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.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Aamir A Azhar
  Info
• Instructor: Alexander T Kapsidelis
  Info
• Instructor: Rachel Raiola
  Info
• Instructor: Wyonia McLaurin
  Info
• Instructor: James A McGowan
  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.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Christian Kennedy
  Info
• Instructor: Sabrina L Qiao
  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.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Kai-Lilly K Karpman
  Info
• Instructor: Rose N Demaris
  Info
• 3 points

INTERMEDIATE FICTION WORKSHOP

Prerequisites: The departments 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. 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.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Heidi S Julavits
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Frances H Cha
  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.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Naomi M Bernstein
  Info
• 3 points

INTERMEDIATE NONFICTION WRKSHP

Prerequisites: The departments 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. 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.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: John Vincler
  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.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Rebecca S Levey
  Info
• 3 points

INTERMEDIATE POETRY WORKSHOP

Prerequisites: The departments 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. 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.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Emily Luan
  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

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Ryan P Cook
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO AUDIO STORYTELLING

LEC - INTRO TO AUDIO STOR

The medium of audio offers possibilities and challenges all its own: no images, no visual text, only sound. In this class, we will explore principles of the form both by studying and by making. Students can expect to leave with an understanding of the niceties of script writing and basic technical aspects of audio creation, as well as the beginnings of a portfolio of work. The class will encourage movement along a spectrum: you are encouraged to experiment in an unbounded way with audio as an art form, and to progress toward an understanding of how to create refined, public-facing work. 

While this class involves a fair amount of reading, much of what we will study and discuss is audio material. We will consider sound stories from the ground up – from folkloric oral traditions, to raw, naturally captured experimental pieces, to seemingly straightforward radio news segments, to highly polished narrative podcasts. 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 create a fully rounded “pilot episode” for a theoretical show, from 7 to 20 minutes in length. 

This is an intro class intended to open exploratory space across fields of interest, but writers in particular stand to benefit. Our lessons will focus most rigorously on the lexical mechanics of scripting: how to “tell” a story. Oral storytellers arguably understand suspense, humor and showmanship in ways only a live performer can. Even if you are a diehard writer of text for readers, you may find, once the class is over, that you have learned techniques that can translate across borders: your readers may benefit. Alternatively, you may discover that audio is the medium for you.

This class is split into two parts: each week, you’ll meet for a lecture; separately, you’ll meet again during the week for a discussion section, where you may be asked to share and workshop your work, to analyze outside audio, and generally go deep in ways you can’t in lecture. The class is intended 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 10:10 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Mallika Rao
  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.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Bonnie Chau
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Hauntings: Ghosts, Presences & Residues

Hauntings: Ghosts in Lit

“I believe
—
I know that ghosts
have
wandered the earth. Be with me always
—

take any form
—
drive me mad!”

 
—Emily Brontë
, Wuthering Heights

 

In this course we’ll expand our understanding of how writing is often the site of lingering, numinous, immaterial presences. We’ll begin with the tradition of
the ghost story
— a literary device beloved by writers for centuries across many genres. Beyond the consideration of the supernatural, we’ll also investigate more abstract capacities in which texts—and writers (and sometimes editors!)—are inevitably possessed by an
other
, a presence that lingers persistently, making itself known whether we welcome it or not. Memory and trauma are their own kinds of ghosts. Similarly, we’ll discover how traces of works by writers we admire, our teachers, even a specific text or image, can manifest as spectral forms inhabiting our work. We’ll address the complexities of those vestiges in terms of appropriation and originality—what Harold Bloom calls “the anxiety of influence.” Students will process and explore these ideas in both creative and analytical writings throughout the semester.

Course Books (available at Book Culture):

Eileen Myles
, Afterglow

Diana Khoi Nguyen,
Ghost Of

Lucie Brock Broido,

Trouble in Mind

Mary Reufle
, A Little White Shadow

Max Porter
, Grief is the Thing With Feathers

All other readings will be posted on Courseworks as PDFs.

