the related additional readings, will be carefully chosen by you so that your writing will be relevant & meaningful as you continue your coming of age journey at Duke. Throughout the course, you will engage with your peers' writing, and thus collaboratively strengthen your ability to improve your thinking and writing.
If you are interested in and willing to be introspective to learn about yourself & others through personal writing, discussions, readings, along with some yoga & mindfulness, then this Wr120 class might be a great opportunity for you.
Constellation: How do we understand and advance human health?
PREVENTING PANDEMICS
WRITING 120-13CN-120.14CN
WF 11:45AM - 1:00PM- WF 3:05PM - 4:20PM
Preventing pandemics: interdisciplinary approaches to preparedness
In 2015, in the wake of SARS, H1N1, and Ebola, the United Nations and the World Health Organization convened a global team of experts to assess the threat of future epidemics. The team found that outbreaks are becoming more common for a multitude of reasons and we are unprepared to deal with them when they occur. They concluded that without better approaches to prevention and containment, future epidemics are inevitable: a prediction that has come to bear.
Where are new outbreaks most likely to occur and why? What ecological, sociopolitical, and cultural factors contribute to differences across locales in disease emergence, spread, and the capacity to respond? How have our dominant understandings--or narratives--of disease shaped our preparedness and response efforts to date? In the first third of our course, we will use an interdisciplinary case study of a single epidemic to examine these questions together, via guided readings, writings, and small-group discussions. You will summarize two of the guided readings independently (1 page each) and compose a written analysis of one of them (2 pages).
In the second two-thirds of the course, you will use your developing interests to form a three-person research team. Throughout the rest of the course, each team will collaborate to research a contemporary epidemic (e.g., cholera, Zika, SARS) and compose a review and synthesis paper about that epidemic (15-20 pages). In the paper, teams will summarize the biology of and public health response to the epidemic and then present three additional narratives of the epidemic, each from a different disciplinary perspective:
- Ecological: specific environmental conditions and human-environment interactions encourage outbreaks (e.g., El Niño, deforestation, wildlife trade)
- Cultural/anthropological: specific beliefs, values, norms, or customs (e.g., distrust, stigma, individualism) encourage outbreaks, as do culturally inappropriate interventions
- Political/economic: specific characteristics of states and sociopolitical systems encourage outbreaks (e.g., by increasing poverty or inequality, by decreasing security or stability)
Each team member will research one of the three disciplinary narratives and present their findings in one of three sub-sections of the review and synthesis paper (3-4 pages per sub-section). Team members will work together to compose: 1) an introduction that summarizes the biology of and public health response to the epidemic; 2) a conclusion that applies the results of all three sub-sections to suggest specific improvements to prevention and/or mitigation efforts (3-4 pages each). 70% of the grade for the review and synthesis paper will be based on the individual sub-section and 30% will be based on the co-written introduction and conclusion; 5% of the overall grade will be based on team member evaluations.
As you work on the review and synthesis paper, you will be expected to meet with your research team outside of class on a few occasions. Throughout the course, we will use guided workshops and peer review to revise our writing, and you will be expected to consider and incorporate the feedback you receive from your peers and/or professor before submitting a final product.
Constellation: How is memory formed, shaped, and transmitted?
WRITING TO REMEMBER
WRITING 120-47CN- WRITING 120-48CN
Instructor: Madeline Sutton
TUTH 8:30AM - 9:45AM- TUTH 11:45AM - 1:00PM
How does memory shape the ways you write and understand the world around you? How can you use writing and research as methods of inquiry into the past, present, and future? And how can you render memories into impactful stories with the power to inspire social action?
In this class, we’ll explore the complex relationships between writing, research, and memory. We’ll examine the many ways that writing connects us to the world and to one another across disciplines, professions, decades, cultures, and communities. By studying the role of personal and cultural memory in research-based and multimodal writing, we’ll examine how writing is shaped by context—who we’re writing for, what questions we’re asking, what kinds of evidence we’re using—and how effective writers make strategic rhetorical choices that reflect those contexts. As writers, we’ll approach memory as a “heuristic” (Sharon Crowley)—a tool for rhetorical invention, decision-making, and problem-solving.
