The Department of Rhetoric & Writing brings together faculty, staff, and students to study and teach the power of language in today’s world. With roots in antiquity and a continual flowering in the present, the field explores how communication shapes everyday life and how writing adapts as new technologies and contexts emerge. Our work ranges from close attention to a single sentence to investigations of the digital, cultural, and global systems that sustain communication.

Writing itself is not fixed but an evolving practice, and our department thrives on crossing boundaries and developing new approaches to understanding how language works. Through our wide range of courses, a nationally recognized First-Year Writing program, and degree programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, students gain opportunities to explore writing in all its forms. Faculty are nationally and internationally recognized for their scholarship and teaching, and we foster a vibrant learning community through classrooms but also in the University Writing Center, and the Digital Writing & Research Lab. In the Department of Rhetoric & Writing at the University of Texas at Austin, students learn to write for the future, building skills that prepare them to succeed in the classroom, the workplace, and the world beyond.