English 010.302Creative Writing: Fiction and Poetry Lynn Levin W 2:00-5:00
English 010.303Creative Writing Courtney Zoffness T 1:30-4:30
English 112.301 Fiction Writing Workshop Max Apple T 1:30-4:30
English 112.302 Fiction Writing Workshop Sam Apple W 3:30-6:30
English 113.301 Poetry Writing Workshop Gregory Djanikian T 1:30-4:30
English 115.301 Advanced Fiction Writing Karen Rile M 2:00-5:00 Cancelled
English 115.601 Advanced Fiction Writing Kathryn Watterson T 5:30-8:30
English 116.401 Screenwriting Kathleen DeMarco T 1:30-4:30
English 117.301 The Arts and Popular Culture Anthony DeCurtis R 1:30-4:30
English 130.401 Advanced Screenwriting Kathleen DeMarco M 2:00-5:00
English 130.402 Advanced Screenwriting Andy WolkF 2:00-5:00
English 135.301 Creative Nonfiction Writing Max Apple R 1:30-4:30
English 135.302 Creative Nonfiction Writing Marion Kant W 3:30-6:30
English 135.305 Creative Nonfiction Writing Valerie RossTR 10:30-12:00
English 135.601 Creative Nonfiction Writing Robert Strauss M 5:00-8:00
English 145.301 Advanced Nonfiction Writing Paul Hendrickson T 1:30-4:30
English 145.302 Advanced Nonfiction Writing Lise Funderburg W 3:30-6:30
English 156.301 Telling Stories Out of Photographs Paul Hendrickson W 2:00-5:00
English 157.301 Introduction to Journalistic Writing Tom Ferrick M 2:00-5:00
English 158.301 Advanced Journalistic Writing Dick Polman M 2:00-5:00
English 159.301 Political Writing in the Blog Age Dick Polman W 2:00-5:00
English 165.401 Writing through Culture and Art Kenny Goldsmith R 1:30-4:30
English 415.640 Ut Pictura Poesis: A Writing Workshop Rebekah Zhuraw W 5:30-8:30
English 415.641 Learning from the Harlem Renaissance:
A Writing Workshop Kathryn Watterson R 5:30-8:10
English 010.301 Creative Writing Burnham
In this course, we'll explore the possibilities of two genres: creative non-fiction and poetry. We'll begin with some exercises that will help us generate lots (and lots) of material, material that we'll then shape into personal essays and poems. We'll read, and re-read, essays and poems that will inspire, or annoy, or cajole us into writing our own pieces. You won't get topics assigned: rather, you'll be asked to find your own subjects from the exploratory writing. You may find yourself writing about basketball, coffee, keys, bad choices, speeding tickets, disappointment, red dresses, scars, repetition, hair, mosh pits or running twenty miles. We'll do a lot of collaborative work in class. At the end of the semester, you'll turn in a portfolio of at least fifteen pages of completed work, plus sketches and drafts. If you have questions, please feel free to write me: dburnham@english.upenn.edu
Time: TR 10:30-12:00
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English 010.302 Creative Writing: Fiction and Poetry Levin
This workshop-style class is an introduction to the pleasures of the writing process. Students will benefit from in-depth readings and constructive critical support in a class that fosters a community of writers. We will spend half the semester writing poems, and the other half writing fiction. Some of each meeting will be devoted to reading poems or a short story by established authors, with the emphasis on reading as writers rather than scholars. Experimentation and revision will be encouraged. Class participation and attendance are vital. We will have some brief in-class writing exercises and a variety of take-home assignments designed to help students generate and shape work. Students will turn in a final portfolio of 15 or so pages, which will include both poetry and prose. We will also write some brief (up to one page) responses to work read and written in class.
