BEGINNING FICTION WORKSHOP

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. The beginning workshop in fiction is designed for students with little or no experience writing literary texts in fiction. Students are introduced to a range of technical and imaginative concerns through exercises and discussions, and they eventually produce their own writing for the critical analysis of the class. The focus of the course is on the rudiments of voice, character, setting, point of view, plot, and lyrical use of language. Students will begin to develop the critical skills that will allow them to read like writers and understand, on a technical level, how accomplished creative writing is produced. Outside readings of a wide range of fiction supplement and inform the exercises and longer written projects.

• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Ronald L Jr. Robertson
  Info
• Instructor: Emily Christine C Johnson
  Info
• Instructor: Emily R Gutierrez
  Info
• Instructor: Alexis J Hutchinson
  Info
• Instructor: Luciana Siracusano
  Info
• 3 points

BEGINNING NONFICTION WORKSHOP

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. The beginning workshop in nonfiction is designed for students with little or no experience in writing literary nonfiction. Students are introduced to a range of technical and imaginative concerns through exercises and discussions, and they eventually submit their own writing for the critical analysis of the class. Outside readings supplement and inform the exercises and longer written projects.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Peter M Raffel
  Info
• Instructor: Wally Suphap
  Info
• 3 points

BEGINNING POETRY WORKSHOP

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. The beginning poetry workshop is designed for students who have a serious interest in poetry writing but who lack a significant background in the rudiments of the craft and/or have had little or no previous poetry workshop experience. Students will be assigned weekly writing exercises emphasizing such aspects of verse composition as the poetic line, the image, rhyme and other sound devices, verse forms, repetition, tone, irony, and others. Students will also read an extensive variety of exemplary work in verse, submit brief critical analyses of poems, and critique each others original work.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Latif A Ba
  Info
• Instructor: Joel Jr. Sedano
  Info
• 3 points

INTERMEDIATE FICTION WORKSHOP

Intermediate workshops are for students with some experience with creative writing, and whose prior work merits admission to the class (as judged by the professor). Intermediate workshops present a higher creative standard than beginning workshops, and increased expectations to produce finished work. By the end of the semester, each student will have produced at least seventy pages of original fiction. Students are additionally expected to write extensive critiques of the work of their peers. Please visit 
https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate
 for information about registration procedures.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Joss Lake
  Info
• Instructor: Omer M Friedlander
  Info
• 3 points

APPROACHES TO THE SHORT STORY

The modern short story has gone through many transformations, and the innovations of its practitioners have often pointed the way for prose fiction as a whole. The short story has been seized upon and refreshed by diverse cultures and aesthetic affiliations, so that perhaps the only stable definition of the form remains the famous one advanced by Poe, one of its early masters, as a work of fiction that can be read in one sitting. Still, common elements of the form have emerged over the last century and this course will study them, including Point of View, Plot, Character, Setting and Theme. John Hawkes once famously called these last four elements the "enemies of the novel," and many short story writers have seen them as hindrances as well. Hawkes later recanted, though some writers would still agree with his earlier assessment, and this course will examine the successful strategies of great writers across the spectrum of short story practice, from traditional approaches to more radical solutions, keeping in mind how one period's revolution -Hemingway, for example - becomes a later era's mainstream or "commonsense" storytelling mode. By reading the work of major writers from a writer's perspective, we will examine the myriad techniques employed for what is finally a common goal: to make readers feel. Short writing exercises will help us explore the exhilarating subtleties of these elements and how the effects created by their manipulation or even outright absence power our most compelling fictions.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Ronald L Jr. Robertson
  Info
• 3 points

INTERMEDIATE NONFICTION WRKSHP

The intermediate workshop in nonfiction is designed for students with some experience in writing literary nonfiction. Intermediate workshops present a higher creative standard than beginning workshops and an expectation that students will produce finished work. Outside readings supplement and inform the exercises and longer written projects. By the end of the semester, students will have produced thirty to forty pages of original work in at least two traditions of literary nonfiction. Please visit
https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate
 for information about registration procedures.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Zohra Saed
  Info
• 3 points