You’ll take up this work in three major projects: a virtual museum exhibit, which uses historical, archival materials to make an argument rooted in peoples’ experiences in the past; a qualitative research project, which uses primary data to develop an argument based in peoples’ everyday experiences in the world; and a public argument, which crafts a multimodal remediation to reach a public audience. In addition to weekly writing assignments that build toward the major projects, you’ll compose reflective journals and self-assessments, participate in peer review workshops, and collaborate on in-class discussions and activities. Together, we’ll study how researchers formulate and investigate questions, locate and evaluate information, tell stories with data, develop positions on intercultural and interdisciplinary topics, and present findings effectively. By doing so, you’ll gain tools and approaches to write purposefully, think critically, and respond thoughtfully to the demands of academic and public discourse.
TOPIC: TBD
WRITING 120CN
Instructor: TBD
Constellation: How do culture, science, and human expression shape our health?
AVOIDING VECTOR-BORNE DISEASES
WRITING 120.11CN- WRITING 120.12CN
Instructor: Cary Moskovitz
MW 1:25PM - 2:40PM- MW 3:05PM - 4:20PM
Malaria, a mosquito-borne disease, kills over one million people each year--mostly young African children. Mosquitoes also transmit dengue hemorrhagic fever, the most rapidly spreading vector borne disease with 50 million infections now occurring annually. Ticks spread diseases such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Lyme Disease, Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and more. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently noted that while 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported annually in the U.S., “the true incidence is 10 times that number.” Given the need for better repellents, new approaches such as clip-on and spatial repellent devices and permethrin-treated clothing are enticing. But how can we know how effective these novel repellents are at keeping mosquitos and ticks away? In this section of Writing 120, students will study the recent scientific literature on repellants as the focus for developing skills in academic reading, writing, giving and receiving feedback, and library research. Working from select principles of health science research and some basic statistics, students will practice careful reading, effective summary, and skeptical analysis as they draft and revise reviews of recent experimental research reports. Building on what they learn in the first half of the term, students will then write substantive scientific essays that make an evidence-based argument on a topic related to reducing vector-borne diseases. Audiences for student writing include classmates and health-science professionals.
Note: this course involves a considerable amount of collaborative work; students should have schedules and attitudes that will allow them to work extensively with classmates outside of class time. Prior coursework in statistics is useful but not required.
NEUROSCIENCE & SOCIETY
WRITING 120.03CN- WRITING 120.04CN
Instructor: Emily Parks
TUTH 8:30AM - 9:45AM- TUTH 10:05AM - 11:20AM
Can brain scans reveal whether someone is lying? Is there such a thing as a "criminal mind"? Do we have free will, or can we blame the brain for our moral shortcomings?
This course will introduce you to the goals and practices of academic writing as we evaluate how neuroscience can inform ethical, legal, and medical questions of our time. We will engage with themes both ancient and modern, asking how neuroscience can enhance our understanding of the human mind – and how that understanding, driven by cutting-edge advances in brain imaging, can impact our modern society.
Along the way, we will examine scientific inquiry itself – the collaborative process through which scientists work together to develop and communicate ideas. You will experience this process firsthand, taking on several roles over the semester: the scholar learning to respond to scientific texts; the ambassador deciphering complex research for a broader audience; and the researcher, collaborating with others to generate and synthesize new ideas.
Across the semester, you will complete two major writing projects: a scholarly perspective essay (approximately 5 pages) and a scientific literature review (approximately 12 pages). Both projects will synthesize neuroscientific research to address a societal issue— such as the ethics of brain implants, disease treatment, social media addiction— and will be written collaboratively, mirroring the practices of professional scholars.