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 010.303 Creative Writing: Memory: Fact & Fiction Zoffness
This course explores the bridges and boundaries between fiction and nonfiction. Students will work to translate their own recollections and experiences into narrative prose - first as a creative, nonfictional essay, and next as a short story. Since good writers are attentive, critical readers, we will also study a range of essays and stories, from the classic works of Vladimir Nabakov to the genre-defiant Tim O'Brien to the recently popularized James Frey. This workshop-style seminar depends on active participation, in-class and take-home writing assignments, formal critiques of one another's work, and commitment to the process of revision. Students will turn in final portfolios of 15 or so pages, based on a relevant topic of their choosing.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English 112.301 Fiction Writing Workshop Max Apple
The class will be conducted as a seminar. Every student will write three stories during the semester; each story will be discussed by the group. The instructor will, from time to time, suggest works of fiction that he hopes will be illustrative and inspirational but there will be no required books. Attendance and participation are essential.
Students who have completed and taken pleasure in a fiction writing course need not submit writing samples. Others please submit brief samples to: maxapple1@comcast.net.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English 112.302 Fiction Writing Workshop Sam Apple
Text: Not yet determined for this semester
This is a course for students interested in serious fiction writing-literary or genre or somewhere in between-but always seriously and always with a mind to perfecting the work at hand. To that end, we will read short fiction from an anthology and some-very little-"instructional" material. We will discuss the fictions primarily as writers, as opposed to literary "analyzers." We will talk about why the stories engage us and why not. We will identify their "prime movers," that is, the elements in a narrative that urge us-or not-through them. Are the characters interesting and consistent (where this question applies, usually to conventional, realistic fiction as opposed to metafiction, where the question is often irrelevant)? Is there sufficient movement (action, plot, story)? Can we appreciate the art of the narration's technique? Is there a discernable style that we can appreciate?
We will ask the same questions of student work during workshops, which will begin early in the term. Workshop pieces can be revised-you are expected to revise everything, particularly your major assignments-and then submitted as your graded writing assignments. Students will be expected to critique and write short responses to all workshop pieces under discussion.
Students will have their work critiqued by the class at least twice during the semester. At the end of the semester, students will be asked to submit a minimum of 20 revised pages.
Throughout the term, students will be required to write three brief scenes, length open, all of which can be used-reworked, let's hope-in the longer requirements. These are due: 4th week, 7th week, and 10th week. Naturally, a scene can be dialogue-driven (almost all dialogue) or, at the other extreme, completely exposition (no dialogue). If the scene does not come at the beginning of a narrative, then you will need to write a brief set-up as an introduction to the scene. Permission required: please email a sample of your work directly to samapple@gmail.com.
Class participation is vital and expected.
Time: W 3:30-6:30
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English 113.301 Poetry Writing Workshop Djanikian
A course for students who have had some experience writing poetry but who wish to improve the rhythm and expressiveness of their language, and who may want to see the things of this world in new relationships and, perhaps, with a broader vision. Students will be asked to write every week, and to discuss and respond to the works of classmates and established poets. A final portfolio of revised poems will be required at the end of the course. Students interested in taking the class should submit three poems to Greg Djanikian via email at djanikia@writing.upenn.edu. Permit is required from the instructor.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English 115.301 Advanced Fiction Writing Rile
Cancelled
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 115.601 Advanced Fiction Writing Watterson
This workshop will will explore the elements of fiction, from the focus on details to reveal the larger world of the story, to character development, dialogue, point of view, style and voice. We will mine a deeper understanding of the craft by reading short stories and excerpts from a wide range of writers. In addition to in-class writing, students will be asked to maintain writing journals, participate in workshop discussions and peer review, and write and revise work on a weekly basis. Please submit a brief writing sample to: kwatters@sas.upenn.edu
Time: T 5:30-8:30
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English 116.401 Screenwriting DeMarco
This is a workshop-style course for those who have thought they had a terrific idea for a movie but didn't know where to begin. The class will focus on learning the basic tenets of classical dramatic structure and how this (ideally) will serve as the backbone for the screenplay of the aforementioned terrific idea. Each student should, by the end of the semester, have at least thirty pages of a screenplay completed. Classic and not-so-classic screenplays will be required reading for every class, and students will also become acquainted with how the business of selling and producing one's screenplay actually happens. Students will be admitted on the basis of an application by email briefly describing their interest in the course. kathydemarco@writing.upenn.edu
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English 117.301 The Arts and Popular Culture DeCurtis
"Writing About the Arts" is a workshop-oriented course that will concentrate on all aspects of writing about artistic endeavor, including criticism, reviews, profiles, interviews and essays. For the purposes of this class, the arts will be interpreted broadly, and students will be able -- and, in fact, encouraged -- to write about both the fine arts and popular culture. Students will be doing a great deal of writing throughout the course, but the main focus will be a 3000-word feature story about an artist or arts organization in Philadelphia (or another location approved by the instructor) that will involve extensive reporting, interviews and research. Potential subjects can range from a local band to a museum, from a theater group to a novelist -- all of which students have written about in previous classes.
