Courses

AS.004.100.  Decoding College Writing.  3 Credits.  

This course examines three broad types of writing students will encounter at and beyond Hopkins: narrative writing, analytical writing, and technical writing. Each has its own implications within the walls of JHU, from research papers to creative projects, but each will extend to the opportunities students pursue outside of academia. Above all, this course demystifies the idea that some writers just “have it” by decoding the processes that lead to great writing and building students’ confidence in written expression to carry forward into their studies and professional pursuits.

Writing Intensive

AS.004.101.  Reintroduction to Writing.  3 Credits.  

Reintroduction to Writing, JHU’s first-year writing course, steps beyond the writing skills necessary to get to college: our shared project is to help you learn how to write for the rest of your life. We approach writing as an adaptable process of inquiry and action, as deeply informed by reading, and as reflective, embodied, and always emerging practice. In this course, we will rethink writing in ways that will help you throughout college, your professional career, personal life, and civic responsibilities in a democracy. Toward that end, this course teaches you to become an agile, curious, creative, and resilient writer. You will read and write academic texts; rhetorically analyze a wide variety of sources, including for the conventions of diverse genres; and write across genres, developing skill and precision in your writing, as well as fluency across contexts, audiences, and media.Classes are capped at 15 students and often involve discussion, workshops, and conferences. Our courses engage with many topics and disciplines; consider carefully which course will most interest you. Reintroduction to Writing is intended for first-year students, though it is available to others by special permission.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.200.  Academic Writing.  3 Credits.  

Academic Writing engages writers in writing assignments like those they are likely to encounter throughout their university education. The course invites students to read and summarize academic essays, and then apply this style of writing in essay form. Subjects include the moves of academic writing, engaging with scholarly arguments, and building one’s own arguments, as well as the styles and formats of academic writing. Classes are small, and they are organized around at least three major academic writing assignments. Each course guides students’ practice through pre-writing, drafting, and revising, and includes discussions, workshops, and tutorials with the instructor. In addition to its central focus on the elements of academic argument, each course teaches students to write with academic integrity and document sources correctly. This course is open to all students.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.201.  Narrative Writing.  3 Credits.  

Telling stories is one of the first and most important ways that human beings aim to make sense of the world and our experience of it. Narrative informs fiction and nonfiction alike, and is central to the writing of history, anthropology, crime reports and laboratory reports, sports stories, and political documentaries. What happened? The answer may be imagined or factual, but it will almost certainly be narrative. This course focuses on narrative, a nonfiction mode that answers the question of “what happened” in a variety of contexts and aims to make sense not only of what happened, but how and why. Students summarize and analyze narrative essays and write narrative essays of their own. They learn the power of narrative to inform and persuade as they test that power in their own writing. The course is open to all students.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.212.  Studies in Contemporary American Short Stories.  3 Credits.  

In a 2012 interview with the New York Times, American critic M.H. Abrams was asked, “Why study literature?” Abrams answered, because “it enables you to live the lives of other people.” But how does a master of short stories open a window to his or her characters’ thoughts and feelings? How does the writer, as Abrams suggests, draw us into other lives? In this class, students will explore these questions through their own writings across different modes and styles. Writing projects will range from evaluating another critic’s interpretation of how a story brings its characters to life to writing your own autobiographical narrative. Our readings will feature the work of some of the masters of contemporary American short stories including Nate Brown, Danielle Evans, Joyce Carol Oates, Gish Jen, Richard Ford, Denis Johnson, Jennifer Egan, ZZ Packer, James Salter, George Saunders, Lorrie Moore, Edward P. Jones, David Foster Wallace, and Lydia Davis

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.221.  Writing Methods:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Projects and Methods (FA6)

Writing Intensive

AS.004.231.  Place-based Writing:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)

Writing Intensive

AS.004.241.  Special Topics in Writing:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)

Writing Intensive

AS.004.251.  Community-Engaged Writing:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.262.  Writing Baltimore.  3 Credits.  

