Undergraduate Bulletin
Spring 2025
WRT: Writing
WRT 101: Introductory Writing Workshop
An introduction to the foundations of writing, offering students a variety of rhetorical strategies and helping them develop creative and critical thinking, fluency, and correctness. Coursework creates ample opportunities for significant practice in reading, writing, and critical analysis. Emphasis on writing as a revision-based process. WRT 101 prepares students for WRT 102 and postsecondary academic writing. This course may be repeated until a satisfactory grade is achieved.
Prerequisite: Writing Placement Score of 3 or WAE 194 with a C or higher
DEC: A1
3 credits, ABC/U grading
WRT 102: Intermediate Writing Workshop
A study of strategies for extended academic writing assignments including critical analysis, argument or point of view, and multi-source, college-level research essays. Students continue to develop rhetorical awareness, analytical proficiency, and academic research skills. At the end of the course students create a multimodal ePortfolio of final revised essays to be evaluated by their instructor and at least one outside reader. This course may be repeated until a satisfactory grade is achieved.
Prerequisite: One of the following: Writing Placement Score of 4, WRT 101 with C or higher or transfer equivalent, SAT EBRW >= 580, ACT ELA >=23, AP ELC or AP ELGC >=3
DEC: A2
SBC:
WRT
3 credits, ABC/U grading
WRT 200: The Rhetoric of Grammar and Style
Students will examine conventions of grammar and style to understand how they are derived and applied in common formal and informal writing situations. Students will experiment with prose style as a way to achieve rhetorical effectiveness. Students will study aspects of grammar that are most relevant to clear writing, including punctuation, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, phrases, clauses, gerunds, participles, infinitives, and complete sentences. Sentence imitation, sentence combining, and sentence invention techniques are used to help students become more flexible in their syntactic fluidity.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent or permission of the Undergraduate Program Director
3 credits
WRT 201: Principles of Professional Writing
An introduction to the principles and practices of professional writing, this course is designed to teach students about foundational skills and approaches needed for a variety of professional writing situations. Students learn and apply core concepts, analytical skills, and strategies of effective workplace writing through genres common to a range of fields, such as business, industry, education, the arts, publishing, nonprofit organizations, law, international affairs, and public service and health-related professions. Through engagement with writing studies theory and research, and exposure to different types of professional writing, students will develop an understanding of relevant rhetorical, social, cultural, and ethical considerations.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent
3 credits
WRT 300: Theories and Methods in Rhetoric and Writing
An exploration of theories and methods of rhetoric and rhetorical criticism. Moving through historical approaches to rhetorical study to provide a foundation in rhetorical theory, the class examines contemporary methods in rhetoric research and practice to equip students with skills in invention, deliberation, and persuasion. The course includes a final project that uses contemporary rhetorical methods to examine the ethical practices underlying persuasion in every-day activities, communications, or objects.
Prerequisites: WRT 102 and COM 100
3 credits
WRT 301: Writing in the Disciplines: Special Topics
Writing in specified academic disciplines is taught through the analysis of texts in appropriate fields to discover discourse conventions. Students produce a variety of written projects typical of the genres in the field. Different sections emphasize different disciplines. Typical topics will be Technical Writing, Business Writing, Legal Writing, and Writing for the Health Professions. May be repeated for credit as the topic changes.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent
3 credits
WRT 302: Critical Writing Seminar: Special Topics
A writing seminar, with rotating historical, political, social, literary, and artistic topics suggested by the professors each semester. Frequent substantial writing projects are central to every version of the course. May be repeated for credit as the topic changes.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent
DEC: G
SBC:
HFA+
3 credits
WRT 303: The Personal Essay
We all have stories to tell about our lives. In this course, we will explore how to tell them through the personal essay, a notoriously slippery and flexible form that we will engage by writing our own personal essays, as well as by reading and responding to writers who work in that genre. Students will also prepare a personal statement for their application to graduate or professional school, or for another academic or professional opportunity.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent
3 credits
WRT 304: Writing for Your Profession
In this course students learn about types of documents, rhetorical principles, and composing practices necessary for writing effectively in and about professional contexts. Coursework emphasizes each student's career interests, but lessons also address a variety of general professional issues, including audience awareness, research methods, ethics, collaboration, and verbal and visual communication. Students complete the course with practical knowledge and experience in composing business letters, proposals, and various kinds of professional reports. A creative, self-reflexive assignment also contextualizes each individual's professional aspirations within a bigger picture of his/her life and culture.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent
3 credits
WRT 305: Writing for the Health Professions
Enables students interested in a health care career to strengthen their critical writing skills. While learning to gather information and to apply ethical principles in a logical, persuasive fashion, students will explore and write about various types of evidence concerning the health care needs of different populations: a field research project on a health issue affecting a local target population of their choice, a critique of government documents that contain data on that issue and population, and a review of scholarly research on the same issue as it affects the larger national population represented by that local one. Writing assignments will include drafts and final versions of a research proposal, field research results, numerical analysis, literature review and a final project incorporating all of the previous work conducted about that issue and population. Students will also write a reflective paper which can serve as the basis for a personal statement for medical or other health-related graduate school applications. This course will fulfill the second half of the Writing Pre-Med/Pre-Health prerequisite.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent; U3 or U4 standing
SBC: ESI
3 credits
WRT 306: Tutor Training
This course is reserved for new tutors hired by the Writing Program to staff the Writing Center. Instructor permission is required to enroll in this course, which is designed to introduce new tutors to the discipline of writing pedagogy and help tutors contextualize their own experiences in scholarship associated with the field. This course is designed to help new tutors develop their own methodology for tutoring, grounded in some influential scholarship in Writing Center pedagogy.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent
SBC: EXP+
3 credits
WRT 307: Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine
A writing-intensive critical seminar on the roles that argument and persuasion play in the development, circulation, and translation of medical and scientific knowledge. Class discussions and writing assignments will be organized around two mutually informing themes: first, consideration will be given to the rhetorical strategies experts use to produce technical arguments; second, emphasis will be placed on how non-experts interact with and contest those arguments. This course will address issues of power, access, and social justice as it traces how scientific discourses move among diverse audiences. To that end, writing assignments will ask students to 1) analyze medical and scientific texts, 2) modify those texts to fit the unique demands of a particular community, and 3) conduct sustained original research into a scientific or medical controversy of their choosing.
