University Writing Program

Among animals, individuals choose mates based on biologically informative features such as long colorful tail feathers, large canines, or a red, swollen posterior. We typically assume that human attraction (and love) is much more nuanced and complex ... but is it? Many features that humans find beautiful or attractive, such as small waists, curvy hips, and large eyes, can be tied to biological explanations. Even behavioral features, such as nurturing behaviors, may be attractive for adaptive reasons. In this course, we will explore and write about biological explanations for these and many other aspects of human attraction. Using an evolutionary perspective, we will examine global patterns of attraction and challenge stereotypes of beauty. Do nice guys really finish last? Do traditionally attractive features in western cultures — such as low body weight — actually provide an evolutionary benefit, or might some preferences be culturally derived? For the final essay, students will supplement library research with data collection to produce an interdisciplinary research paper.

Elissa Jacobs

The American dream is a source of pride, controversy, and frustration. Many understand it as the unfettered pursuit of wealth, power, and social mobility. But when we apply this ideal to our contemporary society the American dream becomes infinitely more complex. If the American dream is about the mere “pursuit of happiness” and we live among so much abundance, then why is there a seemingly equal amount of anxiety, discontent, and rage?  In this class we will explore the American dream within the social, economic, and cultural context of global capitalism. We will look at how this idea has been expressed and explained through a variety of textual mediums such as literature, music, and film. This course is designed to challenge and destabilize our assumptions about the American dream to assess what, if anything, the idea promises for contemporary society.  

Jared Berkowitz

Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos founder whose entire business model of the “painless” blood draw was based on nonexistent technology; Adam Neumann, who was ousted from his WeWork startup for misleading investors and driving the business to bankruptcy; and the Sacklers, whose acclaimed philanthropy was largely sourced by unfettered opioid drug sales which triggered a national crisis of addiction and overdose deaths. These are just a few of the numerous individuals and companies that have made questionable ethical choices in the name of furthering their business. This class will explore a variety of business ethics issues relating to such topics as Silicon Valley, sports and the NCAA, and repatriating stolen art. In addition, we will examine the acclaimed film The Big Short to consider the boundaries of ethical behavior in the business world. This course will foster incisive analysis and sophisticated academic writing as a way to explore dilemmas relating to business ethics. Structured assignments, class discussions, peer group workshops, and conferences will direct us as we explore different writing tasks.

Lisa Rourke

Sex Sells! It’s the immortal truism of the advertising industry. But how does sex sell? For decades, advertisers have used hot bods and innuendo to suggest that power and pleasure can be bought. In the 1970s, the battle cry, “You’ve come a long way, Baby!” pushed cigarettes as the hip accessories of feminism and the sexual revolution. Today, brands blend consumerism with gender activism, invite LGBTQ to the mainstream marketplace, and tempt millennials with new promises of sex and success. In this course, students find and write about advertising that delights, infuriates, and perplexes them. In the first essay, they dissect their choice of pornographic food commercials, Budweiser bromances, and Calvin Klein billboards that titillate consumers and reshape social constructs of masculinity and femininity. The research paper challenges students to locate and comprehend recent studies of sex and gender in advertising and apply them to a defined set of ads or a major campaign of their choice.

Doug Kirshen

In 2009, a woman was found murdered in rural Louisiana. There were no witnesses, but seeming evidence led police to suspect undocumented immigrants. The victim’s DNA, however, did not match any of the Mexican suspects. Years later a new forensic technology generated a portrait of the killer – a blonde male of Northern European ancestry, and an arrest was made. Forensic science has not only helped to identify the dead, to solve crimes, and to bring culprits to justice. Forensic techniques, accepted at the time but later discredited, have also led to false convictions, as in the case of a man found guilty of rape who spent decades in prison before DNA tests confirmed his innocence, or in the case of an arsonist who was exonerated by the State of Texas in 2011 but had been executed years earlier. This course invites students to explore the achievements and shortcomings of forensic science. We will investigate the work of forensic anthropologists, take a look at real-life cases to learn about the history and effectiveness of investigative techniques, and analyze how forensic science has been portrayed (and transformed) in popular television series such as Bones, CSI, or Crossing Jordan. 