While the course provides a structured framework for approaching these collaborative projects, the ways in which your teams collaborate and develop their ideas are not formulaic. This class offers a unique Writing 120 experience: an opportunity to engage deeply in collaborative scientific inquiry. Success will require flexibility, intellectual curiosity, and a willingness to consider new ideas and perspectives.
This course is well suited for students interested in neuroscience, psychology, or biology. It is grounded in three core principles. First, writing is a vehicle for critical thinking—a tool for bridging the classroom and the real-world. Second, strong writing depends on revision, and you will regularly practice giving and receiving meaningful peer feedback. Third, scientific innovation depends on collaboration. By enrolling in this Writing 120 course, you commit to being an active and engaged member of an intellectual community.
Constellation: Peace or war?
DYSTOPIAN/APOCALYPTIC FICTION
WRITING 120.51CN-120.52CN-120.53CN
Instructor: Kevin Casey
TUTH 10:05AM - 11:20AM- TUTH 1:25PM - 2:40PM- TUTH 3:05PM - 4:20PM
What can literature and film teach us about war, famine, environmental degradation, and other real matters of life and death?
Plenty, particularly if you look closely at speculative genres such as dystopian, apocalyptic, and/or post-apocalyptic. This class intends to do just that: we’ll read/watch multiple novels and films from these genres to inspire and inform our thinking and writing about these issues, as well as engage with secondary sources in disciplines such as literature for additional context.
Writing will likely include a research paper, a close reading, a first-person reflection essay, regular brief responses to readings/films. (I may add or change 1-2 other assignments as well.)
The list of required readings and films will be finalized in summer 2026, but representative examples include The Road by Cormac McCarthy, American War by Omar El Akkad, and Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (film adaptation by Sam Esmail), and Children of Men (film directed by Alfonso Cuarón, based on the novel by P.D. James.)
Constellation: What makes a body political?
WRITING PORTRAYED IN MEDIA
WRITING 120.36CN-120.37CN
Instructor: Sharieka Botex
WF 1:25PM - 2:40PM- WF 3:05PM - 4:20PM
How do popular media and scholarly texts portray writing, reading, communication, and other literacy practices of various professions and academic disciplines? In what ways do scholars across disciplines discuss their writing and research on television shows, music, podcasts, and other forms of entertainment and media? When and how do media portrayals of writing, reading, and communication in various fields differ from and/or compare to lived experiences among people in these professions and scholarly fields? These are among some of the questions this class will provide you with an opportunity to explore. In this class, we will explore scholarly texts and popular entertainment media to learn how people discuss the writing, reading, and communication they do in their professional fields. This course requires students to review television shows, podcasts, music, and scholarship that shed light on academic and professional paths to better familiarize themselves with the ways writing, reading and communication transpire in their future majors or careers.
In this class, students are required to complete three main writing projects[1]: 1. Contemporary Issues Journals, in which they respond to assigned writing prompts, explore topics of interest and engage with scholarly texts and popular media sources. 2. An 8-10 page double-spaced research paper, which explores intersections between media and scholarly sources related to a profession or academic discipline of your choosing and a topic you are interested in writing about. 3. Reflecting on the Writing and Scholar You Were and the Writer and Scholar You Aspire to Be Presentation.
Through writing and revising your assignments and participating in peer-review focused on the major writing assignments, you will develop an awareness of the literacy practices you may use in your future professional and academic endeavors and learn about similarities and differences in writing, reading and communication in different majors and professions.
