Project Description

Amanda Doxtater and Olivia Noble Gunn (Scandinavian Studies) joined the Writing@UW Fellowship to collaboratively redesign SCAND 335: Scandinavian Children’s Literature, reimagining it as Literature, Film, and the Nordic Child. Drawing on their shared expertise in film, gender studies, and Scandinavian cultural history, they broadened the course to explore how childhood and youth are imagined, constructed, and politicized across literary and visual media. Through their collaboration in the fellowship, they designed a course that centers writing as a method of inquiry in which students engage in sustained, iterative writing to develop nuanced interpretations and make meaningful connections across texts, contexts, and cultural histories.

Their project responds to longstanding departmental challenges: a reliance on ad hoc W credit, limited time for pedagogical development, and large enrollments with little instructional support. Rather than layering writing tasks onto existing content, Amanda and Olivia developed an integrated approach that uses writing to support deep engagement with core course concepts including historical contextualization, cultural norms, translation, and the construction of childhood. Assignments encourage students to interpret across media, analyze both word and image, and explore genre through writing tasks like adaptations, memoirs, and fairy tales.

By creating a new syllabus and accompanying teaching materials, Amanda and Olivia are laying the groundwork for a writing-intensive course while also sparking broader conversations about writing pedagogy and curricular design in their department.

Materials

  • Draft syllabus for Literature, Film, and the Nordic Child (forthcoming)
  • Presentation on writing pedagogy for departmental meeting (forthcoming)
  • Assignments focused on translation, memoir, and genre experimentation (forthcoming)

Transforming Writing Instruction Through Collaboration

Amanda and Olivia’s collaboration began with a shared goal: to create a consistently writing-intensive course where writing functions as a central mode of inquiry rather than an add-on. Through the fellowship, they identified common pedagogical bottlenecks—especially in students’ struggles with historical contextualization and analytical depth. Together, they explored how scaffolded assignments could better support students in developing interpretive skills, building arguments, and moving more confidently through these challenges.

Their partnership also sparked conversations about genre, form, and audience, including assignments that invite students to experiment with nontraditional genres such as picture books, fairy tales, and reflective writing. Together, they are building not just a course, but a model for sustainable, integrated writing pedagogy, a model that centers student learning and opens space for collaborative curriculum development.