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

LOST & FOUND IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

CG SEM - ANTHROPOCENE

We are living through a time of unprecedented change. This change is characterized by “solastalgia,” a word that describes a response to environmental loss in our daily lives which encompasses both pain and solace. In this course we will think seriously about the imperative to notice, pay attention, and remember that which is changing or disappearing. How might we work through and with loss, and how might we harness attention and awareness to envision different futures and new creative approaches? Students will consider the ways writers and other artists are working with losing and finding in a posthuman world across different forms, genres, and cultures. Will take an imaginative and interdisciplinary attitude to these questions, studying literary work alongside visual art, anthropology, psychology, literary theory, and science. We will consider extinction, elegy, landscape, geological temporalities, fragments, trash, and ghosts. In his call to arms,
The Great Derangement,
author Amitav Ghosh writes that climate change resists so many of the literary and artistic forms we currently possess. As such, he calls for an embrace of hybrid genres. Through reflections, critical essays, and their own creative work, students will think seriously about hybridity and the imaginative challenge of being alive in the world today.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Madeleine J Watts
  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 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Mallika Rao
  Info
• 3 points

IT'S COMPLICATED: WRITING AS A RELATIONS

CG SEM - WRIT AS RELATION

In this cross-genre class, we’ll explore writing process as relationship, one that reflects how we relate to both ourselves and the world. How do we bring the public back to the private space of the writing desk? How do our social, cultural, and political realities and histories influence our writing process? How is our relationship with our audience informed by our relationship with language? How can we be at play in structures of grammar and narrative without assimilating to what seems otherwise unrelatable? Seeing the sentence as a set of relationships, one tied to our human relations, we will write and revise with the hope of fostering an enduring relationship with the page. Coursework will include in-class writing exercises and 3 short (3-6 page) pieces.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Nina Sharma
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED 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. 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.

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Marie G Lee
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Halle Butler
  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: Benjamin Marcus
  Info
• 4 points

EXERCISES IN STYLE

TBA

• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Christine M Smallwood
  Info
• 3 points

Time Moves Both Ways

What is time travel, really? We can use a machine or walk through a secret door. Take a pill or fall asleep and wake up in the future. But when we talk about magic machines and slipstreams and Rip Van Winkle, we are also talking about memory, chronology, and narrative. In this seminar, we will approach time travel as a way of understanding "the Fourth Dimension" in fiction. Readings will range from the speculative to the strange, to the realism of timelines, flashbacks, and shifts in perspective. Coursework will include short, bi-weekly writing assignments, a completed short story, and a timeinflected adaptation. 

• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Hilary J Leichter
  Info
• 3 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

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

NEW WORLDS IN WRIT & VR

FIC SEM - WRIT & VR

Creating New Worlds in Writing and in VR is a generative, exploratory fiction seminar where we will read, analyze, and experiment with the process of building new worlds. We will ask, What are the narrative possibilities that unfold within these environments? What are the conventions of sci-fi and fantasy and how can they be used to critique and scrutinize our lives on earth, particularly, experiences of violence, environmental degradation, and racial, sexual, and gender-based oppression? We will use VR technology to help us model our own invented spaces. We will examine how to incorporate traditional literary elements, such as character and dialogue, into these dynamic environments.

• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Joss Lake
  Info
• 3 points

SENIOR NONFICTION 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. Senior Nonfiction Workshop

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Darby M Smith
  Info
• 4 points

LIFE STORIES

NF SEM - LIFE STORIES

In this seminar, we will target nonfiction that tells stories about lives: profiles, memoirs, and biographies. We will examine how the practice of this kind of nonfiction, and ideas about it, have evolved over the past 150 years. Along the way, we will ask questions about these nonfiction forms: How do reporters, memoirists, biographers, and critics make sense of their subjects? How do they create work as rich as the best novels and short stories? Can criticism explicate the inner life of a human subject? What roles do voice, point-of-view, character, dialogue, and plot—the traditional elements of fiction—play? Along the way, we’ll engage in issues of identity and race, memory and self, real persons and invented characters and we’ll get glimpses of such key publications as
The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, and The New York Review of Books.
Some writers we will consider: Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, Joseph Mitchell, Lillian Ross, James Agee, John Hersey, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal, Gay Talese, James Baldwin, Vladimir Nabokov, Janet Malcolm, Robert Caro, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The course regularly welcomes 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

TRUE CRIME

NF SEM - TRUE CRIME

The explosion of true crime programming in the past few years—from podcasts to documentaries to online communities sleuthing cold cases—would make you think that poring over real-life atrocities is a recent phenomenon. But in fact, our obsession with death, destruction, duplicity, and antisocial behavior is as old as humanity itself.

