History
Originally rooted in the study of rhetoric and oratory, Dartmouth's writing courses—like writing courses nationwide—were re-designed in the early twentieth century as writing-about-literature courses. This model would stand until the 1960s, when ideas regarding the teaching of writing began to change. Dartmouth found itself at the center of national and international conversations. In the early 60s, Albert Kitzhaber completed his "Report of the Dartmouth Study of Student Writing," a work that later served as the foundational case study for Themes, Theories, and Therapy, a widely read assessment of first-year writing in American colleges (1963). Kitzhaber's recommendations included providing students opportunities for writing instruction in departments other than English, throughout their educations. Responding to the idea that writing should be taught across the disciplines, Dartmouth revised its first-year requirement to include not only English 5, offered by the English department, but also a first-year seminar, offered by departments and programs across the disciplines.
In 1966, the college hosted the "Anglo-American Conference on the Teaching and Learning of English," which quickly became known as the Dartmouth Seminar. There, scholar-teachers from the U.S. and Great Britain met to attempt to define the field of English, and to determine those methods by which it might best be taught. Many experts in the field consider the Dartmouth Seminar to have cemented the establishment of a scholarly field dedicated to understanding, researching, and teaching writing in higher education.
The Writing Program today develops, delivers, and oversees Dartmouth's first-year writing and seminar requirements. Our writing courses (WRIT 2-3 and WRIT 5) provide a foundation for the liberal arts by introducing students to critical writing. Critical writing is a practice of thinking by means of which ideas are discovered, examined, compared, evaluated, refined, and promoted. The Writing Program also oversees the first-year seminar courses, which are taught in departments and programs throughout the College. Our first-year courses prepare students to engage fully with their intellectual work in every discipline.