Prerequisite: WRT 102
3 credits
WRT 319: Nonprofit Business Writing
A multimodal writing and analysis-intensive course focusing organizational analysis and public facing rhetoric of businesses with a special interest in nonprofits as a way to introduce students to a career in the nonprofit world. Using real nonprofits or other organizations as an example, students will apply theories of organizational rhetoric, visual rhetoric, genre, and more to analyze the ways in which a business internally communicates and externally presents itself in its public facing texts and artifacts particularly with an eye toward diversity, equity and inclusion and assumed power structures. For the first half of the class, students will choose a business or nonprofit organization to formally research, analyze and create content for. Genres include an organizational rhetorical analysis report, a writing profile, a researched spotlight brief and a video message. Students will then present their work in a 10 to 15-minute formal presentation, peer reviewed by the class. The second half of the semester, the class will partner with one or more businesses or local nonprofits through Stony Brook University's Center for Service Learning and Community Service (CSLCS). Using an asset based approach, students will work in groups to collaborate with the organization(s) to learn their needs then using what they learned from the first half, write mini white papers which will then be combined into a Collaborative White Paper for the organization(s).
Prerequisite: WRT 102
3 credits
WRT 320: Rhetoric and Culture
An introduction to the history of rhetoric that highlights its relationship to reading, writing, and speaking in modern contexts. Emphasis will be placed on defining rhetoric - its traditions, forms, and enduring realms of influence. Specific content depends on instructor preference, but in general, this course will address key historical moments, especially the beginnings of rhetoric in antiquity and 20th century struggles against fascist rhetoric, alongside historical-critical perspectives on contemporary rhetorical theory and practice.
Prerequisite: WRT 102
3 credits
WRT 321: Writing for Social Justice
"This course grapples with the complex historical partnership between writing/language and social justice: the manifestos, poetry, essays, editorials and political statements, the films, speeches, wall writing, testimonials and posters and zines from the many contexts in which people use language to move society toward equity and justice--even activist technical and professional writing that aims to change systemic inequities through the (re)writing of bureaucratic and policy texts. We will consider language broadly by looking at and experimenting with a range of communicative forms recruited to address social justice. "
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent
3 credits
WRT 375: Technical Communication
An exploration of technical communication, a field of inquiry and an approach to conveying complex information in professional contexts. Many industries and organizations require that their workers spend a significant amount of time communicating goals, project ideas, and technical knowledge to many different audiences. This course gives students the confidence and tools needed to communicate effectively and responsibly to colleagues and potential employers in a professional and valued manner.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent
SBC: SPK
3 credits
WRT 376: Digital Rhetorics
In antiquity, rhetoric was an art of persuasion carried out through the medium of voice. Since the printing press, rhetoric and composition have been concerned with rhetoric in written word. Today, in the 21st century, we face digitality, defying any attempt to easily delineate speech, writing, and visuality. What does it mean to compose, interpret, and argue through digitality? What does it mean to practice rhetoric as a civic art when our communities are global and hyperconnected? This course explores the subfield of digital rhetoric, which aims to capture answers to these questions and more.
Prerequisite: WRT 102
3 credits
WRT 377: Special Topics in Digital Writing
A writing-intensive seminar with rotating topics exploring current issues in digitally based discourse. Sample topics include but are not limited to, Writing for the New Media; Authorship in the Digital Age; The Rhetoric of Surveillance; AI and Writing. Frequent substantial writing projects are central to every version of the course. May be repeated for credit as the topic changes.
