My Simmons

Writing Boston

Spring 2025 Writing Boston Courses

WRI-101-01 Writing Boston: Boston Childhoods

Instructor: James Smith
T/Th | 5:00-6:20pm

This course considers the ways that literature set in Boston imagines and reflects the lives and concerns of young people in the city. Along with child and adolescent characters, students will explore the personalities and histories of Boston’s neighborhoods, cultural institutions, and contemporary movements as they’re represented in literature.

WRI-101-02 Writing Boston: Boston’s Neighborhoods

Instructor: Brendan Halpin
T/Th | 5:00-6:20pm

This writing course invites students to look beyond the tourist attractions and media portrayals of Boston and to consider what life is like for the majority of Boston residents. Students will learn about Boston’s neighborhoods and use this knowledge as inspiration for their own writing.

WRI-101-03 Writing Boston: Boston and Climate Change

Instructor: Zinnia Mukherjee
T/Th | 2:00-3:20pm

This course aims to provide students an engaging learning platform to study and analyze the city of Boston’s contributes to the growing problem of climate change, the threats it can potentially face because of the growing nature of the problem, and how the city can be used to design and implement solutions to mitigate the adverse effects thereby making it a more resilient city.

WRI-101-04/05 Writing Boston: Boston Childhoods

Instructor: Betty Thompson
WRI-101-04: T/Th | 2:00-3:20pm
WRI-101-05: T/Th | 3:30-4:50pm

This course considers the ways that literature set in Boston imagines and reflects the lives and concerns of young people in the city. Along with child and adolescent characters, students will explore the personalities and histories of Boston’s neighborhoods, cultural institutions, and contemporary movements as they’re represented in literature.

WRI-101-06 Writing Boston: Writing Boston: Sci-Fi and Ethics

Instructor: Shreya Bhattacharyya
M/W/F | 12:00-12:50pm

In this writing course through recent science fiction, we will explore societal outcomes and ethical dilemmas that may arise from technological advances being made in Boston right now.

WRI-101-07 Writing Boston: Boston Childhoods

Instructor: James Smith
M/W | 5:00-6:20pm

This course considers the ways that literature set in Boston imagines and reflects the lives and concerns of young people in the city. Along with child and adolescent characters, students will explore the personalities and histories of Boston’s neighborhoods, cultural institutions, and contemporary movements as they’re represented in literature.

WRI-101-08/09 Writing Boston: City as Text

Instructor: Rachel Molko
WRI-101-08 T/Th | 2:00-3:20pm
WRI-101-09 T/Th | 3:30-4:50pm

In this section of Writing Boston, we will consider the City as a text itself and explore the cultural politics and environment that make up the human geography of Boston.  We’ll consider the impact of place on personal identity and explore its effect on the way we see ourselves and the world.

WRI-101-H01 Writing Boston: Athens of America (Honors)

Instructor: Gregory Williams
T/Th | 3:30-4:50pm

This writing course explores Boston as a model for America. The course’s title is a reference to Boston’s popular nickname in the 1850s. As America’s Athens, Boston’s politics were central to the formation of the United States itself. Like Athens, Boston also became a cultural hub, and, like Athens, it developed an elite-run political system characterized by inequality.

WRI-101-H02 Writing Boston: Food is Love (Honors)

Instructor: Karen Agostini
T/Th | 2:00-3:20pm

Food is inextricably linked to culture and identity, and reflects many aspects of who we are and where we live. Through writing and inquiry, students will explore the role of food in the development of personal and community identity, highlighting aspects of Boston’s local food system and journeys of Boston immigrant populations spanning the city’s history.