UWP-About

Undergraduate Writing Programme

 

The Undergraduate Writing Programme (UWP) at Ashoka University is one of the first writing and critical thinking programmes of its kind in the country. Established in 2020, our courses are designed to cultivate rigorous writing practices in students. It is our understanding that an education in the liberal arts is built upon the foundation of analytical thinking, communicated through clear and persuasive writing across disciplines. Towards that end, our activities for the past five years have been directed to exploring a robust pedagogy of writing.

Flagship Course - Introduction to Critical Thinking

 

One of the primary laboratories for this investigation is our flagship course ‘Introduction to Critical Thinking’ (ICT), a foundation course for all first-year undergraduate students at Ashoka University. The ICT course, taught through small, seminar-style classes, has enabled a sort of discursive freedom, a dynamic space where academic writing and argumentation may be explored within a range of disciplines without being tied down to those disciplines.

Our classes result in offering a colourful array of topics for critical engagement, drawing from topics in Philosophy, English, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, Political Science, and now even the Sciences (Physics in particular).

Additionally, we have also started offering companion courses on thesis writing to fourth year undergraduate students and PhD scholars.

Core Objectives

 

The holistic objective in our teaching across these domains is simply to bring a sharper focus to the writing process, and reveal the deeper constituents of good thought and argumentation. 

We have also developed other, smaller avenues where this objective is periodically met. This includes our Critical Writing Pedagogies Symposium, where we invite writing instructors from across India for presentations and discussions about teaching the craft of writing. We also run the UWP Pedagogy Colloquium, a discussion series where faculty across departments at Ashoka illustrate their approach to teaching and their relationship with writing in particular.

Contact Us

 

We are open to prospects of collaboration with groups or individuals looking to explore these ideas. Feel free to write to us at uwp@ashoka.edu.in. 

We typically open up job applications once a year in the summer months of June- July. However, we are currently closed for applications.