Katrin Fischer

A thick accent, bunch of grammar errors, jumble of different languages, and so on: it feels embarrassing to speak or write “bad” or “broken” English. We casually hear or say, “you speak very good English!” Is it a compliment or insult? Or we hear folks say that “everyone in American should speak English.” What do we assume as “bad” or “broken” and what counts as “good”? In this seminar, we will look into how different forms of English are represented and consumed in literature, film, video, and visual art. Students are welcomed to bring in and share their own experiences on issues including “foreignness,” migration, language learning, and translation, to name but few. By focusing on how multiple Englishes meet and clash in fictional and real environments, we will try to rethink the hierarchies of language and culture. Our ultimate goal is to reflect on how this conversation could influence both our class environment and daily lives. 

 Amanda Presswood

The Matrix Resurrections. The Hunger Games. Blade Runner 2049. Ready Player One. Divergent. The Handmaid’s Tale. In recent years, dystopias have been a mainstay of popular books, movies, and TV. These depictions of brutal fictional worlds and the heroes who fight to change, escape, or just survive them have a lot to tell us about our own world. They explore issues of individual freedoms, reproductive justice, digital privacy, family power dynamics, capitalism, and nearly every other problem we face in our modern society. In this course, we will explore a variety of dystopian fiction on screen and in literature in order to understand how creators use dystopian allegories to teach us about ourselves. We will watch and discuss episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale together for our first paper, and then students will choose their own pieces of dystopian fiction to research and analyze for a larger final project.

 Laura Heath-Stout

Humans often consider themselves to be "the moral animal," distinguished from other animals by our complex and socially derived systems of morality, characterized by empathy and cooperation. However, when comparing humans with the rest of the animal world, are we really so different? In this course, we will examine through discussion and writing the degree to which human morality is grounded in our evolutionary past. We will explore the development of human morality during childhood and adulthood through the lens of evolution and will look at classic scientific tests of morality/ethics (e.g., the trolley problem). Additionally, we will engage with evidence for morality in non-human species and probe the degree to which our primate relatives engage in altruistic, empathetic, and moral behaviors. During the final paper, students will have the freedom to choose their own topic and to utilize interdisciplinary literature in their exploration of the nature and nurture of morality. Usually offered every year.

Elissa Jacobs

Instruction offered remotely in Fall 2021. 

Storytelling plays a crucial role in our lives. We draw on stories to make meaning of ourselves and others, to shed light on our experiences, and to express who we are or would like to be. The same holds true for businesses. Storytelling is not only a core competency of business leaders but an indispensable component of functional organizations. Successful companies take pride in compelling stories; troubled companies tend to lack institutional stories and a culture of storytelling. Capable business leaders are effective storytellers, and strategic storytelling has been a proven means of initiating change and of turning companies around. This course invites students to investigate the power of stories and storytelling in business contexts. By analyzing texts from various media, we will discuss questions such as: What characterizes effective stories? What is the importance of storytelling and story-making in companies? How can storytelling bring about organizational change? Which traits do storytellers and business leaders share? What is the connection between storytelling and leadership?

Katrin Fischer

Over the past year, particularly with the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen an increasing reliance on public health data to inform public policies, monitor progress, and guide individuals’ health decisions. Public health data has been spun into narratives about right versus wrong, infographics that motivate action, and graphs that illustrate trends, among others. Since we’ve been inundated with quantitative data, you likely know what it’s like to experience data as an audience member, however in this course, you’ll become the composer with data at your communicative disposal. This course will encourage you to think about questions like: What is public health data? How is data generated and collected? How is public health data used or misused in academic, professional, and societal contexts? How do writers frame data to achieve certain ends? How does data visualization relate to communication? We will explore these questions across a variety of texts including CDC and NIH publications, TedTalks, and academic articles. After analyzing public health data use in different genres, you’ll then embark on your own quantitative reasoning journey by crafting a research essay that incorporates public health data and strategic data visualization. 

According to Charles Darwin, “A naturalist’s life would be a happy one if [they] had only to observe and never to write.” Unfortunately (or fortunately!), much of a naturalist’s practice involves writing. In fact, the same holds true for those in other scientific fields — scientists must not only do science, but they, too, must write science. But what exactly are professional scientists writing? What motivates their composing and to whom do they write? What rhetorical choices do scientists make when communicating complex information? In this course, we’ll examine the discursive and generic requirements scientists face when composing in different contexts for different audiences. By considering a number of professional scientific genres — including research articles, grant applications, poster presentations, and public talks — we will explore questions of accessibility, writerly agency, persuasion, and objectivity. You’ll even have the opportunity to interview faculty members in the disciplines to learn about the writing tasks you might encounter as a working professional in your field. By the end of this course, you’ll have a more sophisticated understanding of professional writing in the sciences, and as such, you’ll be asked to produce two distinct genres of writing that take up the same research topic, albeit for different audiences and different communicative purposes. 

