Undergraduate

Humor is often treated as poetry's guilty pleasure — the thing serious poets do between serious poems. This seminar rejects that premise entirely. From the ribald fabliaux of medieval verse to the deadpan surrealism of Russell Edson, from Swift's savage ironies to Natalie Shapero’s sardonic restraint, comic poetry has always been doing the most sophisticated work: puncturing authority, negotiating pain, and telling the truth at an angle.

We will study humor not as decoration but as epistemology — a way of knowing and saying what other modes cannot reach. Topics include: the rhetoric of the joke; bathos and anticlimax as poetic structure; the long tradition of parody and mock-epic; nonsense verse and its philosophical undertow; the relationship between comedy and elegy; and the political uses of irony and satire.

Students will read widely, write critically, and compose original comic poems in a range of modes.

This creative writing course, focused on the art of writing and reading poetry, addresses the fundamentals of craft. Through creative writing exercises and assignments, students will explore precise imagery, unpredictable figuration, intentional musicality, the use of line and stanza, and the relationship between form and content. Students can expect to read deeply, respond creatively, and to engage with their peers in a workshop setting. This course is designed both for writers with a passion for the genre and those who are interested in gaining experience. Successful completion of Poetry Workshop I is a prerequisite for enrollment in Poetry Workshop II.

The main goal of this course will be to understand the reasons, traditions and methods behind the practice of literary adaptations. From Joyce Carol Oates's "Blue Bearded Lover," to Anne Sexton's "Cinderella", to Angela Carter's "Wolf-Alice" and Marina Carr's "By the Bog of Cats," there are stories that continue to resonate through the centuries, and others that are made to resonate through the labor of new story tellers. Each text will be explored both independently and within the context of its adaptive genealogy. Students will be expected to read each text carefully, come prepared to actively participate in class discussion and respond to both academic and creative writing prompts based on assigned texts and class lecture.

In this course, we will explore the embattled, yet perpetually alive relationship between writing and activism by reading canonical and emergent works of fiction, narrative prose, and poetry that not only represent social ills, but seek to address and even to spur social justice in some way. Students will be encouraged to choose an issue that they feel passionate about on which to research and respond for the entire quarter—and will be asked to produce works in a range of genres in relation to that issue. Authors to be encountered will include Percy Shelley, John Ruskin, Upton Sinclair, Audre Lorde, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Nick Drnaso, and more.

Since the commercialization of the internet in the 1990s, the online space has evolved and fractured and become more commodified than ever before. In this course, we will look at depictions in contemporary literature of the experience of being online, of engaging with various platforms, and the mindsets that it creates. At heart in this course, we are looking at the ways in which fiction attempts to mimic, critique, mock, or even take pleasure in being online, and what fiction is able to do in dialogue with another medium. We may read works by Tony Tulathimutte, Patricia Lockwood, and Ben Lerner. As an antidote to all of this thinking about onlineness, we will also engage in creative writing exercises, some inspired by or made possible by being online. 

Increasingly, the fantastical creeps into popular narratives, a rupture in the fabric of otherwise ordinary reality. This workshop will focus on the fantastical in contemporary literature and culture, and the logistical issues and questions that commonly arise around it. We will look at the role of fantastical in puncturing the veil of "realism." What is the fantastical doing that can't be done through other narrative techniques? How does the narrative metabolize this disruption? How should the fantastical be tempered by the mundane? Students for this course should not only have an interest in speculative fiction, but should have already made some efforts within this mode. Note that this course does not focus exclusively on fantasy or science fiction, though there may be some genre overlap. Come prepared to engage with free-associative creative exercises. Readings may include works by George Saunders, Jan Jamil Kochai, and Rachel Ingalls. 

This creative writing course, focused on the art of writing and reading fiction, addresses the fundamentals of craft. Through creative writing exercises and assignments, students will explore characterization, point of view, plot, scene work, and worldbuilding. Students can expect to read deeply, respond creatively, and to engage with their peers in a workshop setting. This course is designed both for writers with a passion for the genre and those who are interested in gaining experience. Successful completion of a Fiction Workshop I is a prerequisite for enrollment in Fiction Workshop II.

This workshop-centered course invites writers to navigate the "sublime" in poetry and prose, that boundary between beauty and horror in contemporary writing. What defines a moment of insight or the impulse of horror? How does the sublime offer means of engaging the boundary between the human and nonhuman worlds in the present moment? What formal play has previously explored these boundaries? To these ends, we will examine work by writers including Angela Carter, Xi Chuan, Lauren Groff, Mona Susan Power, and Dubravka Ugresic.

This course invites writers to reconsider the influence of Chicago's public spaces on artistic impulse.  In particular this quarter, we will examine aspects and depictions of a "fantastic Chicago."  If Chicago is a city that "dreams itself," what do its spaces of violence and environmental degradation say about that dream?  Students will analyze and explore Chicago writers' work in prose and poetry, then develop their own creative responses, building connections to adopted critical approaches.  To these ends, we will examine work by writers including Daniel Borzutzky, Barry Pearce, Sterling Plumpp, Ed Roberson, and Ava Tomasula y Garcia, as well as the city's rich legacies in documentary and the visual arts.

This creative writing course, focused on the art of writing and reading poetry, addresses the fundamentals of craft. Through creative writing exercises and assignments, students will explore precise imagery, unpredictable figuration, intentional musicality, the use of line and stanza, and the relationship between form and content. Students can expect to read deeply, respond creatively, and to engage with their peers in a workshop setting. This course is designed both for writers with a passion for the genre and those who are interested in gaining experience. Successful completion of Poetry Workshop I is a prerequisite for enrollment in Poetry Workshop II.