Class meetings will include detailed discussions of the students' own writing, as well as that of the instructor and other writers whose work appears in magazines, newspapers and journals. A considerable effort will be made to have the course be as professionally focused and "real time" as possible, so current stories in the media will frequently be the subject of class discussion and critique. A number of writers, critics, journalists, editors and other media types will visit the class to share their work and experiences with the students, and to participate in the discussions. It should be emphasized that, in discussing the work of fellow students, courtesy and respect will be as much required as candor.
Those interested in taking the course should email as soon as possible one or two samples of their best prose to Anthony DeCurtis at ADeCurtis@aol.com . Applicants can also mail their work directly to the instructor at: 875 West End Avenue, Apt 10G, New York, NY 10025. Also include your name, SS#, undergraduate class, and the telephone number where you can be reached. Permit is required by the instructor.
Time: R 1:30-4:30
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English 130.401 Advanced Screenwriting DeMarco
This is a workshop-style course for students who have completed a screenwriting class, or have a draft of a screenplay they wish to improve. Classes will consist of discussing student's work, as well as discussing relevant themes of the movie business and examining classic films and why they work as well as they do. Classic and not-so-classic screenplays will be required reading for every class in addition to some potentially useful texts like What Makes Sammy Run? Students will be admitted on the basis of an application by email. Please send a writing sample (in screenplay form), a brief description of your interest in the course and your goals for your screenplay, and any relevant background or experience. Applications should be sent to kathydemarco@writing.upenn.edu
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 130.402 Advanced Screenwriting Wolk
The Creative Writing Program in the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) and the Cinema Studies Program are co-sponsoring a Fall 2007 advanced screenwriting workshop to be taught by screenwriter/director ANDY WOLK. Students will develop a screenplay in the course which will focus on the nuts-and-bolts of structure, plot, character and dialogue and how a story is told visually. This course offered as part of the Avnet Advanced Screenwriting Project.
Wolk has written screenplays for every studio, and teleplays and pilots for every network including HBO'S Emmy-winning FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. He received the Writer's Guild Award for NATICA JACKSON starring Michelle Pfeiffer and was nominated for the Award for the movies CRIMINAL JUSTICE and DELIBERATE INTENT, each of which he also directed along with episodes of many shows including THE SOPRANOS, WITHOUT A TRACE and THE PRACTICE. He has served as a Creative Advisor and Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute's Screenwriting Labs.
Wolk lives and works in Los Angeles. He will make at least three extended visits to Penn. Students must be available for meetings on Thursday evening, all day Friday, and Saturday morning during these three periods which are tentatively set for:
September 6-8
October 25-27
November 29 - December 1
When Mr. Wolk is not at Penn, the class will meet Fridays with his teaching assistant and will confer with Mr. Wolk by phone/conference call. Mr. Wolk will also work individually with each student by email and phone.
