This article describes a version of the Seminar in Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy, a Master's level course that Marcia Buell taught in summer 2017 at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. Buell argues that because many MA students enter graduate courses in Basic Writing expecting that the course will show them how to "fix" problems in the texts that basic writers produce, it is necessary to design MA courses which promote a theorized pedagogy, to show how history, theory, and social or institutional contexts drive pedagogical approaches. In addition to discussing the concepts that graduate students in the course learned and sometimes struggled with, Buell introduces resources and hands-on activities used to help graduate students address key questions such as what makes a student a Basic Writer, or how we might tap linguistic understandings of basic writers instead of assuming a lack of knowledge about language.