This section of UWS focuses on “Environmental Justice,” which encompasses the equal access of all people, regardless of race, ethnic origin, or socio-economic status, to the benefits of nature as well as the equitable distribution of environmental harms.  It gives visibility and voice to those who have been historically marginalized and suffered the most from environmental hazards and the effects of climate change: communities of color, indigenous peoples, and the poor.  The course invites students to examine power inequities, historical contexts, and scientific concepts to understand the causes and effects of environmental injustices and environmental racism.  It also invites students to explore stories of resilience and hope by researching, learning, and writing about inspirational individuals, groups, and movements who have taken action for a more just and equitable future. 

Instruction offered remotely in Fall 2021. 

This course examines ways that media constructs and reconstructs the “ideal” body and the ways in which that ideal continues to be reconfigured. From the supermodels of the 1990s to Kim Kardashian, it is clear that society is obsessed with how bodies, especially female bodies, are represented in the media. But what is the role of social media when it comes to representations of the body? Does it allow for a greater representation of body types or is it reproducing the idealized body portrayed by mainstream media? This course explores how media constructs, shapes, and reinforces the culture of the ideal body. We will also explore the stereotypes and ideologies regarding gender, race, and class embedded in body image. The course will introduce critical approaches and theoretical foundations used to examine the representations and impacts of body images. Areas of the study may include, but not limited to, television, movies, social media, magazines, and video games. 

Amanda Presswood

Time travel is a motif that appears regularly in the genres of science-fiction and fantasy—from recent popular television series like Doctor Who and Loki, to classic novels like H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Diana Gabaldon’s fantasy-romance series Outlander. But is time travel only the stuff of fiction, or could it be a real possibility? How do we understand time, and do we have the capacity to manipulate it? In this course, we will explore how time is conceived in different cultures and academic disciplines in an attempt to get a fuller picture of what time actually is and how it affects us. Using strategies from the fields of physics, sociology, philosophy, and psychology, we will analyze the scientific and ethical questions raised by cultural depictions of time travel. Through this analysis, we will develop a deeper understanding of how time affects our own lives, and how we might be able to affect it.

Rachel Dale

In recent years, anime has become a global phenomenon enjoyed by millions of people, racking up a diverse group of fans. Yet, in many ways, anime is still very much rooted in its Japanese cultural origins. So, what does it mean for anime to be simultaneously Japanese and global? This course will examine this question from various angles, using the films of Studio Ghibli as well as some popular television shows. Together, we will explore how anime creators use their unique cultural perspective to create universal messages about issues such as the environment, coming of age, and cultural belonging. At the same time, we will see how these creators’ limited perspective can lead to problems such as cultural appropriation and issues surrounding racial and gender representation. Through this, students will learn to think more critically about the media they encounter and gain a new way to experience anime.

Shira Malka Cohen

Video games afford opportunities to immerse ourselves in virtual worlds in an interactive and engaging manner. The creativity and imagination behind game design necessitate the interaction of a wide range of skills: coding, graphic design, storytelling, musical composition, and sound design.

How is it that we can spend hours picking up virtual weeds in Animal Crossing, be fearful of turtle shells in Mario Kart, or experience immense satisfaction when leveling up our Pokemon or beating a boss in Dark Souls? This course addresses these questions by tracing the development of video games from the early pixelated heroes of Mario and Pac-Man to online spaces that involve the global participation of millions of people, such as League of Legends and Call of Duty. Students are required to think critically about the virtual worlds they inhabit and consider how video games implement play, immersion, and engagement and how their unique function as an interactive medium has evolved throughout the latter half of the 20th century to the present day. The interdisciplinary nature of game studies allows students to think and write critically on an array of topics concerning narrative, immersion, gender, music, technology, and game design

James Heazlewood-Dale

When something goes viral, it spreads. The pandemic has triggered a medical awareness of social distancing and community spread, but it has also instigated mob mentality and rampant misinformation through technological sharing. How do these concepts of contagion function? How do they impact individuals and communities, making connections while also causing marginalization? Can they be controlled? We will investigate how ideas and disease are spread, their short-term and long-term consequences, and the measures taken in response. Course readings and media will encourage students to think critically about human behavior that creates and destroys viral community. Students will analyze and research cultural and historical examples from zombies, to Twitter, to witch trials through the interdisciplinary lens of epidemiology, sociology, and psychology. By applying rhetorical analysis to instances of uncontrollable forms of communication, students will learn and reflect on their own strategies of academic communication.