In this class, we will trace the origins of true crime in nonfiction literature in the United States from Puritanism to the present. We will see how the genre has developed and how its preoccupations reflect the zeitgeist. We will consider how race, gender, class, and other identities shape narratives around victims and victors, guilt and innocence. We will think broadly about what, exactly, crime is, not limiting ourselves to the obvious. We will also look at corruption, fraud, systemic discrimination.

Once (and sometimes still) considered a trash genre, we will read elevated works that turn that notion on its head. We will host guest speakers from the multifaceted perspectives true crime writing touches: victims, law enforcement, journalists, and convicts themselves. Since recent true crime reporting is such an expansive field that we can only begin to scratch the surface of in this class, students will present and analyze true crime artifacts to the class.

The centerpiece of the semester will be students reporting and writing on a real crime themselves. It is all too easy to critique the work of others at a comfortable distance when one has not entered the thorny fray oneself. Students will craft their own true crime writing project, interrogate their own motivations and interest, and present their findings to the class.

The subject matter of this class is disturbing in nature, and we will be looking at all manner of crimes from violent to white collar to sexual to social. Consider this a blanket trigger warning for each and every class. We will cultivate a safe space to think and feel through the crimes we examine and share ways to take care of ourselves. I am here as a resource and to help students navigate university resources as appropriate.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Elizabeth L Greenwood
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

SENIOR POETRY WORKSHOP

Prerequisites: The departments 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.

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

POETIC METER AND FORM

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. This course will investigate the uses of rhythmic order and disorder in English-language poetry, with a particular emphasis on formal elements in free verse. Through a close analysis of poems, well examine the possibilities of qualitative meter, and students will write original creative work within (and in response to) various formal traditions. Analytical texts and poetic manifestos will accompany our reading of exemplary poems. Each week, well study interesting examples of metrical writing, and Ill ask you to write in reponse to those examples. Our topics will include stress meter, syllable-stress meter, double and triple meter, rising and falling rhythms, promotion, demotion, inversion, elision, and foot scansion. Our study will include a greate range of pre-modern and modern writers, from Keats to W.D. Snodgrass, Shakespeare to Denise Levertov, Blake to James Dickey, Whitman to Louise Gluck etc. As writers, well always be thinking about how the formal choices of a poem are appropriate or inappropriate for the poems content. Well also read prose by poets describing their metrical craft.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Brionne Janae
  Info
• 3 points

Provocations in Twentieth-Century Poetic

Provocations in 20th C Po

This is a class about poetry and revolt. In a century of wars, unchecked proliferation of industrial and market systems in the continued legacy of settler-colonialism and the consolidation of state powers, does language still conduct with revolutionary possibilities? In this class, we will read manifestos, philosophical treatises, political tracts, literary polemics, poems, scores, and so on, as we consider poetry’s long-standing commitment to visionary practices that seek to liberate consciousness from the many and various structures of oppression. The term “poetry” is not limited to itself but becomes, in our readings, an open invitation to all adjacent experiments with and in the language arts. As such, we will look at the emergence of the international avant-gardes as well as a few student movements that populate and complicate the explorations of radical politics in the twentieth-century. In addition to our readings, students will be asked to produce creative responses for class discussion. Final projects will be provocations of their own design.

Required Texts:

Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto

Aimé Césaire: Notebook of A Return to the Native Land

Hilda Hilst: The Obscene Madame D

Marguerite Duras: Hiroshima Mon Amour

Guy Debord: Society of the Spectacle

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

MYSTERIES

Mystery once referred primarily to religious ideas: divine revelations, unknown rites, or the secret counsel of God. In the 20th century, the word began to be used in reference to more prosaic things, like whodunits. But what is coming to be known in a story? Why and what is a reader tempted to try to know, and what, today, can she possibly think is going to be revealed? When do the ‘tricks’ of withholding information annoy, and when do they compel? What are clues? What are solutions? In what ways can and do stories not straightforwardly written as mysteries use the tropes of mystery? And to what mechanisms of meaning-making do these tropes point?