TRADITIONS IN NONFICTION

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. The seminar provides exposure to the varieties of nonfiction with readings in its principal genres: reportage, criticism and commentary, biography and history, and memoir and the personal essay. A highly plastic medium, nonfiction allows authors to portray real events and experiences through narrative, analysis, polemic or any combination thereof. Free to invent everything but the facts, great practitioners of nonfiction are faithful to reality while writing with a voice and a vision distinctively their own. To show how nonfiction is conceived and constructed, class discussions will emphasize the relationship of content to form and style, techniques for creating plot and character under the factual constraints imposed by nonfiction, the defining characteristics of each authors voice, the authors subjectivity and presence, the role of imagination and emotion, the uses of humor, and the importance of speculation and attitude. Written assignments will be opportunities to experiment in several nonfiction genres and styles.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Peter M Raffel
  Info
• 3 points

INTERMEDIATE POETRY WORKSHOP

Intermediate poetry workshops are for students with some prior instruction in the rudiments of poetry writing and prior poetry workshop experience. Intermediate poetry workshops pose greater challenges to students and maintain higher critical standards than beginning workshops. Students will be instructed in more complex aspects of the craft, including the poetic persona, the prose poem, the collage, open-field composition, and others. They will also be assigned more challenging verse forms such as the villanelle and also non-European verse forms such as the pantoum. They will read extensively, submit brief critical analyses, and put their instruction into regular practice by composing original work that will be critiqued by their peers. By the end of the semester each student will have assembled a substantial portfolio of finished work. Please visit
https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate
 for information about registration procedures.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexander Dimitrov
  Info
• 3 points

TRADITIONS IN POETRY

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. 

“For those, in dark, who find their own way by the light of others’ eyes.” —Lucie Brock-Broido

The avenues of poetic tradition open to today’s poets are more numerous, more invigorating, and perhaps even more baffling than ever before. The routes we chose for our writing lead to destinations of our own making, and we take them at our own risk—necessarily so, as the pursuit of poetry asks each of us to light a pilgrim’s candle and follow it into the moors and lowlands, through wastes and prairies, crossing waters as we go. Go after the marshlights, the will-o-wisps who call to you in a voice you’ve longed for your whole life. These routes have been forged by those who came before you, but for that reason, none of them can hope to keep you on it entirely. You must take your steps away, brick by brick, heading confidently into the hinterland of your own distinct achievement.

 

For the purpose of this class, we will walk these roads together, examining the works of classic and contemporary exemplars of the craft. By companioning poets from a large spread of time, we will be able to more diversely immerse ourselves in what a poetic “tradition” truly means. We will read works by Edmund Spencer, Dante, and Goethe, the Romantics—especially Keats—Dickinson, who is mother to us all, Modernists, and the great sweep of contemporary poetry that is too vast to individuate.

 

While it is the imperative of this class to equip you with the knowledge necessary to advance in the field of poetry, this task shall be done in a Columbian manner. Consider this class an initiation, of sorts, into the vocabulary which distinguishes the writers who work under our flag, each of us bound by this language that must be passed on, and therefore changed, to you who inherit it. As I have learned the words, I have changed them, and I give them now to you so that you may pave your own way into your own ways, inspired with the first breath that brought you here, which may excite and—hopefully—frighten you. You must be troubled. This is essential

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Latif A Ba
  Info
• 3 points

SHORT PROSE FORMS

Prerequisites: No Prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. Flash fiction, micro-naratives and the short-short have become exciting areas of exploration for contemporary writers. This course will examine how these literary fragments have captured the imagination of writers internationally and at home. The larger question the class seeks to answer, both on a collective and individual level, is: How can we craft a working definition of those elements endemic to short prose as a genre? Does the form exceed classification? What aspects of both crafts -- prose and poetry -- does this genre inhabit, expand upon, reinvent, reject, subvert? Short Prose Forms incorporates aspects of both literary seminar and the creative workshop. Class-time will be devoted alternatingly to examinations of published pieces and modified discussions of student work. Our reading chart the course from the genres emergence, examining the prose poem in 19th-century France through the works of Mallarme, Baudelaire, Max Jacob and Rimbaud. Well examine aspects of poetry -- the attention to the lyrical, the use of compression, musicality, sonic resonances and wit -- and attempt to understand how these writers took, as Russell Edson describes, experience and made it into an artifact with the logic of a dream. The class will conclude with a portfolio at the end of the term, in which students will submit a compendium of final drafts of three of four short prose pieces, samples of several exercises, selescted responses to readings, and a short personal manifesto on the short prose form.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Alan Ziegler
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 3 points

