My Simmons

Writing Boston

Fall 2024 Writing Boston Courses

WRI-101-01 Writing Boston: Food is Love

Instructor: Karen Agostini
T/Th | 3:30-4:50pm

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.

WRI-101-02 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-101-03 Writing Boston: Apartheid Schooling

Instructor: Masato Aoki
T/Th | 2:00-3:20pm

This writing course will focus on Boston’s history of struggle against educational inequality and residential segregation. And it will contextualize Boston’s educational and residential conditions within national patterns of educational inequality, economic inequality, racial inequality, and the testing and accountability movement.

WRI-101-04 Writing Boston: Food is Love

Instructor: Urshila Sriram
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.

WRI-101-05 Writing Boston: Boston’s Neighborhoods

Instructor: Brendan Halpin
T/Th | 2:00-3:20pm

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-101-06 Writing Boston: City as Text

Instructor: Christy Lusiak
T/Th | 2:00-3:20pm

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-101-07 Writing Boston: Writing Boston: Sci-Fi and Ethics (3+2 Engineering and 3+1 LIS students only)

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-101-08 Writing Boston: Athens of America

Instructor: Gregory Williams
M/W | 2:00-3:20pm

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-101-09 Writing Boston: Boston Childhoods

Instructor: Betty Thompson
T/Th | 6:30-7:50pm

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.