In this course we will read with the intention of noticing how writers have borrowed, avoided, warped, translated, or disguised the structures of mystery. In this way, we will think about what techniques of mystery we might integrate into our own work. There will also be four five to seven page creative writing assignments, based around: the Clue, the Crime, the Search and the Detective.

In addition to the creative writing assignments, each student will be responsible for one presentation on a reading. The guidelines for presentations are appended after the sample syllabus below.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Rivka R Galchen
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 3 points

STORIES WITHIN STORIES

The science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin, in her sly, radical manifesto of sorts “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” proposes an idea of the “bottle as hero”: instead of conflict serving as our central organizing theory for narrative, she suggests that “the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag.” In other words: a container. These containers needn’t only apply to novels, I contend, but many types of literary narratives, whether they are classified as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or some hybrid of forms.

With this in mind, the generative cross-genre craft seminar Stories within Stories aims to uncover beautiful and practical approaches to gathering small narratives into a larger, cohesive whole. Readings will include Svetlana Alexievich’s devastating novels in voices, Percival Everett’s incendiary novel-within-a-novel
Erasure
, Ted Chiang’s mesmerizing historical fantasy, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s braided essays of restoration, Nâzım Hikmet’s epic in verse
Human Landscapes from My Country
, Renee Gladman’s cross-disciplinary approaches to writing and drawing, Yevgenia Belorusets’s dispatches from Ukraine, Edward Gauvin’s identity-memoir-in-contributors’ bios, Saidiya Hartman’s speculative histories, Gary Indiana’s gleefully acerbic roman à clef
Do Everything in the Dark
, Alejandro Zambra’s standardized test-inspired literature, W. G. Sebald’s saturnine essay-fiction, and Lisa Hsiao Chen’s meld of biography and autobiography, as well as fiction and nonfiction by Clarice Lispector, Vauhini Vara, Eileen Myles, Olga Tokarczuk, and Julie Hecht, among other texts. 

In addition, we will also read essays on craft and storytelling by Le Guin, Gladman, Zambra, Lydia Davis, Walter Benjamin, Garielle Lutz, Ben Mauk, and more. What we learn in this course we will apply to our own work, which will consist of regular creative writing responses drawn from the readings and a creative final project. Students will also learn to keep a daily journal of writing.

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

STORIES WITHIN STORIES

STORIES WITHIN STORIES DI

Required discussion section for WRIT UN3404 Stories Within Stories

The science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin, in her sly, radical manifesto of sorts “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” proposes an idea of the “bottle as hero”: instead of conflict serving as our central organizing theory for narrative, she suggests that “the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag.” In other words: a container. These containers needn’t only apply to novels, I contend, but many types of literary narratives, whether they are classified as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or some hybrid of forms.

With this in mind, the generative cross-genre craft seminar Stories within Stories aims to uncover beautiful and practical approaches to gathering small narratives into a larger, cohesive whole. Readings will include Svetlana Alexievich’s devastating novels in voices, Percival Everett’s incendiary novel-within-a-novel
Erasure
, Ted Chiang’s mesmerizing historical fantasy, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s braided essays of restoration, Nâzım Hikmet’s epic in verse
Human Landscapes from My Country
, Renee Gladman’s cross-disciplinary approaches to writing and drawing, Yevgenia Belorusets’s dispatches from Ukraine, Edward Gauvin’s identity-memoir-in-contributors’ bios, Saidiya Hartman’s speculative histories, Gary Indiana’s gleefully acerbic roman à clef
Do Everything in the Dark
, Alejandro Zambra’s standardized test-inspired literature, W. G. Sebald’s saturnine essay-fiction, and Lisa Hsiao Chen’s meld of biography and autobiography, as well as fiction and nonfiction by Clarice Lispector, Vauhini Vara, Eileen Myles, Olga Tokarczuk, and Julie Hecht, among other texts. 

In addition, we will also read essays on craft and storytelling by Le Guin, Gladman, Zambra, Lydia Davis, Walter Benjamin, Garielle Lutz, Ben Mauk, and more. What we learn in this course we will apply to our own work, which will consist of regular creative writing responses drawn from the readings and a creative final project. Students will also learn to keep a daily journal of writing.