Laura Kremmel

The Joker, Hannibal Lecter, and Norman Bates are all villains defined by their mental illnesses: they’re weird, dangerous, even evil. Similarly, we draw on narrative tropes to understand real and fictional characters with physical illness. For example, depictions of cancer patients in popular culture often use metaphors of the battlefield to declare them victorious or defeated. Experiences of physical and mental illness—including related embodiments of confusion, pain, and grief—are notoriously difficult to articulate. Without feeling illness ourselves, we are left to representations like the ones above to provide insight into these conditions. How do those representations influence our behavior towards those who are ill? How do they inform understandings of our own health and sociopolitical, bioethical, or criminological programs? To address these questions, we will analyze representations of illness in a variety of genres, which may include film, ads, comics, and online media. This course will help students build skills in research, analysis, and rhetorical awareness of the many disciplines that representations of illness impact.

Laura Kremmel 

This course considers music as a radical political tool for social justice. Guided by different genres of music and different social justice issues, we will listen to politically resonant songs in order to explore how music not only actively participates in and shapes our culture, but also offers modes of resistance to regimes of power. From the pro-labor and anti-war politics of folk music, the anti-establishment and anti-normative bents of punk, and the racial and social justice orientations of hip-hop, students will examine how music fights power, encourages activism, and effects social change. This course is designed in such a way that students may participate fully regardless of the level of their prior musical knowledge or experience. All of the music we will be examining involves texts that are linguistic, sonic, and occasionally, in the case of music videos, visual. Our study of these musical texts will be enhanced through various critical and theoretical approaches to the intersections of race, gender, and class. For final research papers, students will be encouraged to develop a research topic about music and social justice issues that are meaningful to them. 

Ethan King

Our contemporary moment has been marked by various catastrophes and crises: the pandemic, the climate emergency, the refugee crisis, widening economic disparities, rising nationalist extremism, and racial inequalities and police violence. These crises have combined to create a present moment of profound uncertainty and growing unrest, and daily life has become undergirded by a rising tide of anxiety. Using contemporary events and recent cultural texts as sites of inquiry about the global tumult of our present, students will consider how the convergence of the everyday and the catastrophic frame our “new normal,” as well as how distinctions between normalcy and emergency are connected to media narratives, corporate agendas, and political rhetoric and policy. Altogether, the course invites students to examine our experience of the contemporary world from multiple lenses and encourages students to research, learn, write about, and potentially reimagine the social, economic, and environmental challenges of our time.

Ethan King

Filmmakers have long celebrated the successes—and warned of the harrowing dangers—of coming to America as an immigrant. We pride ourselves as a nation of immigrants, yet newcomers pay dearly to get here, only to find that they are not very welcome when they arrive. What do these strangers from strange lands contribute to our national identity, and what must they sacrifice to fit into the American scene? Filmmakers use immigrant stories to show us our country through their eyes, and what we see is not always pretty. Ideals of justice and fair play are compromised, and progress always comes at a price. Through such films as An American Tail (1986), the story of naïve mice (representing European Jews) who imagine that in America there are no cats, The Godfather II (1974), and El Norte (1983), we will consider the myths and realities of America as a land of opportunity shaped by the hardships and determination of immigrants.

Doug Kirshen

The ocean, the open road, and the automobile all entice us to travel. From Thelma and Louise, a female buddy road crime film, to acclaimed food critic Anthony Bourdain, who samples foods from across the globe, travel has long worked in popular culture to offer the tantalizing possibilities of reinvention, of getting lost, of escape into the new. However, travel is more than just a romantic fantasy about self-transformation. In fact, British travel essayist Pico Iyer argues that our travel experiences are always structured by our preconceptions about ourselves and the world; for Iyer, we can never completely escape from ourselves. Building on the ideas of Iyer and others, we will investigate what we do when we travel and the motivations that drive the urge to explore. How does travel relate to identity, gender, and self-discovery? In this course, we will probe this question and others by watching films and reading texts from a variety of genres and disciplines, examining the desires, pressures, and delusions that propel us to hit the open road or take flight. Building on ideas from the course, students will be encouraged to write papers that engage with issues related to travel and self-exploration that they find compelling.