IT'S A BARBIE WORLD
WRITING 120.45CN-120.46CN
Instructor: Leslie Maxwell
MW 8:30AM - 9:45AM- MW 11:45AM - 1:00PM
In many countries and cultures around the world, Barbie, at 66 years old, is a childhood toy, a plaything. Yet Barbie is, of course, more than that. In many ways, Barbie is a totem for our cultural and individual identities. How Barbie has shaped our collective and individual memories? And how have our collective and individual memories shaped Barbie? How does that affect our view of childhood, both our own and that of others? What are the complexities that Barbie (the toy, the word, the idea) brings up? And how has Barbie gone from toy to pop culture icon (or both at the same time)? In this class, we will explore these questions through the framework of a writing class, practicing skills of close reading, critical reading and thinking, doing research, using sources responsibly, and using sources as one piece of a larger whole.
Constellation: Why do we need rules?
ROAD NOT TAKEN
WRITING 120.05CN-120.06CN-120.07CN
Instructor: Laurel Burkbauer
TUTH 8:30AM - 9:45AM- TUTH 10:05AM - 11:20AM- TUTH 11:45AM - 1:00PM
The Road Not Taken: Alternate Selves, Parallel Lives, and the Choices That Define Us
Do you ever wish you could have a do-over? That you could know the outcome of your choices before you make them? That you could read the last chapter of your own life first? This course will introduce you to the norms and practices of academic writing while exploring what the essayist Cheryl Strayed calls “the ghost ship that didn’t carry us”—the many counterfactual lives we could have lived had we made different decisions at crucial moments along the way. This course topic relates to the Constellation theme of rules on the level of the individual, in the sense of “rules to live by.”
Our course texts—Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and the film Past Lives—all ask, “What if…?” What if I could go back and make different choices? What if I had accepted that other job? What if I had married someone else? They feature figures who are able to experience multiple potential lives or who are prompted to stop and reflect on their own life trajectories because of encounters with other people who represent alternative life paths. These main texts will be supplemented by literary criticism, psychological studies, personal essays, and poetry that is concerned with decision-making, regret, potential, and possibility.
The midterm paper asks you to craft your own argument in response to literary criticism of a course text. The signature assignment of the course requires you to select a novel, film, or piece of narrative nonfiction related to our course themes and interpret it through the lens of relevant secondary sources you find in your own research process. From Groundhog Day to Everything Everywhere All At Once to La La Land—time loops, multiverse stories, and what-might-have-beens are all fair game here!
TOPIC: TBD
WRITING 120.CN
Instructor: TBD
Constellation: How does social control operate in the modern world?
RHETORIC OF COMEDY
WRITING 120.20CN-120.21CN
Instructor: Ben Hojem
TuTh 3:05PM - 4:20PM- TuTh 4:40PM - 5:55PM
From Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” to South Park and The Daily Show, we take it for granted that comedy is a form of resistance, resistance against hypocrisy, corruption, and oppressive forces in our politics and culture. But is this true? Does comedy stoke our rebellious natures, or is it more like a release valve that encourages us to capitulate to the status quo? This course will explore this question through the perspectives of cultural critics, academic theorists, and the comedians themselves.
REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE
WRITING 120.09CN- WRITING 120.10CN
Instructor: Hannah Taylor
MW 8:30AM - 9:45AM- MW 11:45AM - 1:00PM
Writing Reproductive Justice, Politics, and Rights
“To obtain Reproductive Justice, we must work on injustices in all arenas: social, economic, gender, racial, environmental, financial, physical, sexual, disability, and carceral.” – Loretta J. Ross
The landscape of reproductive politics is an example of the complex interaction between belief, culture, law, and embodiment. The past year, in particular, has seen seismic shifts in the way that the United States approaches reproductive rights. But reproductive justice and politics are about more than just abortion. This course will encourage us to think of the many facets of reproductive justice– menstruation, reproductive technologies, IVF, birth justice, and chronic reproductive illness– and how they are written about in a variety of discourses.
