Writing

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Writing Program

Director: Professor Hillard

The Writing Program supports students who produce academic writing at Davidson and the faculty who teach its practices throughout the curriculum. The Program sponsors writing in a variety of styles, genres, and disciplinary contexts across the college, which values writing as a core feature of undergraduates’ intellectual lives. The Program’s mission is to promote a robust rhetorical culture at Davidson by:

offering students practice in analysis, intellectual argument, and other forms of writing associated with civic and scholarly publics
fostering effective and innovative methods for teaching writing in the liberal arts
guiding students in research practices and writerly ethics, with an emphasis on making fair and effective use of the work of others
regularly assessing students’ work as writers

The Composition Requirement

The Davidson College faculty believes that a strong liberal arts education requires significant practice in critical thinking, writing, and discussion. Regardless of major or eventual career choice, Davidson College graduates should be able to make sophisticated arguments about complex intellectual issues, and to do so with rhetorical power and clarity. To this end, each first-year student must pass a course which focuses on the techniques for producing effective academic and intellectual writing.

There are two ways to meet this Composition requirement:

Successful completion of a WRI 101 course, taught by faculty from across the college. WRI 101 courses are offered in both Fall and Spring semesters. WRI 101 course descriptions, guidelines for choosing a WRI 101 course, and information about the course goals are available on the Writing Program web site.
Successful completion of both Humanities 150 and 151. For more information about these courses, please consult the Humanities Program materials.

WRI 101 – Writing in the Liberal Arts

WRI 101 helps students develop the skills of writing in the liberal arts: critical analysis of texts, exploration of and deliberation about public and intellectual issues; familiarity with research strategies; understanding the conventions for using with integrity the work of others; and crafting of inventive, correct, and rhetorically sophisticated prose. The subjects for writing in the course vary by instructor. For any semester, descriptions will be available on the Writing Program web site.