Centre for Writing Studies
03/01/2024 2024-03-23 13:20Centre for Writing Studies
Centre for Writing Studies
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Centre for Writing Studies
Centre for Writing Studies (CWS) is India’s first and only teaching and training centre devoted to developing and disseminating interdisciplinary writing pedagogy for the university. As part of the Office of English and Foreign Languages at JGU, the CWS is committed to enable a culture of writing and a community of writers within JGU and outside. The Centre aims to contribute towards making university learning and teaching, writing- intensive and centre writing pedagogy across disciplinary/ school divisions in the university. Towards this end, the CWS works to create, nurture and consolidate an eco-system of institutionalised writing instruction and support within the university through teaching, tutoring and other activities in the university. The CWS makes JGU’s commitment to excellence in higher education manifest by promoting transformative education that is built on a teaching-learning environment of care.
What is JGU CWS’s pedagogy of writing?
Writing pedagogy or the teaching of writing includes teaching of critical reading, critical writing, and critical thinking that forms the foundation of academic writing produced in a university. We are evolving forms of teaching that bring imaginative play, intellectual rigor, and social engagement to the process of reading and writing. The courses and workshops are designed and taught by faculty who are researchers in different disciplines of the social sciences and humanities and teach writing as a motivation to participate in the production of knowledge. In that, our approach is different from the approach of teaching academic writing as merely proficiency in language and grammar.
What we do
Currently, the CWS teaches core and advanced academic reading and writing courses in undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programmes across various schools at JGU. We also look forward to the inauguration of comprehensive tutoring services at JGU, beginning Spring 2023.
Apart from teaching and tutoring, the CWS faculty regularly conduct workshops for the JGU student community on various aspects of academic reading and writing. These workshops are meant to benefit students who might not have had an opportunity to take a core writing course or those who wish to strengthen specific aspects of writing and reading in their own work. This is also an excellent opportunity for the JGU student community to get acquainted with the unique workshop pedagogy that CWS subscribes to.
The CWS also has been instrumental in the orientation and training of full-time faculty in JGU in the methods of teaching academic writing at the undergraduate level. This training has included intensive engagement with strategies of teaching, conducting workshops, and giving critical, compassionate feedback. We look forward to further strengthening our capacities in faculty training in writing pedagogy, given its deeply felt need in the landscape of higher education in India.
Outside the realm of writing pedagogy, the CWS aims to broaden the discourse on academic writing, locating the writing process in the academic setting more firmly within its creative, political-economic, and affective contexts. This is evident in the wide range of talks/ curated series/ workshops/ symposia that the CWS has hosted in the past semesters. Since 2021, the CWS has been hosting “Research Majlis”, a platform meant to share emergent research in the social sciences and humanities disciplines in India. In hosting exciting scholarly academic research across diverse disciplines including anthropology, history, education, and political science, “Research Majlis” represents the CWS’ commitment to encouraging a robust, interdisciplinary academic profile.
Centre Coordinator
Shivani Kapoor
Associate Professor
Email: cws.oefl@jgu.edu.in