This course will discuss through writings– both scholarly and popular– how we got to this moment in reproductive politics, and what we can do to change it. Using lenses from rhetorics of health and medicine, disability studies, and reproductive justice, this course will ask students to consider how writing has shaped the discourses of reproductive health and politics. Throughout the course, students will be asked to complete weekly reading responses and be expected to share writing via discussion posts regularly. The course will include two longer writing assignments. The first, an analysis of the ways that an aspect of reproductive health has been discussed across mediums, will be between 1,000 and 1250 words. The final project will be a 1,500-2,000 word research paper on a controversy relevant to the course. Students will also produce a public-facing, advocacy document based on a reproductive health issue of their choice.
TOPIC: TBD
WRITING 120.CN
Instructor: TBD
TOPIC: TBD
WRITING 120.CN
Instructor: TBD
Constellation: How do sports influence society?
SPORTS AND THE WRITTEN WORD
WRITING 120.33CN-120.34CN-120.35
Instructor: James Holaday
TUTH 10:05AM - 11:20AM- TUTH 1:25PM - 2:40PM- TUTH 3:05PM - 4:20PM
For well over 150 years, sports have played an important role in American (and world) culture. And as long as there have been sports, people have written about them. From game reports in newspapers to biographies to autobiographies to predictions for the future to pure fiction, writings related to sports run the gamut. They often cross the line from journalism to literature or even poetry. In this class we will examine how writing about sports has changed over time by reading some of the genres listed above; then students will embark upon several sports-related writing projects of their own. First, students will produce a memoir-type paper on their experiences with sports. Athlete or fan, success or failure, funny or sad–everyone has a story! Secondly, students will produce a paper on an element of sports history. Sports have helped shape society (think Jackie Robinson’s integration of major league baseball) or been shaped by them (think performance enhancing drugs or Olympic boycotts). For this paper, students will go beyond the obvious and do some research to examine a bit of sporting history. Third, since a large part of writing about sports involves telling stories about others, often using the words of those people, the next project will consist of interviewing a sports personality. To do this successfully, students will do any necessary research so that relevant questions can be asked of their subjects. Finally, students will have a chance to use their creativity and write a short story. The story must center around a sporting event of some sort and be written within set word limit guidelines.
Constellation: What is The Cosmos?
DECODING DISNEY
WRITING 120.24CN
Instructor: Lisa Andres
TUTH 11:45AM - 1:00PM
In a 1955 episode of Disneyland titled “Man in Space,” Walt Disney began by saying:
“Discoveries that were miracles a few short years ago are accepted as commonplace today. Many of the things that seem impossible now, will become realities tomorrow.”
As much as Disney’s films dominated and defined the present, Walt himself always had an eye to the future, as his plans for the city of Epcot and his fascination with Tomorrowland reveal.
This section of Decoding Disney will explore the “new frontier” in Disney’s films: possible topics may include Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland episodes as well as contemporary films such as Toy Story (1994), Treasure Planet (2002), Wall-E (2008), Strange World (2022), and Elio (2024). In the second half of the course, we’ll broaden our scope to consider Disney’s expansion of the Star Wars (The Mandalorian; Andor + Rogue One) universe as well as the MCU multiverse (Spiderman: No Way Home; Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness; Ant-Man: Quantumania) as we prepare for the release of Avengers: Doomsday. We will supplement these film viewings with selected readings. Projects will include an initial brainstorming project, an annotated bibliography, a synthesis essay, and a final, collaborative podcast.
TAYLOR’S VERSION
WRITING 120.25CN
Instructor: Lisa Andres
TUTH 10:05AM - 11:20AM
What does Taylor Swift have to do with The Cosmos? Well, in August of 2024, NASA’s official Tumblr compared the eras of the universe to Swift’s Eras Tour, peppering the post with numerous Swiftie-references. And, just months earlier, when Swift kicked off the European leg of The Eras Tour, concert-goers received a surprise: the addition of The Tortured Poets Department era to the setlist. Notably, during “Down Bad,” an UFO appears “in the sky” above Swift: the combination of spotlights and lasers were used to bring to life the alien abduction metaphor which Swift uses to describe the otherworldly experience of the relationship. References to the cosmic and celestial appear through Swift’s discography, and this course proposes to trace their evolution as well as examine Swift’s songwriting on a more micro-level, as someone “trying to find [their] place in this world.” Course requirements include: required album listenings; selected scholarly readings as well as album reviews and podcasts. Projects may include an initial brainstorming project, an annotated bibliography, a synthesis essay, and a final, collaborative podcast.