Students will be admitted to this course by permission of the instructor. Applications should be sent to Mingo Reynolds at: mingo@writing.upenn.edu
The deadline for submitting applications is Friday, March 30. Students will be notified of their status by April 13. Applications should include: a short note describing your interest and relevant experience (coursework and otherwise) and a brief (8 pages max.) sample of your writing. Those with resumes can send one also, but it is not required.
This is the fourth in a series of advanced screenwriting courses offered by eminent working screenwriters through a collaboration of Cinema Studies and Creative Writing. Generous funding for this project has been provided by Jon Avnet (C'71).
Time: F 2:00-5:00
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English 135.301 Creative Nonfiction Writing Max Apple
Each student will write three essays and the class will offer criticism and appreciation of each. There will be some discussion of and instruction in the form, but the course will be based on the student writing. Attendance and participation required.
Time: R 1:30-4:30
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English 135.302 Creative Nonfiction Writing: Writing Your Travels Kant
In this course students will learn to observe and record what they see when they travel. They will explore a popular form of writing and practice it in their own daily activities. The familiar will become strange and new as they return home, walk through the campus, visit Center City or explore an ethnic community in order to write accounts of what they see. They will, in the process, learn about themselves but without that preoccupation with the self alone that marks much student writing. They will see themselves in the mirror of "the other". The course will explore famous works by travelers who visited the USA as a means to see the familiar through foreign eyes, such works as Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" (1835), Charles Dickens' "On America and the Americans" (ed. Michael Slater), G.K. Chesterton's "What I Saw in America" (1922). Jonathan Raban's "Old Glory: An American Voyage" (1981) and the expatriate who returns like Bill Bryson's "I am a Stranger here myself: Notes on returning to America after twenty years" (1999).
Time: M 3:30-6:30
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English 135.305 Creative Nonfiction Writing Ross Ross
This course is intended for capable writers who possess the maturity and temperament to work successfully as peer tutors at Penn. The course emphasizes the development of tutors' own writing through the process of collaborative peer-criticism, individual conferences, and intensive sessions on writing, from mechanics to style. The class meets twice weekly; tutors also work two hours weekly in the Writing Center or elsewhere, and confer regularly in small groups or one-on-one meetings with the instructor. Tutors are required to write five short papers, eight one-page peer reviews, and two responses to readings. Additionally, students keep a journal and give two class presentations. CWIC-affiliated course.
Time: TR 10:30-12:00
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English 135.601 Creative Nonfiction Writing Strauss
Do you feel you have a fresh perspective on life's goings-on? Did you look at a building today and wonder what's going on inside? Is there an event, a person, an idea that you think has been misunderstood, misinterpreted, under-appreciated? If so, come and investigate with me. We will spend the semester doing our best to write out of that paper bag that is made up of our curiosity, our observations and our prejudices. The best creative non-fiction explains, but it also makes us run to learn more about the subject. We will have a special emphasis on humor, perhaps the most difficult type of writing to pull off. We'll look at different definitions and styles of humor, from Woody Allen's to Mark Twain's to, with good fortune, your own. We will be reading some of the best magazine and newspaper writing of the last century, and hopefully be writing some stuff like it as well. We will talk about essays, arts reviews, general features and even sportswriting. Students will be required to write at least two pieces of magazine length (2000 words or so) and several shorter pieces. The longer pieces will be presented to the class for workshop criticism.
Time: M 5:00-8:00
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English 145.301 Advanced Nonfiction Writing Hendrickson
This is an intensive course in creative nonfiction--both the reading and practice of it. It's seeking to look at fact as literature. Think of it as the art of fact: using reportage and some of the literary techniques of fiction in the service of compelling, true, real-life stories--sometimes your own story. The core goal is to get a circle of student writers writing, and have them willing to share the work aloud in class. Implicit in this is the willingness to suffer some gentle slings of criticism. We will be examining models of nonfiction from present and past word masters: Annie Dillard, E.B. White, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Michael Herr, Tim O'Brien, John Hersey, James Agee, George Orwell, Thomas Lynch. Ever heard this last name? Lynch is a Michigan undertaker. He writes like a dream. Good writing is where you find it; sometimes it will be about the art of taking folks under.
