With registration windows opening today, students can now sign up for classes that will fulfill the writing-in-the-disciplines requirement in a more innovative way.
Writing Beyond the Disciplines, a project proposed by Kristen Neuschel, associate professor of history, will introduce students to a new way of writing with three classes offered in three different departments this Spring.
Neuschel will offer the freshman seminar "Living Through The Great Wars," Public Policy Professor Kenneth Rogerson will teach "News Writing and Reporting" and English Professor Thomas Ferraro will instruct "Bravura American Writing."
Neuschel said she designed the project to meet the needs of a generation of college students that has become detached from its own writing.
"I believe that for the current generation, writing has been a testing instrument," she said. "I think that has produced a greater alienation from writing than what had been true for the generation before. I think measures must be taken to overcome that alienation. That is what I proposed in these classes. You get a direct experience in thinking about how writing should connect who is inside you with what you are attempting to learn. We're trying to get people to learn how to bring their full and authentic selves into dialogue with academic settings."
Writing Beyond the Disciplines has been funded by the Spencer Foundation and the Teagle Foundation, which will support three courses each year for the next three years.
The three courses offered next semester are being adapted to emphasize the goals of the new program. Rogerson has previously taught "News Writing and Reporting," one of the core classes for the Policy Journalism and Media Studies Certificate, which will be revamped starting next semester to include online writing.
Rogerson said he was excited when he was approached by Neuschel about the project.
"[This] is the way writing is going," he said. "There will always be a need for people who can gather, synthesize and present the news. The method of how that happens-the form and the channel that that goes through--may change, but there will always be a need for people to gather the news."
Neuschel said the course she will be teaching next semester will help connect students with their writing.
"My course, the freshman seminar on [World War I], gets students to read things that were written by people their own age as they went into war 100 years ago," she said. "That presents certain wonderful opportunities in engaging writing and thinking about its power. It gets students thinking about how 18-year-olds used writing to express their dread, love and grief long ago. There are particular opportunities in each course to do this differently."
These courses will not replace the freshman Writing 20 requirement, and Neuschel said her project has benefited from the support of the Robert Thompson, Jr. Writing Program.
"We are working within established curricular guidelines," she said. "Duke has a national visibility in its writing program. Our Writing 20 program is so strong and interdisciplinary. I'm in no way taking away a piece of the writing program. I'm trying to build on it. The fact that we have two writing course requirements on top of Writing 20 means there is a structure in which I can experiment."
Joseph Harris, director of the Robert Thompson, Jr. Writing Program and associate professor of English, said he is enthusiastic about the project.
"Neuschel has been in close contact with me over the past year as she has been thinking about this project," he said. "I think it is a great idea, and I hope the writing program can collaborate with her as she moves ahead."
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