RADICAL MAGIC
WRITING 120.38CN-120.39CN
Instructor: Cheryl Spinner
MW 3:05PM - 4:20PM- MW 4:40PM - 5:55PM
Crafting Magic: Writing & the Occult
The past decade has witnessed the renaissance of the witch, which last had its height amidst the “goth weirdos” of the 1990’s. Currently, patches, t-shirts, and pins pepper Etsy with statements like “Support Your Local Coven” and “‘We Are the Granddaughters of the Witches You Could Not Burn.’” Books and think-pieces have been published about this current phenomenon by popular tarot readers, astrologists, and witches, all of whom address the feminist, queer, activist potential of these practices. Most recently, performing powerhouse Taylor Swift has been accused of witchcraft on stage during her record-breaking concert, “Eras,” and Swifties are experiencing a real psychological condition known as “post-concert amnesia.”
We will begin with the Salem Witch Trials, traverse the 19th-century spiritualist and occultist movements, pivot to representations of witches in the 1960’s and 70’s, spend some time in the grungy 90’s, and end with witchcraft in our current moment. We will examine the literary qualities of Tarot, spells, and incantations, and question the distinction between writing and magic. Is there really a difference between a poem and an incantation? Can the lyrics of a rock song be a hex?
We will also explore the often-overlooked mystical dimensions of the book as object. We will explore how books serve not merely as vessels of information, but as potent artifacts capable of transmitting ancient wisdom and embodying life itself. With “spines” that bind them together, how are books “bodies?”
As a whole, the course is an alchemy of disciplines. You might think of it as the following equation:
RM = W+L+H+A
(Radical Magic = Writing + Literature + History + Art)
Expect to produce quite a bit of writing over the course of the semester, which will include:
- Weekly Blog Posts
- Digital Archival Research Project
- Literature Review
- Bibliography
- Grimoire
These assignments are intended to teach you varying techniques of writing genres over the course of the semester, which range from traditional academic writing, writing for the general public, and magical writing. Bi-weekly blog posts will clock in at around 250-500 words and will be informal responses to the reading of the week, and/or be a space to complete short assignments in response to a prompt. With the digital archival project you will learn how to conduct advanced academic research in David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University. You will choose an object from the treasures of Duke’s extensive collections related to magic and the supernatural and provide a 1,000 word description of the piece and why it is important for an exhibit on magic, feminism, and the supernatural. Collectively, we will gather the artifacts each of you have chosen and present them in a virtual exhibition. The archival project is intended to give you an opportunity to engage in writing that is not academic but intended for a more public facing audience. The literature review will train you in traditional academic writing. You will choose your topic of interest and write a literature review requiring a minimum of 10 peer-reviewed sources that outlines the major debates in the field.
For your final project, you will create your own physical grimoire. Creativity is encouraged. These grimoires, or “spell-books,” are yours. If something inspires you, don’t ask me—just put it in! There are parameters to the assignment that make it gradeable, but aside from those you really have free-range.
Constellation: How does artificial intelligence impact human experiences?
MUSIC SAVED MY LIFE
WRITING 120.01CN-120.02CN
Instructor: Michael Dimpfl
MW 3:05PM - 4:20PM- MW 4:40PM - 5:55PM
In the early 1970s in downtown New York City, people came together to dance through the night to what would eventually be labeled a new genre of music -- disco. From the moment of its birth, disco transformed the way people understood the power of music. At the time, listening and dancing were inseparable – they were brought together on the dance floor, surrounded by strangers, shepherded by the choices of the DJ in a musical conversation with the dancing crowd. This moment forever changed popular music and created a decades-long interest in dance clubs as places of encounter and celebration.