TRANSLATION SEMINAR

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Students do not need to demonstrate bilingual ability to take this course. Department approval NOT needed. Corequisites: This course is open to undergraduate & graduate students. This course will explore broad-ranging questions pertaining to the historical, cultural, and political significance of translation while analyzing the various challenges confronted by the arts foremost practitioners. We will read and discuss texts by writers and theorists such as Benjamin, Derrida, Borges, Steiner, Dryden, Nabokov, Schleiermacher, Goethe, Spivak, Jakobson, and Venuti. As readers and practitioners of translation, we will train our ears to detect the visibility of invisibility of the translators craft; through short writing experiments, we will discover how to identify and capture the nuances that traverse literary styles, historical periods and cultures. The course will culminate in a final project that may either be a critical analysis or an original translation accompanied by a translators note of introduction.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Bonnie Chau
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Inhabiting Form: Writing the Body

The body is our most immediate encounter with the world, the vessel through which we experience our entire lives: pleasure, pain, beauty, horror, limitation, freedom, fragility and empowerment. In this course, we will pursue critical and creative inquiries into invocations and manifestations of the body in multiple genres of literature and in several capacities. We will look at how writers make space for—or take up space with—bodies in their work.

The etymology of the word “text” is from the Latin
textus
, meaning “tissue.” Along these lines, we will consider the text itself as a body. Discussions around body politics, race, gender, ability, illness, death, metamorphosis, monstrosity and pleasure will be parallel to the consideration of how a text might function itself as a body in space and time. We will consider such questions as:
What is the connective tissue of a story or a poem? What is the nervous system of a lyric essay? How is formal constraint similar to societal ideals about beauty and acceptability of certain bodies? How do words and language function at the cellular level to build the body of a text? How can we make room to honor, in our writing, bodies that have otherwise been marginalized?

We will also consider non-human bodies (animals & organisms) and embodiments of the supernatural (ghosts, gods & specters) in our inquiries. Students will process and explore these ideas in both creative and analytical writings throughout the semester, deepening their understanding of embodiment both on and off the page.

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Samantha Zighelboim
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO AUDIO STORYTELLING

CG SEM - INTRO TO AUDIO S

It’s one thing to tell a story with the pen. It’s another to transfix your audience with your voice. In this class, we will explore principles of audio narrative. Oral storytellers arguably understand suspense, humor and showmanship in ways only a live performer can. Even if you are a diehard writer of visually-consumed text, you may find, once the class is over, that you have learned techniques that can translate across borders: your written work may benefit. Alternatively, you may discover that audio is the medium for you.

We will consider sound from the ground up – from folkloric oral traditions, to raw, naturally captured sound stories, to seemingly straightforward radio news segments, to highly polished narrative podcasts. While this class involves a fair amount of reading, much of what we will be studying and discussing is audio material. Some is as lo-fi as can be, and some is operatic in scope, benefitting from large production budgets and teams of artists. At the same time that we study these works, each student will also complete small audio production exercises of their own; as a final project, students will be expected to produce a trailer, or “sizzle” for a hypothetical multi-episode show.

This class is meant for beginners to the audio tradition. There are some tech requirements: a recording device (most phones will suffice), workable set of headphones, and computer. You’ll also need to download the free audio editing software Audacity.

• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Mallika Rao
  Info
• 3 points

THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

What is an aesthetic experience and what does it tell us about art or about ourselves? An aesthetic experience might be best initially defined as a subjective and often profound encounter with an object, artwork, or phenomenon that elicits a heightened sense of beauty, appreciation, or emotional response. It involves a deep engagement with the sensory, emotional, and intellectual aspects of the object of appreciation. Aesthetic experiences typically involve a sense of pleasure, contemplation, or emotional resonance, and they often transcend practical or utilitarian considerations. These experiences can encompass a wide range of phenomena, literature, natural landscapes, and even everyday objects when perceived with a heightened sense of awareness and appreciation. Aesthetic experiences are highly personal and can vary from person to person based on individual preferences, cultural backgrounds, and emotional responses.

For me, an aesthetic experience is both mysterious and confounding—I’m impacted physically as much as it might mentally or emotionally. In the throes of an aesthetic experience, I might feel the small hairs on my arms or on the back of my neck stand up. I might feel nearly ill from a racing heart or my stomach turning. I might feel energized by new thoughts prompted by the experience or feel my heart swell in appreciation and awe. I might also feel a deep sense of recognition—one that connects me to the art object and its maker in a way that transcends time and place. But why do I feel this? Where does this feeling come from? What is really happening?? In this class, we’ll study this question on two levels:

1. A ‘theoretical’ level. Theorists, critics, and philosophers have long tried to understand what it means to have an aesthetic experience. Plato likened this experience to madness, Kant to the sublime; Tolstoy argued the aesthetic experience was a form of communication only accessible through engagement in art. Historians place aesthetic experience within the context of time and culture. We’ll study and discuss theories that have tried to define this mysterious phenomenon. 

 2. A ‘practical’ level. We’ll also read the work of writers who have puzzled through this question of the aesthetic experience by writing about their connection to a work or body of work by another artist. Often this involves a search to understand the self via the work of another artist.

Books: Required books available at

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Chloe Jones
  Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED FICTION WORKSHOP

Building on the work of the Intermediate Workshop, Advanced Workshops are reserved for the most accomplished creative writing students. A significant body of writing must be produced and revised. Particular attention will be paid to the components of fiction: voice, perspective, characterization, and form. Students will be expected to finish several short stories, executing a total artistic vision on a piece of writing. The critical focus of the class will include an examination of endings and formal wholeness, sustaining narrative arcs, compelling a reader's interest for the duration of the text, and generating a sense of urgency and drama in the work. Please visit
https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate
 for information about registration procedures.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Rebecca J Schiff
  Info
• Instructor: Marie G Lee
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

SENIOR FICTION WORKSHOP

Prerequisites: The department's permission required through writing sample. Please go to 609 Kent for submission schedule and registration guidelines or see http://www.arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate. Seniors who are majors in creative writing are given priority for this course. Enrollment is limited, and is by permission of the professor. The senior workshop offers students the opportunity to work exclusively with classmates who are at the same high level of accomplishment in the major. Students in the senior workshops will produce and revise a new and substantial body of work. In-class critiques and conferences with the professor will be tailored to needs of each student.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Samuel Lipsyte
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

How to Write Funny

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."   

--Mel Brooks 

"Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the 

End."                                                                                                                --Sid Caesar 

"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."                                                                                                                                  --E.B. White 

 

"What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke."                                                                                                                                       --Steve Martin 

"Patty Marx is the best teacher at Columbia University."

--Patty Marx 

O

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Patricia A Marx
  Info
• 3 points

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

There’s a new cast of characters in American fiction: kids, teens, young adults who won’t grow up or grow up much too soon—kids of immigrants, most of them, millennials, a lot of them, and they’re telling stories, different stories, stories that dispel stereotypes and decenter the dominant, white gaze. In this seminar we will examine contemporary novels and short stories by immigrants and kids of immigrants that resist cliched diaspora narratives. Starting with the old guard that first defined immigrant writing, including Vladimir Nabokov and Sandra Cisneros, we’ll dig into how this genre has evolved in the 21st century first with Julie Otsuka and Jhumpa Lahiri, and, more recently, with Jenny Zhang, Jade Sharma, and Anthony Veasna So. Duty, guilt, grandmas, food, debt, intergenerational trauma and buried family secrets that rise from the dead will be ever-present, of course, but we’ll also find joy, absurdity, blasphemy, and other surprises as we study the distinct ways these authors reframe the immigrant experience and move beyond the lens of identity politics. Though our primary focus will be coming-of-age narratives, we’ll read numerous works from adult perspectives, too, grappling especially with the concept “anagnorisis” (Greek: “recognition”), which, in literary works, is a character’s often startling discovery of their true identity. Throughout the course we’ll use what we learn to produce new creative work biweekly, all while envisioning and executing ways to ultimately recast the “other” in our own fiction.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Mina Seckin
  Info
• 3 points

