Many of us first encounter writing as a set of rules. Don’t use the word “I.” Don’t end a sentence with a preposition. Don’t stray from the format of the five-paragraph essay. But writing in college is less about rules and more about a complex array of choices made within social contexts. Who is my audience? What is my purpose? Which perspectives are missing from the discussion? And what are the consequences of those omissions?
In short, at Pitzer you’ll use your writing to enter consequential conversations, asking questions with no easy answers and exploring many viewpoints in order to arrive at your own. Writing at Pitzer is transformative. It’s a form of world-making that enables you to envision and help create a more informed, socially just world.
We live in a time of uncertainty and a time of potentially creative transformation. Faculty will challenge you to use your writing to participate in high stakes debates and to help shape the communities you’d like to join.
This learning will start in your First-Year Seminar, but you’ll have many mentors along the way. We’ve curated short videos showcasing the voices of roughly two dozen Pitzer faculty across the curriculum, from psychology to environmental analysis, archeology to biology. They share their tips and tricks for writing, including the ways their fields of study influence how they approach writing and what they would tell their college-aged selves if they could go back in time.
We hope you’ll find these virtual conversations informative and exciting for the wide-ranging perspectives they offer on writing as the life-long pursuit of knowledge and its ethical implications.
Videos – Writing Tips and Tricks from Your Pitzer Professors
YouTube Playlist
Individual Videos
- Introduction to Writing Tips and Tricks Videos
- Bill Anthes, Professor of Art
- Brent Armendinger, Professor of English & World Literature
- Mita Banerjee, Professor of Psychology and Norma Rodriguez, Flora Sanborn Pitzer Professor of Psychology
- Michele Berenfeld, Associate Professor of Classics
- Menna Bizuneh, Associate Professor of Economics
- Sarah Budischak, Assistant Professor of Biology
- Carmen Fought, Professor of Linguistics
- Sarah Gilman, Associate Professor of Biology
- Tessa Hicks-Peterson, Associate Professor of Urban Studies
- Carina Johnson, Professor of History
- Jemma Lorenat, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
- Jessica McCoy, Professor of Art
- Adrian Pantoja, Professor of Political Studies/Chicano Studies
- Susan Phillips, Professor of Environmental Analysis
- Andrea Scott, Associate Professor of Academic Writing
- Dan A. Segal, Jean M. Pitzer Professor of Anthropology & Professor of History
- Claudia Strauss, Professor of Anthropology
- Andre Wakefield, Professor of History
- Rachel VanSickle-Ward, Professor of Political Studies
- Linus Yamane, Professor of Economics
- Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology & Secular Studies
