W330 CCC 61:2 / DECEMBER 2009 CCC 61:2 / DECEMBER 2009 Jeremiah Dyehouse, Michael Pennell, and Linda K. Shamoon “Writing in Electronic Environments”: A Concept and a Course for the Writing and Rhetoric Major Reflecting the digital turn in composition studies, multimedia writing courses have become commonplace in many writing programs. Yet these technology-rich courses take on new significance when located within a rhetorically based writing major, es- pecially as a core course. This article explores a developing writing and rhetoric major through the lens of a core course (WRT 235) titled “Writing in Electronic Environments.” Specifically, we see the course as an opportunity to make its practices and key concept, “writing environment,” more central to the major, and the writing program as a whole. Teaching writing in electronic environments also means encouraging our students to conceive of better spaces for the kinds of digital writing that they—and others—might eventually want to practice. Developing an undergraduate major in writing and rhetoric presents many opportunities for faculty, including the chance to shape writers’ learning expe- riences over long time periods. With such opportunities comes a potentially forbidding series of challenges, however: of preparing an effective core cur- riculum, of deciding how to teach specialized activities in writing and rhetoric, and of supporting postgraduate majors’ job seeking, to take a few important examples. 1 For academics working in schools where technology support for writers is weak, or where students are often underprepared for learning about Copyright © 2009 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.