BUILDING BETTER WORLDS

As 20th century literary traditions prove increasingly ill-equipped to capture the realities of 21st century life, readers look towards fictional worlds for inspiration and escape from the political chaos of day-to-day existence. When we write we shape the world, because the worlds we imagine impact the world we inhabit. But what does it mean for a writer to 'build a world?' What obligations does the creator of a fiction have to readers who inhabit a world they wish to escape? Are the worlds we build for escape always political? Can we build another world as an avenue to better understand this one?

In this seminar we will explore the concept of "world building" by looking at a variety of work from authors who are known for their immense secondary worlds (such as J.R.R. Tolkein, Ursula K. Le Guin, N.K. Jemisin, or Octavia Butler) but also at fiction that applies techniques of both immersion and politics in ways that may subvert our understanding of what it means to 'create.' Writers discussed are as wide ranging as Toni Morrison, Angela Carter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margaret Atwood, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, all the way up to contemporary writers whose works populate our best loved Independent bookstores: Helen Oyeyemi, Victor LaValle, Ted Chiang, Marlon James, Jeff VanderMeer, Colson Whitehead, Salman Rushdie, Carmen Maria Machado, Alexandra Kleeman, or Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Molly L McGhee
  Info
• 3 points

NOT EXACTLY SCIENCE FICTION

MORE THAN SCIENCE FICTION

In this course we will explore the possibilities of scientific language and ideas both as literature and in literature. The texts we will consider will range from science fiction, to writings by scientists, to nature writing, and much else. We will also consider works that might at first appear unrelated to scientific thinking, such as folk tales, mysteries, and fantastical stories. Special attention will be paid to the special effects generated by scientific language when it appears near other styles of expression. Students will also be responsible for four short creative assignments inspired by the readings, as well as a brief in-class presentation.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Rivka R Galchen
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 3 points

SENIOR NONFICTION WORKSHOP

Seniors who are majors in creative writing are given priority for this course. Enrollment is limited, and is by permission of the professor. The senior workshop offers students the opportunity to work exclusively with classmates who are at the same high level of accomplishment in the major. Students in the senior workshops will produce and revise a new and substantial body of work. In-class critiques and conferences with the professor will be tailored to needs of each student. Please visit 
https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate
 for information about registration procedures.

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Lars Horn
  Info
• 4 points

Writing the Sixties

NF Sem: Writing the Sixti

In this seminar, we will target nonfiction from the 1960s—the decade that saw an avalanche of new forms, new awareness, new freedoms, and new conflicts, as well as the beginnings of social movements and cultural preoccupations that continue to frame our lives, as writers and as citizens, in the 21st century: civil rights, feminism, environmentalism, LGBTQ rights, pop culture, and the rise of mass media. We will look back more than a half century to examine the development of modern criticism, memoir, reporting, and profile-writing, and the ways they entwine. Along the way, we will ask questions about these classic nonfiction forms: How do reporters, essayists, and critics make sense of the new? How do they create work as rich as the best novels and short stories? Can criticism rise to the level of art? What roles do voice, point-of-view, character, dialogue, and plot—the traditional elements of fiction—play? As we go, we will witness the unfolding of arguably the most transitional decade in American history—with such events as the Kennedy assassination, the Watts Riots, the Human Be In, and the Vietnam War, along with the rise of Pop art, rock ‘n’ roll, and a new era of moviemaking—as it was documented in real time by writers at
The New Yorker
, New Journalists at
Esquire
, and critics at
Partisan Review
and
Harper
’s, among other publications. Some writers we will consider: James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, Rachel Carson, Dwight Macdonald, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Pauline Kael, Nik Cohn, Joseph Mitchell, Lillian Ross, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, John Updike, Michael Herr, Martha Gellhorn, John McPhee, and Betty Friedan. We will be joined by guest speakers.

• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Mark Rozzo
  Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION-ISH

NF SEM - NONFICTION-ISH

This cross-genre craft seminar aims to uncover daring and unusual approaches to literature informed by nonfiction (and nonfiction-adjacent) practices. In this course we will closely read and analyze a diverse set of works, including Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history of women and war, Lydia Davis’s “found” microfictions, Theresa Hak Cha’s genre-exploding “auto-enthnography,”

Alejandro Zambra’s unabashedly literary narratives, Sigrid Nunez’s memoir “of” Susan Sontag, Emmanuel Carrére’s “nonfiction novel,” John Keene’s bold counternarratives, W. G. Sebald’s saturnine essay-portraits, Saidiya Hartman’s melding of history and literary imagination, Annie Ernaux’s collective autobiography, Sheila Heti’s alphabetized diary, Ben Mauk’s oral history about Xinjiang detention camps, and Edward St. Aubyn’s autobiographical novel about the British aristocracy and childhood trauma, among other texts. We will also examine Sharon Mashihi’s one-woman autofiction podcasts

about Iranian Jewish American family. What we learn in this course we will apply to our own work, which will consist of two creative writing responses and a creative final project. Students will also learn to keep a daily writing journal.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: James C Yeh
  Info
• 3 points

CLIMATE AND TIME

The goal of this writing seminar is to support the pursuit of topics related to climate change through readings, research, and writing. We will also confront some of the emotional challenges associated with doing work on the environment, especially in these particularly dynamic times. Over the course of the semester, students will create a research portfolio for creative work on a climate-related topic and practice integrating climate-related issues into works that are not explicitly climate focused. One key theme we will explore in concert with climate issues is the concept of time and how it should be framed in our narratives. Time factors into how we recognize the present era, and it also informs our sense of urgency where there is crisis. As the climate crisis continues to unfold, we face new conflicts with time: ice is melting faster than expected, sea levels rising faster than expected, fires happening more frequently than expected, marine level die-offs happening faster than expected, etc. The urgency with which the facts are now being revealed keeps changing the timelines we must confront, and yet, if we do not understand time—beyond our biological relationship to it—we may miss the opportunity to engage in meaningful work. By studying texts engaged in observational practice in the fields of geology, botany, geography, climate studies, animal studies and anthropology alongside literary works, we will forge a creative practice that integrates current research with established arguments and/or new narratives. The final work is a creative writing project based on this research. All literary genres welcome. Some of the texts we will cover may include: Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains by Lucas Bessire; Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleenman; Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Lauren Rush; The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli; The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert; The Yellow House by Sarah Broom; and Fire Weather by John Valliant.

• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Wendy Walters
  Info
• 3 points

SENIOR POETRY WORKSHOP

Seniors who are majors in creative writing are given priority for this course. Enrollment is limited, and is by permission of the professor. The senior workshop offers students the opportunity to work exclusively with classmates who are at the same high level of accomplishment in the major. Students in the senior workshops will produce and revise a new and substantial body of work. In-class critiques and conferences with the professor will be tailored to needs of each student. Please visit 
https://arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate
 for information about registration procedures.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Emily Luan
  Info
• 4 points

