Undergraduate

Whenever we write stories, we are in conversation with other writers, living or dead. Sometimes that conversation is quiet and intimate—a matter of subtle influence, much as we take on unconsciously the diction and cadences of admired mentors and beloved friends. Other times, the conversation is boisterous, a meeting of minds, a deepening of our collective discourse. Still other times, the conversation gets heated. We feel the need to set the record straight, give voice to a neglected or misrepresented character, vindicate a monster, or indict a hero. In this technical seminar, we will read writers responding to other writers—Victor Lavalle & H.P. Lovecraft, Haruki Murakami & Franz Kafka, Doris Lessing & Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Joyce Carol Oates & James Joyce, among others—and examine how these writers retell, modernize, and comment upon influential stories, making the stories their own while incorporating familiar elements. The emphasis of this course will be on critical writing, but students will also have opportunities to write creative responses to the readings and experiment with the craft techniques we discuss.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 10:20-12:20 PM

Who (or what) tells a story might be the most important decision a writer makes.  The narrator of a work of fiction will tell the story from a particular point in time, will have particular biases, agendas, frames of reference, lexicon, insights, and history. And all of those factors contribute to their perspective—in fact, a story’s narrative could be understood as the delivery of the narrator’s perspective to the reader. In this seminar, we will examine perspective in works of fiction, with an eye towards discovering the elements that comprise a given perspective and also what we might learn as writers from the work. Along with the reading material, assignments will include reading responses, creative writing exercises, and presentations. 

Day/Time: Tuesday, 1:00-4:00 PM

What is character? And what is a character? How we answer these two questions depends not only on the genre we're writing in, but also on the kind of writer and person we are. Which is also to say that tackling these questions requires a look within ourselves, a confrontation with who we think we are and how we think we see the world around us, even when our characters are nothing like us. In this Fundamentals course, we'll look at the range of ways that "character" can be seen and constructed—the different technical, aesthetic, and even philosophical approaches to characterization. How does characterization in a poem differ from characterization in a story, or in an essay, play, or memoir? What ultimately makes for a compelling and memorable character? Beyond actual human beings, what does it mean for an idea to be a character, or a city to be one, or the very work itself? Our reading material will include poetry, fiction, and essays, and our assignments will include reading responses, creative writing exercises, short essays, and presentations.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 2:40 - 5:40 PM

When we think of groups that are othered, who and what do we mean? Is the other always defined against hegemonic ideas of race, gender, sexuality, and class? Can we understand American othering outside of post-colonialism? In this seminar, we will read work that investigates othering—which is to say, who and what constitutes an othered literary voice, the ways writers contend with that othering in their work, and the cultural and political forces that push an othered voice to “the edge” of the mainstream. To give a sense of the breadth of othering in literature, we will take a multi-ethnic/cultural/gender and multi-genre approach to our study, examining texts of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from Black, Asian, Native American, Latinx, and queer writers. That list will include Natalie Diaz, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Ocean Vuong, and Audre Lorde. We will work to deepen our facility with the skills needed to critique the ideas in the texts and also situate them in their cultural context. In addition, we will discuss how othering has produced eloquent literary voices and the particular aspects of a given writer’s eloquence. During the semester, you will engage in rigorous inquiry, prompted informal writing, and formal writing in the form of response-papers and short creative assignments accompanied by a critical reflection.

Day/Time: Monday, 1:50-3:50 PM

A monolith manifests in orbit around Jupiter, emitting a signal. A beacon? A man spontaneously discovers the ability to teleport. An evolutionary accident? The origin of human life proves to be malicious. Divine fate? Space travel is enabled by the ingestion of enormous quantities of a geriatric spice a messianic figure auspiciously learns to manipulate. A drug trip?! Among popular genres, science fiction is the riskiest conceptually and among the trickiest to master. The difference between an amazing idea and a rotten story is often slim. What makes good sci-fi work? And how best to write it? Let's put on our gravity boots and solar visors and see what we can discover. In this course, you'll read some novels (by Frank Herbert, Alfred Bester, and Ursula K. LeGuin), poetry (by Andrew Joron), a graphic novel (by Chris Ware), and screenplays (by Damon Lindelof, and Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke). And all the while, you'll try your hand at bending each other's minds with your own science fiction.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 1:00-4:00 PM