Collin Cook

Despite being united by the common desire to win, few relationships in popular culture are as fraught as the relationship between athletes and the various organizational structures—teams, leagues, coaches, agents—of sports. Indeed, given the amount of money at stake, the sports industry’s many competing interests make it a productive case study for thinking about this ever-shifting balance of power. Beginning with the film Jerry Maguire, this course will track these ongoing power negotiations by looking at a variety of relationships within sports, attempting to understand how different actors—athletes, coaches, owners—try to win, maintain dominance, and get paid. How do organizations respond, for example, when individual players like Tom Brady and Aaron Rogers upset the traditional hierarchies that govern teams? Are some coaching styles—such as those of Steve Kerr or Phil Jackson—better suited than others to balancing the competing personalities and interests of professional sports? To further engage with the topics we discuss, students will be encouraged to write papers that grapple with sports-related questions and issues of power dynamics that are of interest to them.

Collin Cook

Many news stories about college campuses emphasize social diversity and identity politics, from free speech debates to sexual violence to student worker unionization to affirmative action. Writers have discussed these issues in editorials, manifestos, fiction, memoirs, and academic research studies. We will examine several of these depictions in order to understand how many forms of diversity, inclusion, and oppression play out in the space of the college campus. We will begin by watching and studying the film Dear White People, then will examine how college is portrayed in a variety of genres of writing, and then students will choose a particular issue to research.

 The Times They Are A-Changin …When Bob Dylan wrote this song in the early1960s, it was the time of political and military upheaval in America. Dylan was trying to rally people to come together to bring about needed change in our society: culturally, socially, and politically. The decade marked revolutionary ideas and turmoil, and the most prevalent included individual freedoms, Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation, the Viet Nam controversy, Woodstock, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Gay Liberation, and more. Students played a major role in bringing about change as campus protests occurred across America. To explore their role, we will start by examining primary sources and personal narratives between 1960 and 1974 from the extensive archive at Brandeis. Through a series of writing assignments, this UWS will provide students an opportunity to examine the Sixties phenomena, first through the lens of music, then through a comparative analysis of controversies, and finally through research into movements that accomplished social change. 

Marsha Nourse

We’re constantly bombarded with messages about the importance of mindfulness: if we would just pay attention, meditate, live in the moment, focus on breathing, or do yoga, then surely our lives would improve. But with so much noise around us, practicing mindfulness can be challenging. As the great composer John Cage observed, “Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise.” How can we turn noise to our advantage so that it enhances rather than disrupts mindfulness? To begin exploring answers to this question, we will first listen to the album Five Songs About Power Lines by the band "World Without Parking Lots" and then examine strategies for listening to help us navigate our noisy world.

Eric Hollander

Yes and no. On the one hand, each writing seminar has the same types of assignments and course policies. On the other hand, each seminar uses a different topic. 

Both options are viable, but students who take UWS in the fall can then apply what they’ve learned to their spring courses. Consult Academic Advising if you have further questions.

UWS is a full-credit course. It counts as one of the 32 courses required for graduation.

UWS instructors work closely with their students, providing one-on-one tutorials, sustained attention to individual development and extensive comments on drafts. With larger classes, instructors could not give this kind of individualized attention.

Depending on availability, students may change their UWS to another in the same semester.

UWS is a first-year requirement. If you do not fulfill it during your first year, you may be placed on academic probation.

An online writing assessment, taken in the spring before entering Brandeis, helps the Writing Program reach out to students who might most benefit from what the Composition Seminar has to offer. (Students wishing to enroll directly into CSEM without taking the online assessment may do so.)

International students must take UWS in their first or second semester at Brandeis. Nonnative English writers are strongly encouraged to sign up for free tutoring in the English Language Programs.

The Writing Center offers support for all students, including those enrolled in UWS, with 30- and 60-minute one-on-one tutorials available by appointment. The Writing Center also offers workshops on each of the major UWS assignments, including the lens paper and research paper.