The ongoing global pandemic and elections have revived conversations on race and the marginalization of the Black Diaspora. In this course, we will engage with the various ways in which black people practice politics in Africa and elsewhere in the diaspora. We will pay special attention to the ongoing impact of national politics on the global pandemic. Scholars taking the course will each week respond to a reading by writing public facing work such as blogs, editorials and/or opinion pieces, and other forms of public writing. A primary goal in this course is to learn how to bring academic arguments to the general public.

To what extent do contemporary streaming services include queer people and people of color? How do contemporary children's books accommodate progressive ideas in the face of conservative backlash? How have networks like HBO, Netflix, or Amazon promoted or undercut LGBTQ civil rights or racial justice? American Studies often focuses on the appraisal, interpretation, and critique of historical and contemporary popular culture. Designed for juniors and seniors, this seminar will explore how American Studies multidisciplinary perspectives can be adapted to reviews, critiques, opinion pieces, and other forms of journalistic, literary, and public writing. Students will consider a variety of historical and contemporary American cultural products, including television, film, books, literature, websites, exhibitions, performances, and consumer products, in order to enter the public conversation about the cultural meanings, political implications, and social content of such culture.

One of the thorniest issues facing artists, art historians, curators, critics, theorists, city planners, and others who have to negotiate art in public places is the question of competing perceptions and meanings. As soon as a work of art is proposed for or installed in a site in which numerous publics intersect, or a work is destroyed, the question arises of “whose public” is being addressed. This seminar will bring to the table historical and contemporary case studies in public art, in part selected by students, as the subjects of several genres of public writing, among them reviews and Op. Ed. pieces. Students in all areas of art history will have already confronted, and will confront in the future, the question of who has the right to make the art, install the art, or destroy the art, in any geography at any time.

Communicate your art-historical knowledge to the broadest possible public. While focusing on public writing, we will study the history and politics of fashion. Topics will include gender and class performance, cultural appropriation, medicine and the body; technology; and law and society. Weekly meetings will include collaborative editing workshops, guest speakers, and a field trip. Students will build a writing portfolio including a book review, film review, Smarthistory essay, museum labels, and a one-minute radio text, among other projects. The Calderwood seminar model demands firm weekly deadlines, allowing classmates time to reflect and comment on each other’s work. We build a scholarly community that shows the larger world how the history of art intersects with fashion.

Art and anthropology museums tell stories about the past and its relevance to the present, but what stories they tell, who gets to tell them, and which objects should — or should not — be considered are not always self-evident. In this writing-intensive seminar, you will learn how texts — from wall labels to exhibition reviews — engage audiences within and beyond the museum’s walls. The course consists of writing assignments related to artworks made in Latin America, many on exhibit at the Davis Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Through these case studies, we will learn how to convert visual images and academic arguments into appealing, jargon-free prose. In keeping with the structure of the Calderwood seminar, weekly deadlines in this class are firm so as to allow classmates time to reflect on such arguments and comment on each other’s ideas. Take on the role of museum curator and learn how texts help us navigate controversies over the acquisition, provenance, and display of artworks from distant cultures and places.

Researchers increasingly attempt to harness biochemical approaches as a way to address pressing societal problems. For example, recent work has focused on topics including the effective production of biofuels, remediation of environmental pollutants and developing new treatments for antibiotic resistant pathogens. In this course, juniors and seniors will explore contemporary research aimed at solving these problems through readings in the primary literature, invited lectures, interviewing researchers and developing independent research proposals. Students will analyze and interpret research findings through weekly writing assignments targeted towards broad audiences, such as research summaries for the scientific press, textbook sections, executive summaries and proposals accessible to non-specialists. Class sessions will be structured as workshops to analyze core chemical and biological concepts and provide structured critiques of writing assignments.

Scientists have made great progress revealing intricate details of many biological processes. They understand the importance of their work like the back of their hands. The scientific literacy of the general public, however, has not kept pace. This seminar aims to equip students with the writing skills necessary to communicate important ideas from a breadth of biological disciplines in an exciting, clear and relevant manner to a range of audiences. The body of work created in this class will include short pieces on articles from the primary literature, reviews of presentations and magazine articles by experts, as well as op-eds on scientific issues of interest and a profile of a scientist of choice. Peer editing and writing workshops play a large part, aiding students as they write multiple drafts of each assignment.

