Fundamentals

We all know them-The Great Gatsby, The Lord of the Flies, The Bell Jar, and other books that seem to have been taught or read in every high school in the country since the dawn of time. In this cross-genre Fundamentals course, we'll re-examine these and works by the likes of Henry Miller, Sandra Cisneros, Allen Ginsberg, and Zora Neale Hurston. We'll think about the cultural history of what makes a classic high school read, about coming-of-age stories, and what it means to be educated, enlightened, and/or entertained. We'll think, too, about how we learn to read, write, and speak back to texts as adults (whatever that means). You'll write creative exercises, critical responses, and a final paper on a work of your choosing.
Day/Time: Tuesday, 12:30-3:20

This fundamentals course will look at fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction to explore questions of perspective. We will examine questions of Point of View and Narrative Distance and how these affect a work and a reader's experience of that work. We will tackle the question of (un)reliability in narrators and speakers and how it serves the work. We will also explore the larger question of perspective in a writer. What does it mean to have a point of view as a writer, and why is it important? Readings will include primary texts as well as critical and fundamentals texts in each genre. Students will complete weekly reading responses, as well as creative exercises. A paper focusing on a specific element of perspective will be due at the end of the course.

In this fundamentals course, students will investigate the complicated relationship between writers, fictional characters, and readers, toward determining what place literary empathy has in our conversation about contemporary literature. James Baldwin once observed that, "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." We will use weekly reading assignments including fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction to ask questions about what Virgina Woolf called "perpetual union with another mind." Students will write critical responses, creative exercises, and a final paper on a topic to be approved by the instructor. Readings include Baldwin, Bishop, Beard, Carson, Walcott, and Woolf.

To give testimony is to bear witness and to provide evidence. To give testimony is also to draw the reader or listener into an individual point of view. In this course, we will study the first-person voice in various forms of personal testimony. Drawing from a mix of memoirs, personal essays, letters, fiction and other first-person narratives, we will analyze the techniques and rhetorical devices used by writers, standup comedians, memoirists in transporting the listener or reader into unknowable, unfamiliar experiences. Expect to engage with texts by authors such as Franz Kafka, Patricia Lockwood, Richard Pryor, and William Maxwell. We will compose our own personal writings through creative exercises. A critical paper is also due.

To give testimony is to bear witness and to provide evidence. To give testimony is also to draw the reader or listener into an individual point of view. In this course, we will study the first-person voice in various forms of personal testimony. Drawing from a mix of memoirs, personal essays, letters, fiction, and other first-person narratives, we will analyze the techniques and rhetorical devices used by writers, standup comedians, memoirists in transporting the listener or reader into unknowable, unfamiliar experiences. Expect to engage with texts by authors such as Franz Kafka, Patricia Lockwood, Richard Pryor, and William Maxwell. We will compose our own personal writings through creative exercises. A critical paper is also due.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 12:30-3:20 PM

Storytelling goes nearly as far back as human consciousness, while the ways in which we tell stories has been expanding ever since. This class will look at several different forms of narrative—fiction, creative non-fiction, narrative poetry, and film—and explore the “grammar” of these different genres, what they share and where they differ and how their particular strengths influence the ways in which they most effectively communicate. How does film (a visual medium) tell a story differently than does fiction (which asks us to project our own imagined version of the story), differently than creative non-fiction, (which must always rely on facts), differently than poetry (which condenses the story to its essences)? How do these different genres and mediums influence the stories they tell and the effects they achieve? Readings will include primary texts as well as critical and fundamentals texts in each genre. Students will complete weekly reading responses, as well as creative exercises. A paper focusing on a specific element derived from the class will be due at the end of the course.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 11:00-1:50
 

Beginning writers are often told to “imitate” the work of “great authors” in order to discover their own voices. One way to enliven this artistic apprenticeship is to copy masterpieces from literary history with great care, but with a comic touch, too. Imitation with a difference—think Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—is the soul of parody, and in this course we’ll make mockeries of poetry, fiction, and essayistic nonfiction from the history of Western literature in order to learn how art works. Parodying Gertrude Stein’s parallax portraiture can illuminate the inner workings of literary mimesis itself. Satirizing Clarice Lispector’s proliferating points of view can teach us about the limits of perspective in narrative art. Imitating Junishiro Tanizaki’s essayistic praise of shadows, we can study the role of polemic in literary nonfiction. By the end of the quarter, you’ll have written several imitations of major literary works, and, en route, you will have hopefully learned something about your own voice as a literary artist.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 2:00-4:50