Professional Writing - Primary Major
In addition to satisfying all of the Dietrich College degree requirements for B.A. candidates, which include , 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.)