WASTE

What if we think of writing as waste management? “To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now,” said Samuel Beckett then, famously, but: What does this mean? In this course, we will explore the many ways in which artists and writers have tried to answer this question, not only with waste as a figure for thought but as the concrete and recalcitrant reality of our being. Students will be asked to keep a notebook, with the instruction to keep everything that is for them a signature of thought. In this way, a pinecone or a piece of garbage is as much “writing” as anything else. Together, we will create an archive for the semester, of everything that is produced and/or consumed under this aegis of making. This class is designed to pose questions about form and the activity of writing and, in turn, the modes and methods of production not only as writers, but as persons. In addition to our weekly readings, we will be taking field trips throughout the city, convening with Freegan.info for a trash tour and meeting with the artist in residence at the Department of Sanitation, as well as hosting visitors for additional conversations over Zoom.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Lynn Xu
  Info
• 3 points

SENSORY POETICS

“A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist” —Vladimir Nabokov


“Every word was once an animal.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

How do writers use words to bring whole worlds to life in the senses?
Sensory Poetics
is a semester-long exploration of how this formal question has propelled the last 150 years of formally innovative poetry, manifestos and essays on craft. Here, we will read by critically and creatively responding to these texts with a single goal in mind: Borrow their methods to compose a dossier of writing that brings just one thing to life in the senses—any one thing—of your individual choosing. To that end, the semester is divided into 3 Labs that each isolate a different register of sensemaking: Sound, Image, and Line. For example, in the Sound Lab unit, you’ll respond to poems and essays by acoustic-centered poets like John Cage, Kamau Brathwaite and Gertrude Stein, transcribing the sound of your one thing, and writing a metered sonnet based on models from different periods and artistic contexts. To capture the look and logic of your one thing, further in you’ll read Surrealists like Aimé and Suzanne Césaire (for Image Lab), Kathy Acker’s cut-ups, and the psychedelic prose poems of Georges Perec and Yoko Ono (for Line Lab). Throughout, we’ll also read Raymond Queneau’s
Exercises in Style
, a book that is similarly a dossier of one thing written a hundred different ways. Class time focuses on close-reading and analyzing poems together. At the end of each of the three Labs, you’ll submit a portfolio which showcases and reflects on your favorite creative/critical writing generated during the unit. So, no matter how boring or inflexible your one thing may appear to you at any point, your only limits beyond this constraint—make a dossier on one thing—will merely be the finite plasticity of your own imagination, which luckily, readings in this course are curated to expand. This is a place to encounter, practice and experiment with new and exciting forms that broaden your repertoire for articulating your obsessions in ways that bring them to life in the ears, eyes and minds of your audience. Writers of all majors and levels welcome.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Holly Melgard
  Info
• 3 points

SHORT PROSE FORMS DISC

Required discussion section for WRIT UN3010 Short Prose Forms

• M 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• 0 points

NONFICTION-ISH DISC

Required discussion section for WRIT UN3226 Nonfiction-ish

• W 11:10 a.m.-noon
• 0 points

INTRO TO AUDIO STORYTELLING DISC

INTRO AUDIO STORYTELLING

Required discussion section for WRIT UN3010 Short Prose Forms

• R 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• 0 points

FICTION WORKSHOP

• W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• W 4:15 p.m.-7:15 p.m.
• R 1:10 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: James Canon
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Frances H Cha
  Info
• Instructor: Dennard T Dayle
  Info
• Instructor: Joshua Furst
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Hilary J Leichter
  Info
• Instructor: Matthew Salesses
  Wikipedia Info
• 6 points

NONFICTION WORKSHOP

• R 1:10 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Cristen A Beam
  Info
• Instructor: Chloe Jones
  Info
• Instructor: Jaquira Diaz
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Ruth Franklin
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Lis Harris
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Susan Hartman
  Info
• Instructor: Michelle Orange
  Info
• Instructor: Wendy Walters
  Info
• 6 points

POETRY WORKSHOP

• W 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Lynn Melnick
  Info
• Instructor: Deborah Paredez
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Lynn Xu
  Info
• 6 points

SPECIAL PROJECTS WORKSHOP

• R 4:15 p.m.-7:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Edwin Torres
  Info
• 6 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

• M 9 a.m.-10:15 a.m.
• None None-None
• Instructor: Shane McCrae
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Susan Bernofsky
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Rivka R Galchen
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 0.5-6 points

INTERNSHIP

• Instructor: Deborah Paredez
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
• 1-3 points

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

THE WRITER AS TEACHER

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

• M 4:15 p.m.-7:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Keri E Bertino
  Info
• 3 points

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

ART OF LYING: FICTION WORKSHOP

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

• T 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Shana M Ferrell
  Info
• 3 points

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

THE COMMA SUTRA: GRAMMAR

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

• T 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Barbara K Fischer
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

STRUCTURE AND ITS DISCONTENTS

.