When we talk about food, we think about personal passions, individual diets and eating behaviors, but we might also think about cultural traditions, consumption disparities and food insecurities, about public health and sustainability, animal rights, deforestation, and genome edited crops. Clearly, the topic challenges us to address difficult questions of intersectionality (of the personal and the political, the local and the global, the human and the non-human). In this seminar we will learn to translate academic discourses into public writing formats that might include op-eds, social media posts, (cook) book reviews, Wikipedia entries, restaurant reviews, and portraits of food activists.

Adolescents are developing socially, cognitively, and civically in their online and offline worlds, transforming how formal and informal learning takes place. Students in this course will digest research findings and reflect on their own experiences about how social technologies (e.g., Instagram, gaming, mobile phones) can influence wellbeing during the tween and teen years. Harnessing personal narratives that appeal to different stakeholders, we will develop timely and accessible strategies to inform adolescents, educators, families, youth workers, and policymakers about the implications of these findings. This interdisciplinary course spanning education, psychology, media studies, and health communication fields involves transforming research into digestible, brief, non-academic pieces intended for the general public and provides opportunities for students to explore their own interests. Sample assignments include a policy brief, op-ed, e-newsletter, 2 minute podcast, social media messaging campaign, and movie reviews. Each week, fellow classmates critique each other’s work in a friendly, constructive environment while guest writing coaches and industry professionals provide useful tips to hone each piece to its creative potential.

While literary criticism might seem like an esoteric or unworldly pursuit, it has relevance and consequence beyond the narrow world of academic journals. It shapes reading lists at the high school, college, and graduate level and contributes to cultural conversations about expanding the canon. It also has the potential to create connections between academic scholarship and the larger world it inhabits. In this Calderwood seminar, we will read selected works of contemporary literary criticism (and a few short stories) and consider the place of published criticism in the wider culture. Over the course of the semester, students will produce several short pieces exploring criticism’s significance and present their work to the class as part of our weekly writing workshops. Assignments -- including op-eds, reviews of public talks, memoranda, podcasts, and blog posts --  will target a non-specialist reading audience. This course will give students the opportunity to build on their own experiences as readers of literature and writers of literary criticism as they engage with the questions and controversies that criticism raises.

Tax carbon? Label genetically modified crops? Ban endocrine disruptors? In this course, an interdisciplinary capstone experience for the ES major, we will engage with such questions and related environmental sustainability issues as public writers. Students will choose one environmental issue, which will be the focus of their environmental “beat” during the semester. They will draw on an interdisciplinary toolset from environmental studies to analyze and communicate the scientific, economic, political, and ethical dimensions of pressing policy issues. Students will conduct independent research to produce weekly articles, such as op-eds, blog posts, press releases, book reviews, policy memos, and interviews with environmental professionals. Class sessions will be organized as writing workshops focused on the interdisciplinary analysis and content of student work.

From Hollywood’s casting couches, to the Copenhagen City Hall and the highest echelons of the French media establishment, to the feminists in Mexico and Argentina and the demands of those in Japan, Iran, and Egypt, the #MeToo movement has raised a global wave of protests against sexual abuse. The expression of women’s voices has been undeniably transformed since the hashtag's emergence, but the aims and results of the movement, and the consequences faced by those accused, have varied from place to place. Students will consider #MeToo from a comparative and multilingual perspective, analyzing texts and media from around the globe, in a collective effort to grasp how culture, language, and nation condition the international struggle for women’s rights.

In this course, students will leverage their prior mathematical knowledge to communicate complex mathematical ideas to audiences ranging from the general public to other mathematicians. Each week, students will research a new topic and produce a piece of writing explaining this topic in a specific context. Assignments may include research abstracts, book reviews, interviews with mathematicians, newspaper articles, and technical documentation. Class time will be devoted to discussing the mathematical content behind each assignment as well as workshopping students' writing. This course will give students the opportunity to ground (and expand on) the mathematics they have learned and make connections across the discipline. Moreover, this course's unique format will help students develop their research and independent learning skills.