We will attempt different forms of creative nonfiction, starting with the personal essay or family memoir. Then we'll move on to something deeply reported and/or researched--something that's essentially outside oneself. For this piece it's likely a student will travel into the nearby world and observe something: or interview someone (or several someones). The piece--and these are always to be thought of as "pieces," not as "papers"--could be a profile of a local personality or athlete. It could be an extended scene, say, of a jazz club, or of a hospital emergency room, or of a homeless shelter, or of the Reading Terminal Market. The student will have the primary say in what he or she wishes to tackle. But the instructor will approve the story idea and will monitor and help guide its development. Although not a direct aim of the workshop, it's slimly possible someone will emerge with a piece of nonfiction that any professional magazine or newspaper editor in his or her right mind would be proud to publish. This has happened in previous workshops.
Those interested in taking the course should submit as soon as possible one or two samples of their best prose (paper copies only, no electronic submissions will be accepted) to Paul Hendrickson, Fisher-Bennett Hall, Room 234 (please slide work under the door if no one is in the office). Also include your name, last four digits of SS#, undergraduate class, e-mail address and telephone number where you can be reached. Permit is required by the instructor. Those chosen for the course will be notified by the end of the current term.
Time: T 1:30-4:30
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English 145.302 Advanced Nonfiction Writing Funderburg
This course will be organized around short in-class and weekly writing assignments, readings and exercises, some of which will be looked at in workshops. Additionally, there will be one longer, feature-length piece that will connect the writer to the outside world and will go through an intensive drafting and revision process. While personal investment and perspective are welcomed in all the writing for this class, the long assignment will focus outward, on an event, person, place or topic that will allow the inclusion of reported contentÖso that art and fact can meet on the page.
This class is for the brave of heart, for people willing to experiment and push themselves in their writing and ñ heaven help us ñ receive with open minds the constructive criticism of their peers and instructor.
Prerequisites for this class are a curiosity about the world, a willingness to reflect, and a desire to honestly capture the wonder, confusion, uplift, terror, and hilarity that surround us all.
Please email a sample of your writing to lf@lisefunderburg.com
Time: W 3:30-6:30
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English 156.301 Telling Stories Out of Photographs Hendrickson
A new creative writing course built entirely around the use of photographs, and the crafting of compelling nonfiction narratives from them. The essential concept will be to employ photographs as storytelling vehicles. So we will be using curling, drugstore-printed Kodak shots from our own family albums. We will be using searing and famous images from history books. We will be taking things from yesterday's newspaper. We will even be using pictures that were just made by the workshop participants outside the campus gates with a disposable camera from CVS or with their own sophisticated digital Nikon. In all of this, there will be one overriding aim: to achieve memorable, full-bodied stories. To locate the strange, evocative, storytelling universes that are sealed inside the four rectangular walls of a photograph. They are always there, if you know how to look. It's about the quality of your noticing, the intensity of your seeing.
Writers as diverse as the poet Mark Strand and the novelist Don DeLillo and the memoirist Wright Morris have long recognized the power of a photograph to launch a story. In this course we are going to employ memory and imagination to launch our stories, but most of all we are going to make use of fact-everything that can be found out, gleaned, uncovered, dug up, stumbled upon. Because first and last, this is nonfiction, this is the art of reported fact. So a lot of this class will go forward using the tools and techniques of journalism: good, old-fashioned reporting and research, legwork. And turning that reporting into writing gold.
A photograph represents time stopped in a box. It is a kind of freeze-frame of eternity. It is stopped motion, in which the clock has seemed to hold its breath. Often, the stories inside of photographs turn out to be at surprising odds with what we otherwise thought, felt, imagined.