• W 2 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Lincoln M Michel
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

NARRATIVE PODCASTING

.

• F 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Jason A Gots
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

NONHUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

.

• W 5:15 p.m.-7:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Benjamin Hale
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

THE CHILD IN FICTION

.

• W 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Nalini M Jones
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

THE EXCRUCIATING

.

• T 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Binnie Kirshenbaum
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

THE PERIPHERAL WRITER

.

• M 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Erroll G McDonald
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

THEORY FOR WRITERS II

.

• T 1:10 p.m.-3:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Matthew Salesses
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

SO YOU WANNA WRITE FUNNY?

.

• T 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Gary Shteyngart
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

TRANSGRESSIVE LITERATURE

.

• T 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Ira Silverberg
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

SIBLINGS

.

• M 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Christine M Smallwood
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

DOUBLES, DOPPLEGANGERS...

.

• M 2 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Lynn S Strong
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

ARCHITECTURE OF A STORY

.

• W 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Lara Vapnyar
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

.

• R 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Chloe Jones
  Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

THE AGE OF PLEASURE

.

• T 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Jaquira Diaz
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

PROFILES

.

• T 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Lis Harris
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

CRITICAL FABULATION

.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Margo L Jefferson
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

HOME AND EXILE

.

• F 1:10 p.m.-3:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Nadia Owusu
  Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

INNER LIFE

.

• R 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Benjamin Taylor
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

SEMINAR ON ANNIE ERNAUX

.

• M 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Kate Zambreno
  Info
• 3 points

POETRY SEMINAR

THE POET'S NOVEL

.

• W 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Jay A Deshpande
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

POETRY SEMINAR

THE END OF SOLITUDE

.

• T 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Joshua Edwards
  Info
• 3 points

POETRY SEMINAR

Read & Write (Meter)

.

• T 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Shane McCrae
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

POETRY SEMINAR

EDITING CNTMPORARY POETRY

.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Alice Quinn
  Info
• 3 points

POETRY SEMINAR

THE VERY LONG POEM

.

• F 1:10 p.m.-3:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Emily F Skillings
  Info
• 3 points

TRANSLATION WORKSHOP

Word-for-Word Workshop

• R 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Susan Bernofsky
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

TRANSLATION WORKSHOP

LITERARY TRANSLATION WORKSHOP

• W 2 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Alyson Waters
  Info
• 3 points

TRANSLATION SEMINAR

WOMEN OF THE WORLD

TRANSLATION SEMINAR

• W 2 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Susan Bernofsky
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

TRANSLATION SEMINAR

IMPOSSIBLE TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATION SEMINAR

• F 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Katrina Dodson
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION LECTURE

LONG CENTURY SHORT NOVELS

.

• M 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Joshua A Cohen
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION LECTURE

The Self

NONFICTION LECTURE

• M 1:10 p.m.-3:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Leslie S Jamison
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

POETRY LECTURE

POETRY LECTURE

• T 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Jared D Fagen
  Info
• 3 points

MASTER CLASS

FIC - NONSTANDARD ENGLISH

.

• M 12:05 p.m.-2:05 p.m.
• Instructor: Maisy Card
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

FIRST PERSON & PLACE

.

• R 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Carina D Schorske
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

BUILDING A WRITING CAREER

.

• W 5:15 p.m.-7:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Michele Filgate
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

THE ART OF MURDER

.

• M 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
• Instructor: David M Gordon
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

THE COMPASS OF THE LARGE

.

• M 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Nathan Heller
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

KITCHEN TABLE TRANSLATION

.

• W 5:15 p.m.-7:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Madhu H Kaza
  Info
• 1.5 points