Department of Writing Studies AI Statement

As a community of writers and teachers of writing, the Montclair Writing Studies department believes that writing is inextricably linked to thinking and lived experience. To write well requires careful exploration of the rhetorical situation: the relationship between the writer, the context for what is written, and the intended audience. To write well requires life experience, training, and practice. To write well requires understanding that thinking is profoundly shaped by writing, and that writing cannot and should not be completely outsourced to a technology such as Generative AI. We can write with technology, but technology cannot write for us. To allow that to happen would be to relinquish our ability to think.

As a community of writers and teachers of writing, we have a right and responsibility to help shape how writers engage with this technology. We believe that AI literacy is an essential component of this mission. Through open dialogue and collaboration, we aim to equip our community with the knowledge and skills to take advantage of AI’s potential while preserving the human elements that make writing a powerful mode of invention, expression, and communication. We are working to establish norms and practices that enable students to engage with AI thoughtfully and ethically, use it creatively when called for, and recognize its limitations. Without proper training and experience, the growing computational and expressive power of AI can easily overwhelm even the most confident of writers and thinkers. Therefore, AI’s ubiquity demands more intensive training in the art and craft of writing, not less.