This course challenges students to think critically about music, and writing about music, in the public sphere. Students explore the relationship between their specialized academic knowledge and their experiences as day-to-day consumers of music. The core material of the course consists of a series of writing and editing exercises for an imagined audience of non-specialists—including reviews of recordings and lectures, program notes for concerts, an interview with a prominent musician—and discussions of controversial issues in academic music. This course addresses a variety of issues, such as how to write about the experience of live performance or how to assess music as a kind of social activism. By translating the technical vocabulary of academic music into a language accessible to the public, students find that they listen and think musically in new and unanticipated ways.

Philosophical writing is often thought to be impersonal and abstract, focused on rigorous argument and high theory to the exclusion of personal narrative, voice, humor, and literary style. But not all philosophy takes that form. This seminar explores the alternative mode of more personal philosophical writing, as it appears in contemporary personal essays on philosophical themes and pieces of public philosophy with a personal slant philosophy (in, e.g., The New York Times, The Point, Aeon, and The New Yorker.) The course is structured as a writing workshop, and centrally aims to develop students’ confidence and skill in writing their own pieces of autobiographical philosophy. Students will create a portfolio of writing and workshop it closely with their peers and professor throughout the semester.

Legal researchers often examine the legal system through books that tell the story of important cases. In this course students will work in teams to write papers on lawsuits, legal controversies and law-related subjects related to such a book. To support their research, students will be introduced to fundamental aspects of the American legal system, legal research, and legal writing. For the Spring 2026 edition of the course, we will be researching and writing the stories of lawsuits brought against the Trump administration in such areas as immigration, LGBTQ rights, health care, religion and trade policy.

Take a step back from your psychology major and learn how to transfer your expertise to the public. This Calderwood Seminar challenges upper-class students in an intimate workshop setting to grow as psychologists and writers. Throughout the semester, students will build a writing portfolio that might include op-eds, book reviews, journal article reviews, coverage of public talks, Wikipedia entries, articles for middle school STEM magazines, and interviews with research psychologists. Classes will include collaborative editing workshops, guest lectures from experts, and activities to build a strong writing foundation. In keeping with the structure of the Calderwood seminar, students choose areas of psychology to study in depth, and weekly deadlines are firm so as to allow classmates time to reflect and comment on each other's work. You have learned how to write for college, now learn how to write for life.

In the United States, at least 1 in 6 persons will be arrested by the time they reach adulthood. Nearly two-thirds of adults have ever had a family member incarcerated. Most people incarcerated in jails have not been convicted of the crime for which they are being held. Public writing is a primary vehicle by which these and other aspects of crime and punishment in the United States (U.S.) have come to the public eye and, in some cases, informed resistance and change. This Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing (CSPW) offers students with the opportunity to learn about and practice various forms of public writing—including research briefs, blog posts, public statements, and op-eds—with crime and justice in the U.S. as our central point of engagement. Success in this class requires a strong commitment to our class community, course policies and deadlines, and personal dedication to the craft of sociological thinking and writing through weekly writing and constructive review. In preparation for the start to the semester, students who enroll in this class will be required to complete a low-stakes review exercise on the sociology of crime and justice and write an introduction letter. Instructions will be distributed in the weeks leading up to the first day of class.

Margaret Atwood professes that, “A word after a word after a word is power.” Propelled by the #MeToo movement, LeanIn, and the women’s march, women are baring their truths, beliefs, and experiences in an explosion of public words. In this seminar students will become immersed in the dynamic contemporary landscape of women’s writing, spanning memoir, poetry, journalism, and political commentary. Within an intimate workshop setting, students will develop their own voices through assignments that will include book reviews, op-eds, social media analyses, and interviews. By taking turns as writers and editors, students will become skilled in evaluating and fostering their own writing as well as the writing of others. This course takes as its premise the intensive Calderwood format of having students regularly produce, critique, and revise their and their peers' writing by alternating being writers and editors throughout the semester.