This year marks the 25-year anniversary of the Bachelor of Arts in Writing at Ithaca College. The department that houses the degree, however, has a history that dates back 53 years.
The writing program was founded in 1973 by a group of six part-time English faculty who decided to branch off and start their own program dedicated exclusively to writing in all its forms. This program eventually became the Department of Writing, with tenure lines and a major the department claims to be New York state’s only comprehensive BA in writing.
Retired associate writing professor and founding member Barbara Adams recounted the evolution of the writing program during her speech at the Department of Writing Silver Anniversary celebration on Oct.10.
“Those first 25 years were very genuine,” Adams said. “It was the ‘let’s do this, let’s do that.’ But it wasn’t all pretty … there [were] ups and downs and obstacles, but it was a lot of fun.’”
Adams worked with colleague Catherine Penner, retired associate professor in the Department of Writing, to write the proposal for the writing major and co-developed the writing center alongside retired associate professor Miriam Brody.
Antonio Di Renzo, professor in the Department of Writing, arrived in 1990 before it officially became the Department of Writing. He was involved in the creation of the major and deciding between whether the writing major would be a BA or a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
He said the then faculty decided on the BA for two main reasons. He said the faculty wanted the students to remember their duties as students, professionals and citizens as well as their role as artists when taking on the writing major. This meant not solely focusing on creative writing, but also providing practical training for students. The second reason is the vast range of courses offered by the faculty — including academic writing, creative writing, professional and technical writing — which create a major that prepares students with skills in many different kinds of writing.
“People need to know that not one role defines them, not one form of writing defines them,” Di Renzo said. “You need to be multi-talented. You need to be creative with your creativity. ”
Di Renzo said that other schools usually only have BFAs in writing, which focus on writing exclusively as a creative and artistic practice.
Jacob White, professor and chair of the Department of Writing, emphasized the versatility that writing majors are taught to have.
“We as a department are really eager to make sure that our students are fully equipped,” White said. “For not just one specific thing but to be able to navigate among things and to be able to navigate a landscape.”
The New Voices Festival and the Visiting Writers’ Workshop are two examples of how the department exposes students to the professional world before they graduate.
The New Voices Festival is co-directed by White and Chris Holmes, professor and chair of the Department of Literatures in English and brings debut authors to campus and offers students a chance to work with them.
Senior Gemma Colasanti is the student leader and social media manager of the New Voices Festival. She said the opportunity to host a panel of authors and workshop with them as a student was something that stood out to her over her college career.
“Combining my love for books and writing with event planning is just something that I didn’t even think was a possibility that I could really do and make a career out of,” Colasanti said.
Both local internships throughout businesses and organizations in Ithaca and remote internships across the country are available for students. Senior Katya Mirsky is currently a writing intern at Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services, where she is working on marketing their 50th anniversary celebration by writing stories about people in the community getting housing through the organization.
“The internship program showed me there’s so many avenues you can go down,” Mirsky said. I’ve [worked at] four different sites, each of them have been a different discipline within writing.”
Jaime Warburton, associate professor in the Department of Writing and the director of the internship program, said that strong and trained writers are needed in the workplace.
“One of the things that is really useful to talk about is the many, many, many ways that creative people who love writing can support their writing at the same time that they’re in the workplace,” Warburton said.
Almost every student at Ithaca College, regardless of major, will pass through the Department of Writing because of the required course, Academic Writing, that is part of the IC curriculum. Di Renzo said that he hopes students get more out of it than just passing the course.
“We want them to fall in love with writing,” said Di Renzo. “We want them to see that writing is a central skill of their life, but also a means of expressing [themselves]. Writing is the technology that helps you discover who you are, because it sets up a dialog between your inner and outer self.”
The Department of Writing is still recovering from the effects of COVID-19 layoffs and are looking ahead to changes in the department. White said the department is looking to appeal to writing students who want to be involved in social organizing or cultural criticism and hopes to integrate more subjects from across the schools at IC in their curriculum to build on the comprehensive aspect of the major.
“We have a very, very rich curriculum, a very talented faculty to be able to always pivot and meet the needs of students, but also the institution as it changes,” said Di Renzo.