Like film, comics are a language, and there's much to be learned from studying them, even if we have no intention of 'writing' them. Comics tell two or more stories simultaneously, one via image, the other via text, and these parallel stories can not only complement but also contradict one another, creating subtexts and effects that words alone can’t. Or can they? Our goal will be to draw, both literally and metaphorically, on the structures and techniques of the form. While it’s aimed at the aspiring graphic novelist (or graphic essayist, or poet), it’s equally appropriate for those of us who work strictly with words. What comics techniques can any artist emulate, approximate, or otherwise aspire to, and how can these lead us to a deeper understanding of the possibilities of point of view, tone, structure and style? We’ll learn the basics of the medium via Ivan Brunetti’s book Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, as well as Syllabus, by Lynda Barry. Readings include the scholar David Kunzle on the origins of the form, the first avant-garde of George Herriman, Frank King, and Lyonel Feininger, finishing with contemporaries like Joe Sacco, Chris Ware, and Alison Bechdel. Assignments include weekly creative and critical assignments, culminating in a final portfolio and paper.

Day/Time: Thursday, 1:00-4:00 PM

This course explores basic approaches to writing poems through careful reading and discussion of modern and contemporary poets. We’ll practice poetic elements, such as rhythm, diction, syntax, and metaphor, at the same time that we explore the movements of mind and the moods that lyricism makes available. The class will practice literary community building by discussing peers’ poems in workshops, by responding to poems and essays by contemporary and modern poets and critics, and by attending literary events on campus. For the first few sessions, our discussions will focus primarily on readings. As we move forward, we will spend the majority of time workshopping student work.

Day/Time: Friday, 10:20-12:20 PM

Describing fiction writing as an “art” is perhaps a misnomer. Depending on who’s describing it, the process of creating a narrative is more like driving in the dark, or like woodworking, or gardening. It’s like raising a half-formed, misbehaved child and then trying to reason with it. The metaphors abound. But the techniques for creating effective fictional prose are often quite consistent. This course will begin with a weeks-long consideration of selected works of fiction where discussion will aim to distinguish the basic devices of effective storytelling. Weekly topics will range from subjects as broad as point of view and plot arrangement to more highly focused lessons on scene design, dialogue, and word choice. Throughout the term, the writing process will be broken down into stages where written work will focus on discrete story parts such as first pages, character introductions, and dialogue-driven scenes before students are asked to compose full-length narratives. Along the way, students will chart their processes of conceptualizing, drafting, and revising their narratives. Finally, in the latter weeks of the quarter, emphasis will shift to the workshopping of students’ full stories.

Day/Time: Monday, 10:20-1:30 PM

This course is for students writing a creative BA or MA thesis in nonfiction, as well as Creative Writing Minors completing the portfolio. If space allows I'll also admit those who are working on a long piece of nonfiction on their own. It can be an extended essay, memoir, travelogue, literary journalism, or an interrelated collection thereof. It's a workshop, so come to the first day of class with your work underway and ready to submit. You'll edit your classmates' writing as diligently as you edit your own. I focus on editing because writing is, in essence, rewriting. Only by learning to edit other people's work will you gradually acquire the objectivity you need to skillfully edit your own. You'll profit not only from the advice you receive, but from the advice you learn to give. I will teach you to teach each other and thus yourselves, preparing you for the real life of the writer outside the academy.

Day/Time: Monday, 1:50-3:50

Between the autopsical facts of science writing and the adaptations, novelizations and base-on-true-story stories, lies a very specific type of writing. The creative nonfiction exploration of the recounted lives of others. From Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago,” to Brian Doyle’s “Thirsty for the Joy,” from John Hershey’s “Hiroshima” and Art Spiegelman’s “Mouse” to Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” the world of nonfiction writing is rife with second, third, and fourth hand stories in which the essayist must learn to negotiate the researched history of people and places, with the imagined mind of these people moving across equally imaginary spaces. How do we believably and respectfully tell others’ stories? How do we learn to find them? How do we draw these stories out, jot them down? How do we know when to make them our own and when to leave them in the liminal space of another’s inaccessible and inimitable experience? Where is the line between imaginative nonfiction and imaginary tales? This course is designed to tackled these specific questions through workshops of student work, writing prompts and guided discussions of assigned texts that attempt to unravel this very matter through numerous and varied approaches.

Day/Time: Friday, 10:20-12:20