University of Minnesota
Department of Writing Studies
612-624-3445
writ@umn.edu


Department Name

Department of Writing Studies

Students on the East Bank Campus

Welcome to the web site for the Department of Writing Studies. Part of the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts, we are an academic department with nationally recognized strengths in teaching and scholarship in rhetoric, writing, and technical communication. With 13 tenured or tenure-track faculty, over 20 non-tenured instructional staff, and degrees from the bachelor's to the doctorate, we offer a diverse set of research, teaching, and learning opportunities.

The department touches the lives of every undergraduate on campus, teaching over 170 sections of first-year writing as well as courses in technical writing and communication, rhetorical theory, composition, and environmental communication. Graduates from our B.S., M.S., and certificate programs are prepared for successful careers in scientific and technical communication and are in high demand by companies both local and national. Our M.A. and Ph.D. graduates pursue careers primarily in academic settings, becoming college professors and instructors.

We are also the administrative home of the Center for Writing, which provides face-to-face and online writing assistance as well as other programs of interest. Faculty and staff in both the center and the department enjoy many collaborative relationships including funded research to study how writing is most effectively taught in different academic disciplines.

We hope you find what you are looking for on our web site. If you have any questions, please email or call us. Or stop in and visit us in Wesbrook Hall, located on the Minneapolis campus.

Sincerely,
Laura J. Gurak, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair

Featured Items

  • Professor Christina Haas to Join the Faculty

    We are very pleased to announce that Chris Haas will join the Writing Studies department in fall, 2010. Her articles have appeared in the prominent journals in composition and writing studies--Journal of Business and Technical Communication, College Composition and Communication, Research in the Teaching of English, and Written Communication. Her work also includes studies of writing in the workplace and classroom. One focus of Professor Haas's research has been, to cite the title of her book, Writing Technology: Studies in the Materiality of Literacy. She has charted the path of digital technologies from word processing, digital writing, hypertext, web environments, new media language, and most recently to instant messaging.

    She has also been the editor of the internationally recognized journal, Written Communication, since 2004. That journal will be re-located to the University of Minnesota next year.

    In spring semester, 2011, Professor Haas will teach a graduate seminar on Literacy: Theory, History, Practice.

    We welcome her to the University of Minnesota!

     November 23rd, 2009

  • Merry Rendahl published in M/MLA

    Ph.D. candidate, Merry Rendahl, recently published an article, "It's Not The Matrix: Thinking about Online Writing Instruction," in M/MLA, the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. Merry has taught writing in online, face-to-face, and hybrid formats. Her dissertation on online writing courses for first-year students will be completed in the 2009- I0 academic year.

    The article resulted from her 2008 conference presentation, "Connecting Teachers and Students in Digital Writing Classrooms," which was part of the Digital Humanities special panel. Kathleen Diffley, Executive Director and Editor, invited her to submit my paper.

    Rendahl, Merry A. "It's Not the Matrix: Thinking about Online Writing Instruction." M/MLA 42.1 (2009): 133-150. Print.

    Traditional classrooms, and the simultaneous gathering of teacher and students therein, function as a ''transparent technology" of education, an assumed, unquestionable practice, one to which online learning is often juxtaposed. Yet the current configuration of "the classroom" is not inevitable; it carries within it many cultural values and warrants critical examination.

     November 22nd, 2009