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

Writing in the 21st century is global, social, and digital. An e-mail message or Twitter post can span the entire globe in mere seconds. A common scholarly goal in this department is the sustained study of all aspects of writing and literacy practices—history and theory, production and circulation, material and digital, social and collaborative, textual and visual. Our work coheres around a common set of questions about the global, social, and digital literacies of our time.

Photo by Matt Buchanan

Welcome to 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.

The department touches the lives of nearly every undergraduate on campus through the First Year Writing program, as well as popular courses including technical writing and communication, professional writing, rhetorical theory, and digital communication. We are also the administrative home of the Center for Writing and the Second Language Studies program.

Graduates from our B.S., M.S., and certificate program 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 in academic settings, becoming college and university professors.

If you have any questions, please email or call us. Or stop in and visit us in Nolte Hall on the Minneapolis campus.



Featured Items

  • Breuch and Rendahl to be published in Computers and Composition

    Congratulations to Merry Rendahl and Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, whose article "Toward a Complexity of Online Learning: Learners in Online First-Year Writing" was accepted by Computers and Composition. The article will appear in 2013.

    May 11th, 2012

  • Kudos, Trent Kays!

    Trent Kays had a proposal, "Wikipedia, Ethos, and the Production of Knowledge," accepted to Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC.

    He also had a proposal accepted to the 2012 National Council of Teachers of English Conference in Las Vegas, NV. He will be presenting "Twitter and Social Media for Igniting Professional Learning Connections" with colleagues from across the country.

    Trent was also a finalist for a UMN Board of Regents Student Representative position.

    Congrats, Trent!

     May 2nd, 2012