Professional Writing - Primary Major
In addition to satisfying all of the Dietrich College degree requirements for B.A. candidates, which include the General Education curriculum, Professional Writing (PW) majors must complete coursework in the following areas below.
Learn how to declare your primary major in Professional Writing.
Curriculum: 13 courses, 111 units minimum
All courses are 9.0 units each, unless otherwise noted.
Introductory Genre Writing Course (1 course, 9 units):
76-212 Intro to TV Writing
76-260 Intro to Writing Fiction
76-261 Intro to Writing Creative Nonfiction
76-265 Intro to Writing Poetry
76-269 Intro to Screenwriting
PW Core Requirements (4 courses, 30 units):
76-271 Introduction to Professional & Technical Writing
76-300 Professional Seminar (3 units)
76-373 Argument
76-390 Style
Rhetoric Requirement (1 course, 9 units):
Course options include:
76-318 Communicating in the Global Marketplace
76-325 Intertexuality
76-327 Equity & Communication: Strategies for Institutional Change
76-372 News Writing
76-384 Race, Nation, and the Enemy
76-389 Rhetorical Grammar
76-393 Narrative & Argument
76-395 Science Writing
76-415 Mediated Power and Propaganda
76-416 Rhetorics of Race & Empire
76-473 Rhetoric and the Construction of Race
76-475 Law, Performance, and Identity
76-476 Rhetoric of Science
76-479 Model Minorities?: Race, Rhetoric, and Identity in Asian America
76-490 Digital Rhetorics
76-492 Rhetoric of Public Policy
76-494 Healthcare Commnications
Advanced Writing/Rhetoric Requirements (4 courses, 36-48 units):
Course options include:
All of the Rhetoric courses listed above
and
76-306 Editing and Publishing
76-307 Advanced Editing and Publishing
76-314 Data Stories
76-354 Watchdog Journalism
76-366 Grant and Proposal Writing
76-368 Role Playing Game Writing Workshop
76-375 Emerging Technologies in Writing
76-380 Methods in Humanities Analytics
76-388 Coding for Humanists
76-391 Document & Information Design
76-425 Science in the Public Sphere
76-455 The Pittsburgh Review of Books
76-464 Creative Nonfiction Workshop
76-474 Software Documentation
76-481 Introduction to Multimedia Design (12 units)
76-483 Research in Technical and Professional Communication
76-487 Information Architecture & Content Strategy
English Electives (3 courses, 27 units):
Complete three additional courses from the English Department’s offerings.
- Only one of the three English Electives may be at the 200 level. The remaining English Electives must be at the 300 or 400 level.
- Two of the three English Electives must be courses that focus on the relationships between texts and their cultural and historical contexts. (We call these Text/Context courses.)