Today, the connection between dance music, DJs, and intimate dance clubs as central social nodes has frayed and occupies an entirely different place in society. Listening is guided by the power of algorithms and dancing is often a kind of shared isolation, not about the joy of encountering strangers in collective celebration or escape.
In this writing seminar, we will develop our skills as writers in the tradition of the social sciences by using the history of dance music culture as a lens through which to analyze the present. What lessons does the history of disco have to share about our alienated and atomized world? On the one hand, we see in the development of disco the emergence of dance club cultures that were spaces of open encounter. On the other hand, broader socioeconomic changes and the rapid advance of technology that accompanied the development of dance music forever changed the role of the human touch central to creating and appreciating music. We live in the wake of these tensions.
Over the course of semester, we will explore this history as a way of developing strong, theoretical argumentation central to social scientific writing. First, we will read theoretical texts to situate the power of music as a cultural phenomenon. This framework will guide our exploration, helping you develop the writing practices necessary to examine complex social phenomenon as they unfold in the real world. With this framework in hand, we will look at the emergence and transformation of dance music culture across the 1970s as emblematic of the transformational, and contradictory, power of dance music. Drawing on the lessons from that moment, we will examine the relationship between popular music and contemporary technology, analyzing the power music has to move us in a world of alienating technologies.
This is a reading and writing intensive seminar. We will being with weekly reading and low-stakes reflective writing assignments to develop our writing tool-kit. These will be accompanied by weekly listening to help you hone observational writing skills. A final project that will ask you to develop an analysis of popular music that mobilizes the theoretical framework established in the class. You will also attend a concert or show during the semester as a way of putting our thinking into practice in the real world.
HIDDEN CURRICLA: SCIFI & GAMIN
WRITING 120.49CN-120.50CN
Instructor: Sarah Ishmael
TUTH 3:05PM - 4:20PM- TUTH 4:40PM - 5:55PM
Speculative Media & The Human
Every science fiction film/film series and video game teaches us things - not just about robots or androids or imagined futures — but about how we define who and what the human being is. “Hidden curricula,” as it were, about who counts as human, whose story gets told, and whose presence in an imagined world requires justification while others simply belong.
This course treats speculative media — science fiction film and video games — as rhetorical archives. We analyze not just what these texts say about humanity, but how they say it: through the media texts themselves (the games and films), as well as marketing campaigns and casting announcements, fan communities’ social media posts, developer statements, through the discourse that erupts when a game or film gets something wrong about who is human and who isn't. As AI becomes more prominent in culture and industry, both the films and games we examine engage directly with these questions — and a key thread in the course will be how Hollywood and game developers' depictions of AI differ from its real-world development, and what those differences reveal about how we define the human. Artificial Intelligence serves as a recurring pressure point in this course: not because it raises new questions about humanness, but because it reactivates very old ones. Artificial Intelligence serves as a recurring pressure point in this course: not because it raises new questions about humanness, but because it reactivates very old ones. Not all of the media we examine will involve AI explicitly — but those that don't dramatize the same underlying questions: who gets defined as human, by whom, and through what systems of knowledge. We will discuss how video games and science fiction films act as both mirrors and teachers, subtly (and sometimes overtly) influencing different understandings of humanity.
Drawing on frameworks from game studies, critical media studies, and composition and rhetoric, students develop a set of theoretical and analytical tools for identifying how speculative media produces, naturalizes, and contests definitions of the human.
In the first arc of the semester, students spend six weeks exploring six different rhetorical sites and theoretical frameworks: each one a different window into how speculative media constructs myths and “hidden curricula” about humanity:
- Textual Discursive Analysis: scripts, dialogue, and narrative structures are analyzed as sites where discursive formations about the human get produced. What knowledge about the human does the writing assume? What can be said and what can't? What does the narrative make it impossible to think?