What is Baltimore—and to whom? As a student at Hopkins, how do you see yourself in relationship to the City of Baltimore? How have others seen, written about, and shared their version of Baltimore with others? In this course students will engage with how writers, artists, and scholars describe and produce knowledge about Baltimore’s past and present. Through reading and writing about Baltimore, students will study and practice different genres and modes of inquiry. In the first part of this class, students will learn through field studies, in-class discussions, and library research. Examining the specific contexts of our course texts and objects, students will experiment with cultural and historical analysis and practice research skills to produce their own writing about Baltimore. In the second part of the course, students will translate what they have learned into a collaborative digital map project, in which they introduce (or reintroduce) classmates outside of the course to a view or narrative of the Baltimore neighborhoods nearest to campus.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.264.  Writing for the Public Sphere.  3 Credits.  

Prestige publications like the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and the Economist are known for producing fine writing across a host of genres. The investigative journalism from these magazines itself makes news, and the range of topics covered is broad: politics and world affairs, history, celebrity profiles, economics, culture, and the arts. But who is the audience for this kind of writing? Is it the public at large, and if so, how might we describe that public? Does this kind of writing find itself under challenge, swamped by the proliferation of writing for niche audiences we see in the digital age? What would be lost in that case? This seminar explores these questions by reading some of the best writing offered by these publications, analyzing it, and debating its contemporary relevance. Our own writing projects will include a genre analysis of an article selected from one of these sources, an academic argument that enters a debate about what constitutes the public sphere today, and finally, a piece of public writing in which you select the topic, define your audience, and work with your peers to produce a class portfolio of high-quality work we can share with the Hopkins community.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.300.  Advanced Academic Writing.  3 Credits.  

Advanced Academic Writing is designed for experienced student writers who want to engage more deeply with academic research and to write in related academic genres. The course will focus on asking research questions, conducting original research, evaluating and synthesizing diverse sources, reading critically, and developing arguments that deliver an original argument. Students will work with a research librarian at the Eisenhower Library, with whom they will learn to navigate traditional databases as well as new media sources. The course culminates with a substantial, polished research paper that draws upon the cumulative skills of the semester. This course is open to all students.

Prerequisite(s): AS.060.113 OR AS.060.114 OR AS.004.100

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.302.  Vaccines, Science, and Values.  3 Credits.  

Vaccines are a public health intervention that produce a common good, yet are enacted on individual bodies. Health professionals and policymakers seeking to promote vaccination must weigh competing values, such as autonomy and justice, as they consider how to respond to individuals who refuse vaccines for themselves or their children. Further complicating this aim, people’s attitudes toward vaccination are shaped by divergent ideas about the meaning of health and social responsibility, as well as by their trust in scientific institutions and knowledge. In other words, scientific evidence alone cannot resolve vaccine controversies; navigating science and values together is vital to achieving just policy in a democratic society. In this course, students will analyze academic essays that address why vaccine hesitancy persists, and what we should do about it. Students will learn to recognize common elements of academic arguments, and apply them to construct their own arguments about the social and ethical dimensions of vaccination.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.307.  Training\Writing Consltn.  1 Credit.  

A one credit course orienting potential writing center tutors to the history, theory, and practice of tutoring writing. This course is for undergraduates who have applied to work as Writing Center tutors. Permission required.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.311.  On Genres:.  1 Credit.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.321.  Writing Methods:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Projects and Methods (FA6)

Writing Intensive

AS.004.331.  Place-Based Writing:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.341.  Special Topics in Writing.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

Writing Intensive

AS.004.351.  Community-Engaged Writing:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Democracy (FA4.1), Projects and Methods (FA6)

Writing Intensive

AS.004.611.  On Genres:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.621.  Writing Methods:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.631.  Place-Based Writing:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.641.  Special Topics in Writing:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive

AS.004.651.  Community-Engaged Writing:.  3 Credits.  

Topics will vary by term. Please see the specific term and section for current topics.

Distribution Area: Humanities

Writing Intensive