• F 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• 0 points

FICTION WORKSHOP

• W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• W 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Instructor: James Canon
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Joshua Furst
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Jennifer George
  Info
• Instructor: Joanna B Hershon
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Madelaine Lucas
  Info
• Instructor: Daniel A Magariel
  Info
• 6 points

NONFICTION WORKSHOP

• R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• M 1:10 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• R 1:10 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• M 1:10 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Cristen A Beam
  Info
• Instructor: Lilly Dancyger
  Info
• Instructor: Susan Hartman
  Info
• Instructor: Leslie S Jamison
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Phillip Lopate
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Michelle Orange
  Info
• Instructor: Nadia Owusu
  Info
• Instructor: Benjamin Taylor
  Wikipedia Info
• 6 points

POETRY WORKSHOP

• T 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• T 5 p.m.-8 p.m.
• M 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Dorothea S Lasky
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Hafizah Geter
  Info
• Instructor: Lynn Melnick
  Info
• 6 points

SPECIAL PROJECTS WORKSHOP

• T 6:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Edwin Torres
  Info
• 6 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

• M 9 a.m.-10:15 a.m.
• Instructor: Dorothea S Lasky
  Wikipedia Info
• 0.5-6 points

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

THE WRITER AS TEACHER

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

• W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Alan Ziegler
  CULPA: 5 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

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

ART OF LYING: FICTION WORKSHOP

CROSS-GENRE SEMINAR

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

FICTION SEMINAR

FEMALE TROUBLE

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• F 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Elisa T Albert
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

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• M 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Hannah L Assadi
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

MAPPING LOS ANGELES

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• W 2 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Paul Beatty
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

THE ART OF PRACTICE

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• W 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Keri E Bertino
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

NONHUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

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

FICTION SEMINAR

THE EXCRUCIATING

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

FICTION SEMINAR

FITS & STARTS

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• M 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Catherine Lacey
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

THE PERIPHERAL WRITER

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

FICTION SEMINAR

SPECULATIVE FICTION

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• T 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Lincoln M Michel
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION

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• W 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Matthew Salesses
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

FICTION SEMINAR

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND

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

FICTION SEMINAR

ARCHITECTURE OF A STORY

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

FICTION SEMINAR

REVISION

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• T 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Matthew Salesses
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

PROFILES

.

• T 1:10 p.m.-3:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Lis Harris
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

THE WRITER AS CRITIC

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• M 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Ruth Franklin
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

CULTURAL MEMOIR

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

NONFICTION SEMINAR

THE AMERICAN ESSAY

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• T 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Phillip Lopate
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

FIELD: OBSV. PRACTICE

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• W 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Wendy Walters
  Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

THE PURSUIT WRTG RESEARCH

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• M 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Brenda Wineapple
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION SEMINAR

US AND OTHERS

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

POETRY SEMINAR

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• T 1:10 p.m.-3:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Timothy B Donnelly
  Info
• 3 points

POETRY SEMINAR

THE PERIOD STYLE

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

POETRY SEMINAR

PROVOCATIONS IN 20THC POETICS

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• T 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Lynn Xu
  Info
• 3 points

POETRY SEMINAR

THE END OF SOLITUDE

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• F 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Joshua Edwards
  Info
• 3 points

POETRY SEMINAR

.

• R 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• W 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• M 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Alice Quinn
  Info
• Instructor: Emily F Skillings
  Info
• Instructor: Asiya Wadud
  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

• F 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Kimberly W Traube
  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

SCIENCE FICTION POETICS

TRANSLATION SEMINAR

• T 2:10 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Katrine O Jensen
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION LECTURE

THE PICARESQUE NOVEL

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• R 1:15 p.m.-3:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Adam Z Wilson
  Info
• 3 points

NONFICTION LECTURE

The Self

NONFICTION LECTURE

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

MASTER CLASS

THE TRAUMA PLOT

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• F 10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Gila Ashtor
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

WRITING CHILDHOOD

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• T 3:20 p.m.-5:20 p.m.
• Instructor: Lisa Brennan-Jobs
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

SATIRE AND WAR

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• F 1:10 p.m.-3:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Dennard T Dayle
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

GOING ROGUE

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• M 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Charlee C Dyroff
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

GENRES OF CRITICISM

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• MTWRF 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Merve G Emre
  Info
• 1.5 points

MASTER CLASS

MEMORIES NEVER DIE

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• R 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.
• Instructor: Caleb Gayle
  Info
• 1.5 points