JGU Center for Writing Studies (JGU CWS) is India’s first and only teaching, training and research center devoted to developing and disseminating interdisciplinary writing pedagogy for the university. This flagship center is committed to enable a culture of writing and a community of writers within JGU and outside. The research and teaching at CWS is developing an inter-disciplinary, practical writing pedagogy that has the potential to transform teaching and learning in social sciences and humanities classrooms. Sensitive to the global writing pedagogies and to the need to make the processes of academic writing accessible, CWS will develop writing pedagogies that address the multi-lingual composition of students and faculty in the university. This capacity building endeavor, which will hire and train new and existing JGU faculty, is to create the imaginative, conceptual and physical space of writing in a 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.
Writing pedagogy or the teaching of writing has in its purview the 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, this is different from the approach of teaching academic writing as proficiency in language and grammar. Skill in sentence construction, nuance in word choice, elegance in form, conventions of genre are learned in the process of careful reading and repeated feedback on revisions in the crafting of written work.
Offer courses in academic writing, critical thinking and research writing to all schools of JGU. Offer workshops to faculty in reading and writing pedagogy. Conduct research to develop writing pedagogy for the Indian classroom.
