Writing Studies at Millersville

Writing Studies

Writing Studies is a future-focused major that develops 21st century skills in critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. We guide writers through web, science, public, professional, and creative writing, offering routes for you to explore. This major is not only a highly-viable career choice at a time when effective communicators are needed most, it is a scholarly pursuit that will develop the way you experience and interact with the world. Make the most of your journey at Millersville University and become a Writing Studies major. What will your writing journey look like?

Interested in Writing Studies? Request More Information.

Writing Studies courses offer wide-ranging views of how writing functions in the world. Students in this concentration will have opportunities to study, for example,

  • composing practices for diverse genres of professional communication;
  • creative writing from fantasy to creative nonfiction;
  • the language of civic change and how to participate in it;
  • the cultural complexities of English-as-a-Second-Language instruction;
  • the rhetorics of multimodal discourses, for instance, visual and digital texts;
  • the arguments that define our racial and gender identities; and,
  • the historical and methodological influences of rhetoric.

Through extensive writing practice informed by historical, rhetorical, linguistic, and theoretical foundations, graduates with this specialty will be prepared to respond effectively to writing situations across disciplines and in various professions.

Mission and Vision

In all of its efforts, the Writing Studies program supports the mission of Millersville University: exploring at every level of instruction the specific ways in which writing reveals diversity among people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints; encouraging students' imagination and inquiry as they experience many situations for writing and reading; establishing in writing classes "unfettered discourse," speaking and writing in manifold forms tailored for diverse audiences according to writers' purposes; inviting students to collaborate with their peers to discover effective modes of discourse and, in so doing, appreciating the distinctions and common ground among themselves as thinkers; and emphasizing for writing students the power of discourse to affect civic change. (Please see a fuller articulation of this alignment on the English Department homepage.)

In these ways, the Writing Studies program also is committed to Millersville's vision--in particular, to facilitate students' engagement as productive citizens within their communities through situated, ethical, effective use of language.

Faculty

The Department of English has seven tenured/tenure-track faculty who are writing studies specialists.