Each year, the Princeton Writing Program offers over 125 Writing Seminars of 12 students each on topics ranging from big data and collective memory to climate change and sexual politics. Student voices are at the center of each Writing Seminar community, where they practice not only how to write, but how to become generous and rigorous readers of each other’s work. In this way writing is understood as critical thinking that can be radically deepened and clarified through an iterative process of feedback and revision.

First-year Writing Seminars are multidisciplinary and designed by Writing Program faculty to emphasize transferable skills in critical inquiry, argument, and research methods. Every first-year student completes a Writing Seminar to fulfill the University writing requirement.

Seminars are typically a mix of AB and BSE students, and our students come to the seminar table with varying levels of preparation as writers; no matter their talents and prior experience, all students benefit from learning in community as they work to grow as readers, researchers, and writers.

Students learn how to frame compelling questions, use databases to locate and evaluate sources, position an argument within a genuine academic debate, substantiate and organize claims, purposefully integrate different types of evidence, and revise for greater cogency and clarity. This work provides students a foundation for their ongoing development as sophomores, juniors, and seniors, guided by faculty across the university.

While each Writing Seminar explores its own topic, PWP faculty practice a common pedagogy and create shared experiences around the research and writing process, summarized below:

1. Writing Seminars meet for two 80-minute periods every week. In class, students discuss source materials and readings (often in terms of the Writing Lexicon), receive instruction on key writing skills, and examine their own writing in draft workshops and small groups.
2. Faculty offer feedback on pre-drafts, as well as extensive marginal and cover comments on three drafts and final revised assignments. They also meet with student writers outside of class in required individual, paired, and small group conferences to discuss their drafts in progress.
3. The Writing Seminar is organized around four writing assignments designed to teach analytical argument, totaling about 30 finished pages. In the first half of the seminar, two assignments give students the opportunity to hone their critical curiosity and cultivate writerly habits in a community of peers. Between those two assignments students practice articulating purposeful, manageable methods for pursuing original lines of inquiry; organize and enter into scholarly conversations; gain meta-disciplinary awareness; learn how to analyze evidence to critique and refine scholarship; come to better understand ethical source use; and construct an arguable thesis in response to a well-substantiated and multi-layered motive. In the second half of the seminar, students revisit and continue developing those same skills in the more sophisticated and self-driven context of a mentored independent research project. 
4. Because the primary focus of the Writing Seminar is on the students’ own writing, course readings are limited to approximately 300 pages per term and include a variety of sources: those serving as a primary focus of analysis, as well as contextual, theoretical, and critical texts. In addition to these assigned readings and peer drafts, students read sources that they locate independently for the research essay. Every seminar is joined by a University librarian who collaborates with the instructor in guiding students in their library research.

The Writing Seminars are designed to have broad appeal to first-year students while providing opportunities for intensive engagement and exploration. Students enroll in Writing Seminars by ranking their top eight choices; an optimization software program places students by balancing preferences and enrollment needs for the entire first-year class. Careful course design is essential to ensure that students across the different seminars share a common experience of intensive writing. Accommodating the complexity of students’ schedules requires that many Writing Seminars be scheduled in the early morning or in the evening.

Learn more about the Writing Seminars