Say, for instance, that you hunger to enter the photographic heart of this youthful, handsome, dark-haired man-who is your father-as he leans now against the gleaming bumper of a 1951 Pontiac. It was three decades before you were born. The moment is long buried and forgotten in your collective family's past-and yet in another way, it is right here before you, on this photosensitive surface. Whether the figure in the photograph is alive or deceased, you are now going to try with all of your writing and reporting might to "walk back in." Almost literally. You are going to achieve a story about this moment, with a beginning, middle, and end.
"Every great photograph has a secret," a noted critic once said. An essayist for Time magazine once wrote: "All great photographs have lives of their own. But sometimes they can be false as dreams."
Candidates for the course are asked to submit as soon as possible one or two samples of their best creative nonfiction prose to Paul Hendrickson, Fisher-Bennett Hall, Room 234 (please slide work under the door if no one is in the office). Paper copies only, no electronic submissions. Be sure to include name, phone number, email address, the last four digits of your social security number.
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 157.301 Introduction to Journalistic Writing Tom Ferrick
This class will teach the essentials of journalism. It will deal mostly with the fundamentals: How to report and write the news. How to conduct interviews and research a story. How to write profiles and news features. We will also cover more advanced topics, such as writing columns, criticism and opinion pieces. The emphasis will be on writing for daily newspapers, but the course will be of great value to anyone considering a career in television, magazine or online journalism. Even those planning careers outside journalism will benefit from the course's focus on mastering clear, concise and compelling writing.
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 158.301 Advanced Journalistic Writing Polman
This is a how-to course for talented aspiring writers -- how to write well in the real world; how to hook the reader and sustain interest; how to develop the journalistic skills that enable a writer to gather, sift and report information. The instructor will share his own real-world experience, as a full-time working journalist for the past three decades. He will be joined on occasion by eminent journalists- including several star journalists from the New York Times- who will address the class and appear at mandatory forums to be held at the Kelly Writers House.
Even though students will read and critique some famous practitioners of non-fiction writing-among them, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Michael Herr, Truman Capote and Richard Ben Cramer-along with contemporary newspaper storytellers that include the instructor (a national correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer), the emphasis will be on the students' own writing.
The goal is to inspire students to tap their own potential, gain fresh insights, and feel comfortable enough to share their assigned work-both short and long pieces-with others in the class over the span of the semester. Students will write all kinds of non-fiction pieces, from personal memoirs to long-form features about anything from the Philadelphia scene to campus issues and events. The topics are less important than the craftsmanship; anything can be a great read if it's written and reported well.
Journalistic issues, both practical and ethical, will also be addressed-among them: how to decide who to interview, and how to handle an interviewee; how to use (and not use) the Internet; when to use (or not use) anonymous sources.
Spaces in this special course are strictly limited. Students will be admitted to the workshop on the basis of an application: students should submit several writings, along with a thoughtful message explaining their interest (and any relevant background or experience) by email to: polman@writing.upenn.edu.
Time: M 2:00-5:00
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English 159.301
Political Writing in the Blog Age
Polman
A primer on writing about U.S. politics, in an era of major technological
upheaval and serious voter polarization. Today's 24/7, wi-fi'd, blogging
environment - along with the rise of new conservative media - are changing
the ways that writers cover politics and deliver the information. The course
will put all these trends in a historical context, tracing the changes that
have occurred during the four decades since Theodore H. White wrote "The
Making of the President 1960." Students will write in different formats,
including: the traditional straight story, commentary, and blogs.
Outstanding and controversial work, from writers such as author Richard Ben
Cramer and Hunter S. Thompson, will be studied. The course, taught by a
veteran reporter of four presidential campaigns, is also valuable for
followers of politics who want to become more discerning readers.
Students will be admitted to the workshop on the basis of an application:
students should submit several writings, along with a thoughtful message explaining their interest (and any relevant
background or experience) by email to: polman@writing.upenn.edu.