Prerequisite: WRT 102
3 credits
WRT 380: Advanced Research Writing: Theories, Methods, Practices
Good research skills are critical to academic success. Most disciplines require writing based upon research, as arguments and explanations make little impact on audiences without effective supporting evidence, drawn from relevant scholarship on the subject. This involves knowing how to use appropriate databases, source materials, and composing processes, as well as negotiating the values, genres, and languages of the scholarly communities in which one is researching. In this course, students will learn fundamentals of research methods, practice these methods in a series of integrated research and writing assignments, and engage in critical reflection about research and writing. Students will focus on an area of disciplinary interest to them, and practice these essential research and writing skills through a series of projects: library assignments, research log, research proposal, annotated bibliography, literature review, abstract, research paper and reflection paper.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent
SBC: ESI
3 credits
WRT 381: Advanced Analytic and Argumentative Writing
Argumentative writing involves making a claim and supporting it with specific, related points and appropriate evidence--in other words, it is thesis-driven writing. Whenever we don't quite like someone else's idea and we want him or her to come closer to ours, argumentative writing is the most efficient method for such persuasion, in whatever profession you're considering. This class, therefore, will focus on learning how to effectively utilize argumentative and counter-argumentative writing strategies. Students will explore an area of disciplinary interest to them through several stages--proposal, preliminary draft, multiple versions, literature review--culminating in a 20-30 page piece of writing in which they make a claim about a particular subject in that area of interest and support it with scholarly research and extensive elaboration. This course will fulfill the second half of the Writing Pre-Med/Pre-Health prerequisite. Covers the Interdisciplinary topic for the English major. This course is offered as both EGL 381 and WRT 381.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent; U3 or U4 standing
SBC: ESI
3 credits
WRT 382: Grant Writing
Introduces students to the fundamentals of seeking and writing scholarly grants to fund research-based projects, from the earliest stages of planning to the completion of the grant application. In consultation with the instructor, each student works for the entire semester on applying for a real grant that is external to Stony Brook University. Key subjects to be taught include understanding funders and funding opportunities, researching and locating one's position in the disciplinary field of the grant, articulating relevant problems in that field, specifying appropriate and evidence-based solutions, addressing specific audiences, and utilizing rhetorical appeals. In addition to frequent low-stakes writing tasks, the course requires three high-stakes written projects: a literature review, a research proposal, and a grant application along with an abstract.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent; U3 or U4 standing
SBC: ESI
3 credits
WRT 392: Theories and Methods of Mentoring Writers
Closely examines the difficulties implicit in mentoring writers, with special consideration for the roles of cultural expectations and social dynamics on both the teaching of writing and writers themselves. In small groups and one-to-one interactions, students explore theories and practices upon which composition instruction and writing center work depend. Building on the understanding that writing is a recursive process (a cycle of planning, drafting, revising, and editing), students also learn to analyze and problem-solve issues that become barriers for effective writing and communication.
Prerequisites: WRT 102 or 103; permission of instructor
3 credits
WRT 444: Experiential Learning
This course is designed for students who engage in a substantial, structured experiential learning activity in conjunction with another class. Experiential learning occurs when knowledge acquired through formal learning and past experience are applied to a "real-world" setting or problem to create new knowledge through a process of reflection, critical analysis, feedback and synthesis. Beyond-the-classroom experiences that support experiential learning may include: service learning, mentored research, field work, or an internship.
Pre- or corerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent Prerequisite: permission of the instructor and approval of the EXP+ contract (http://sb.cc.stonybrook.edu/bulletin/current/policiesandregulations/degree_requirements/EXPplus.php)
SBC: EXP+
0 credit, S/U grading
WRT 458: Speak Effectively Before an Audience
A zero credit course that may be taken in conjunction with any WRT course that provides opportunity to achieve the learning outcomes of the Stony Brook Curriculum's SPK learning objective.
Pre- or corequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent; permission of the instructor
SBC: SPK
0 credit
WRT 459: Write Effectively in a Discipline
A zero-credit course that may be taken in conjunction with any 300- or 400-level course in any department. The course provides opportunity to practice the skills and techniques of effective academic writing and satisfies the learning outcomes of the Stony Brook Curriculum's WRTD learning objective. Students must request that the faculty member teaching the course for which the paper is written email their approval of the student enrollment in WRT 459 to the undergraduate program director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent; permission of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric
SBC: WRTD
0 credit
WRT 487: Independent Project
Qualified upper-division students may carry out advanced independent work under the supervision of an instructor in the program. May be repeated.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent and permission of instructor and undergraduate program director
0-6 credits
WRT 488: Internship
Participation in local, state, and national public and private agencies and organizations. May be repeated up to a limit of 6 credits.
Prerequisite: WRT 102 or equivalent and permission of instructor and undergraduate program director
SBC: EXP+
0-6 credits, S/U grading
WRT 490: Rhetoric and Writing Senior Project
A capstone course for students in the Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing. Students develop and compose a major project for a specific audience and need. Students attend a weekly seminar and work independently to produce their original, theory-driven, and evidence-orientated capstone composition. They are also expected to interact directly with members of the appropriate community for eliciting responses and making corresponding social impact.
Prerequisites: WRT 102 and WRT 300
3 credits
