Welcome from the Director

Dear First-Year Student,

On behalf of the faculty of the University Writing Program, I am delighted to welcome you to Writing 20, Duke's first-year seminar in academic writing. Taught by scholars from a variety of disciplines, Writing 20 enables you to choose from an expansive range of intellectual contexts-such as history, biology, literature, anthropology, ecology, and philosophy-from within which you can develop your acumen in academic reading and writing. Writing 20 provides you with an introduction to and foundation for the rigorous analysis and argument that will be asked of you as you continue to pursue academic study at Duke.

The seminar structure of Writing 20 facilitates an intensive, individualized focus on fundamental aspects of academic writing: reading closely and critically for the purposes of scholarly analysis; responding to and making use of the work of others; drafting and revising texts; and making written texts public. Each section is capped at twelve students, creating a forum in which the professor and students can forge a community of learners engaged in vigorous class discussions and careful attentiveness to one another's texts. As you encounter course texts (including not only published books and articles but also your classmates' writing), Writing 20 will offer you strategies for moving beyond merely extracting information to help you elicit and respond to subtleties, complexities, and points of tension. As the work of Writing 20 increases in complexity over the semester, you will be asked not merely to agree or disagree with what others have to say, but to instead adopt nuanced academic moves that prompt you to extend, modify, complicate, and challenge others' ideas as you create your own position within the larger academic community.

I invite you to browse our site, which includes details about the goals of Writing 20, descriptions of the courses, thoughts on how to select a course, information about our faculty and staff, links for academic readers and writers, opportunities for student publication, and news about our current projects. I wish you the best of success in your writing at Duke!

Sincerely,

Denise K. Comer

Director of First-Year Writing