Time: W 2:00-5:00
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English 165.401
Writing through Culture and Art
Goldsmith
Over the past few years, sound art has been present in exhibitions all over the world. And it's not only in galleries that
this phenomena is taking place: vast repositories of sound art are sprouting all over the web, offering hundreds of hours
worth of MP3s; even rock stars like Sonic Youth are releasing discs of themselves performing works of sound art, introducing
this tradition to new generations. But a closer look shows us that this isn't a new trend at all. Since the beginning of the
twentieth century, artists have involved themselves in sound. Be it recordings of their work, performances, or installations,
the art world has always been a noisy place. The desire to reintegrate the arts, in which sound in its manifold forms has
played a significant part, has taken artists in the 20th century far beyond the traditional purview of painting and sculpture
to their own bodies and voices, to time and space, and to the environment.
This year-long class, given as a collaboration of CPCW and the ICA, will explore facets of sound art through the medium
of
creative writing. Students will be encouraged to develop correspondent methods of responding to the ICA's exhibitions,
specifically a large retrospective of sound art organized by artist Christian Marclay. The class will involve monthly trips to
New York City to attend concerts, museums and lectures. The students will have access to the most cutting-edge artists today
via class visits and studio visits. English 165 will culminate in a publication co-sponsored by the ICA and CPCW.
Permission by instructor only. Spaces strictly limited. To express interest, leave a note with R. J. Bernocco at the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing at 3808 Walnut Street.
Time: R 1:30-4:30
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English 415.640
Ut Picture Poesis: A Writing Workshop
Zhuraw
Images and the figures of speech called imagery bring language to life and abstract ideas to light in the mind. They are what
create the physical world of fiction and convey the subjective realities of poems and the arguments of essays. In this
workshop we will explore the intersection between writing and the visual arts suggested by Simonides de Keos in the 5th
century B.C.E. ("Poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry") and echoed above in Horace's famous dictum. We
will look at some of the theory behind the "sister arts"ùand the two forms of description which unite them: literal and
figurative. Mostly we will examine and play with the language of images and the transfer of categories of meaning which
metaphor and its attendant likenesses govern, along with the image's great project: animation--the ultimate sense of the
real. We will read poems, stories, portions of plays, and essays by writers as diverse as Seamus Heaney, Kate Chopin, Milan
Kundera, Annie Dillard, Yusef Komunyakka, Shakespeare, Susan Sontag, and Susun Minot. Students will write weekly and
participate in weekly peer review. Revision is expected. This is a workshop that will teach writers of all genres to write
persuasively and evocatively.
Time: W 5:30-8:30
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English 415.641
Learning from the Harlem Renaissance: A Writing Workshop
Watterson
The Harlem Renaissance was a period that highlighted African-American intellectual, literary and artistic brilliance and
expressed African-American experience in all its variety and complexity. In this seminar, we will explore the works of
writers, visual artists, composers, performers, jazz and blues musicians, as well as the personal and political context in
which their works were created. Since there is much debate as to the exact dates of the movement, we will focus on the period
between 1920 and 1940. We will learn how artists of the Harlem Renaissance were inspired by earlier works, and how their
creations have influenced art for the remainder of the 20th Century and still today. Among others, we will familiarize
ourselves with W.E.B. Dubois, Jean Tomer, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, Paul Robeson,
Beauford Delaney, Bessie Smith, and Duke Ellington. In better understanding these artists and the range and impact of their
work, students will gain a richer understanding of the intellectual, literary, artistic, and cultural history of the United
States, as well as African Americans' integral contributions to that history. Students will research and make presentations
inspired by this period. Requirements include: 100-150 pages of reading per week; bi-weekly writing responses (3-5 pgs) to
readings and films, personal writing journals, individual and group presentations, research, and final essays or short stories
(15 pgs).
Time: R 5:30-8:10
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