Communication Studies
Planning to change the world? Study communications
Master writing, speaking, and advanced digital communication skills
Finding a Calling in the Writing Associates Program
After graduating from Oberlin in 2022, Ryo Adachi began a full-time position in Oberlin’s Writing Associates Program, which works with students to hone their writing and speaking skills.
Journalism Concentration
This program equips students to navigate a fast-changing media and news landscape. You’ll explore the different sectors of nonfiction storytelling, from newspaper and magazine reporting to radio production, documentary filmmaking, and digital narrative.
Undergraduate Research
Third-year student Dan-Ha Le investigated human and artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to providing writing assistance to college students. The results of the project will inform ethical AI design choices.
Featured Courses
Public Communication
Students will gain skills needed to construct and deliver effective speeches that cultivate engaged participation in public life. In this practice-oriented course, students will develop effective writing and speaking techniques through classroom discussions, activities, and assignments. Students will follow an audience-centered approach to speaking, persuasion, and rhetoric to develop speeches and presentations based upon their own socio-political interests.
- Taught by
- Cortney Smith
Indigenous Rhetorics: Native American Narratives of Survivance
This course explores the narrative methods used to address historical and contemporary Native American issues. Engaging with a variety of texts (including novels and films), students will undertake discourse analysis, theoretical interventions, close textual reading, and visual analysis of Indigenous narratives to examine the possibilities of a rhetoric of survivance.
- Taught by
- Cortney Smith
Writing in the Sciences
A course designed for students interested in developing their composing/revising skills for writing in natural science and mathematics disciplines or interpreting science topics for readers of general science issues.
- Taught by
- Cortney Smith
Community News Reporting
In this course, students undertake advanced projects of pitching, researching, writing and producing news stories about the Oberlin town community. Ethical treatment of sources, balanced and contextualized reporting, verification of facts and multiple modes of producing will be stressed.
- Taught by
- Jan Cooper
Student and Alumni Profiles
Although the Communications Studies major was formally created only recently, Obies have a long history of working—and making waves—in communication-related fields.
A Voice for the Voiceless
Sydney Allen ’19 built upon her Oberlin writing and communication experience with a 2-year fellowship in Indonesia. Now she is an international advocacy journalist, shining a spotlight on underrepresented regions of the world.
From Oberlin to The Atlantic
English major and former editor in chief of the Grape, Luke Fortney ’18 earned a prestigious fellowship at the Atlantic after completing multiple rounds of interviews.
Exploring Human Rights on 3 Continents
As a Frederick Douglass Global Fellow, writing associate Darius Butler ’24 traveled between Washington, D.C.; Cape Town, South Africa; and Dublin, Ireland, to learn from the legacies of social justice giants who made global footprints.
What does Writing and Communication at Oberlin look like?
Peer writing associates guide students early in the writing process by helping to clarify prompts and assignments, brainstorm ideas and topics, and develop research strategies.
“Our writing center helps students negotiate the various contexts they find themselves in, and to have agency to make informed choices about what they’re doing,” says professor Laurie McMillin, director of the Writing Center.
As part of professor Jan Cooper’s winter term project “Podcasting Oberlin News,” students were introduced to the history of the emerging podcasting industry and then charged with creating their own podcast episode.
The Oberlin Review hosted a symposium featuring alumni panelists now working for The Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, and Think Progress.
