Core Writing Courses

As part of the core curriculum, all NYU Shanghai students take a series of two courses offered by the Writing Program.

In the spring of your first year, you’ll enroll in a Writing as Inquiry workshop. Writing as Inquiry serves as a rigorous introduction to writing and critical inquiry at the university level. By the end of the course, you should be able to dissect difficult texts in a range of topics, from global citizenship to bioethics to family dynamics. You will begin to recognize the rhetorical strategies and genre conventions employed in these texts and in readings for your other courses. You will also build clear, convincing arguments that matter both within and beyond academic contexts.

In the fall of your second year, you’ll choose from a variety of Perspectives on the Humanities topics offered by our Writing faculty. These content-based writing seminars introduce you to the questions asked and methods used by a variety of disciplines in the humanities, including philosophy, history, and literature, among others. You might find yourself analyzing comic books, considering questions of gender in Gilgamesh, comparing translations of Hamlet, or reconsidering what is natural, all while continuing to develop your abilities as academic writers.

The course also includes evening event series with lectures, film screenings, and presentations of collaborative student work.

In addition to our core classes, we offer creative writing courses, including a creative writing minor.