- Character & Body Rhetoric: how games and films construct the human through character design, casting, and embodiment — whose body is the default protagonist, whose is the sidekick, whose is the monster, whose death the narrative mourns and whose it treats as inevitable
- Institutional & Technical Discourse: how institutions manage audiences, construct accountability, and position the consumer through official discourse; how institutions — studios, developers, and AI companies — construct and manage public discourse around AI, humanness, and accountability
- Review Bombing & Collective Rhetorical Action: how audiences mobilize rhetorically in response to perceived violations of their definitions of the human
- Villain Redemption Discourse: who deserves redemption - whose humanity is legible, recoverable, worth investing in, who gets to loop back into humanity and who is fixed permanently outside it.
- Mis-en-scène/Game Mechanic Close Reading: How game developers use environmental storytelling, AI storytelling, spatial rhetoric, and visual rhetoric of avatar/NPC design as well as how film makers use camera framing, movement, setting, etc. as visual rhetoric that shapes what bodies the film/game renders generic, disposable, and background.
Three of these sites are anchored by science fiction films/series episodes; three by video games such as (but not limited to) Ghost in the Shell, Alien: Earth, Attack on Titan, Cyberpunk 2077, Detroit Become Human and the Assassins Creed game franchise. Most of the science fiction films/games will have an aspect that engages with questions of AI, difference and humanity. Students engage with these speculative digital texts as researchers, analyzing the rhetoric and cultural discourse around them as carefully as the texts themselves.
In Week 7, students choose their own game (to play themselves or observe pre-recorded game play) or science fiction film/episode to analyze. The assignments that follow — a Scholarly Journal Article Analysis, Literature Review, and Rhetorical Analysis & Methods Memo — all build toward a 1-2 minute multimodal piece (a podcast episode or video essay) in which students present their emerging argument. That multimodal piece feeds directly into the final paper: an original scholarly contribution to media studies, digital rhetoric, and/or game studies. Students will leave the course with a paper that forms a strong foundation for submission to an undergraduate humanities-oriented research journal.
We will read, watch, listen to, and analyze a variety of media and scholarly literature. In addition, we will produce our own texts such as personal reflections and academic essays. Students will learn to research, workshop, revise and edit their own ideas in form and content. In addition, students will learn how to analyze and develop their own arguments from various points of view, articulate and support their positions with research in a variety of forms, respond critically and ethically to other people's ideas, adapt their writing for a variety of audiences, purposes, and contexts, and develop prose that is thoughtful, organized, precise in diction, and structured.
Perhaps unlike other courses you’ve taken, our course texts will also include the writing you and your peers will produce in response to these published texts. That is, some classes will involve peer review and others will revolve around discussions of anonymous samples of your writing. As we look at the writing you and your peers have done, we won’t be examining it to see what is “good” or “bad” about it. Rather, we’ll examine it to hone our sense of how readers might respond to our writing and to learn writing moves from each other. We will be using Ritzenberg & Mendelsohn’s (2021) How Scholars Write and Fang’s (2021) Demystifying Academic Writing as texts to help develop collegiate level academic writing competencies.
Key Focus Questions:
- How do speculative narratives redefine human ontological categories?
- What implicit messages emerge about difference?
- How do representational strategies in science fiction media negotiate complex power dynamics?
The course emphasizes advanced scholarly writing practices, including:
- Introduction to theoretical frameworks
- Introduction to different forms of media and rhetorical analysis
- Critical analysis development
- Sophisticated argumentative strategies
- Peer-review and collaborative scholarly discourse
By the end of the semester students will have developed advanced academic writing competencies and a nuanced critical approach to analyzing representational systems in speculative media. This hands-on approach emphasizes synthesizing research, articulating arguments clearly, and contributing to academic and policy discussions about the construction of humanity speculative media narratives.
Updated 3/30/26