Courses for Spring 2020

In this course, students will read contemporary (and not so contemporary) writers such as Diski, Elkins, MacFarlane, Morris, Parker, Smith, and more. Students will be introduced to the craft of writing through discussions of genres, styles, techniques, and themes. Students will explore different kinds of fictional and nonfictional approaches, from reporting, travel writing, nature descriptions, and autobiography. Throughout the semester students will discuss weekly essays in workshops. Students will write weekly pieces of ca. 800 words. Criticism and editing will be vital components of workshop discussions.

In this class, we will read and write personal essays and poems. The class will follow the familiar workshop structure, alternating between critical discussions and collective conversation about your own work as we respond to each other’s writing in order to create new drafts. Emphasis will be on revision, camaraderie, and surprise. We’ll read a range of moving verse and prose by some of the most exciting contemporary writers as well as classic figures in literature.

This is a course for students who are interested in exploring a variety of approaches to creative writing, including poetry, memoir, and hybrid texts. Readings will include poetry and memoir, and will represent various approaches to writing from life, including works by: Martín Adán, Roberto Bolaño, Hoa Ngugen, Renee Gladman, and Lyn Hejinian, among others. Students will be encouraged to discover new territory, to cultivate a sense of play, to collaborate, and to unhinge conventional assumptions regarding what is possible in writing.

In this creative writing writing workshop we’ll focus on the politics, poetics and powers of naming while we craft our own original works of poetry and creative nonfiction. We will read both historical and contemporary writing from a number of different movements and schools, including the New York School, New Narrative, Confessional, and New Sincerity, whose writers choose to name names as part of the writing process. We’ll consider what acknowledging coterie and in-crowds accomplishes for the writer, and we’ll ask what happens when the company we keep is named—or not named—in our work. We will ask: if proper poems and narratives were long written without proper names, what does it mean for a writer to look toward coterie and kinship and popular culture as part of the writing process? Is gossip a legitimate form of art? We will focus on the syntax of names as a frame with which to think about the works we read and the pieces we write. Students will be expected to complete regular writing and reading assignments, to workshop the writing of their peers, and to complete a final portfolio of original writing.

“Question your tea spoons,” Georges Perec advised, or “that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us.” In asking questions of an object like a tea (or coffee) spoon, a solid thing we may not notice as it moves from hand to cup, writers reveal the ordinary as a realm of endless detail, fascination, and complexity, not to mention strangeness. In this workshop-based course, we will follow Perec’s maxim and pursue astonishing encounters with the stuff of daily life, the raw material for writing be it poetry or prose or something in between. Students will experiment with forms of ordinary (and sometimes daily) life writing and will study texts depicting ordinary life from various perspectives and in multiple genres. Likely authors include Perec, Gertrude Stein, Harryette Mullen, Nicholson Baker, Jena Osman, and Patricia Hampl, among others. Composition and revision are the main tasks of this course. Requirements include: short, 1- or 2-page pieces due each week, engaged participation (including peer review), and a final portfolio of work from the semester.

This is a course for students who are interested in exploring a variety of approaches to creative writing, including poetry, memoir, and hybrid texts. Readings will include poetry and memoir, and will represent various approaches to writing from life, including works by: Martín Adán, Roberto Bolaño, Hoa Ngugen, Renee Gladman, and Lyn Hejinian, among others. Students will be encouraged to discover new territory, to cultivate a sense of play, to collaborate, and to unhinge conventional assumptions regarding what is possible in writing.

Brush up your backstory and polish your point of view! In this generative, interactive workshop we’ll investigate literary fiction technique through a series of directed prompts that will produce a portfolio of work ranging from fully realized stories to quirky experiments worthy of McSweeney’s (e.g., The Bad Writing Competition). Course readings are chosen from a diverse selection of contemporary fiction to illustrate varied approaches to the techniques we’ll explore. You’ll read, write, and workshop every week. Think of this class as CrossFit for fiction writers. This class is appropriate for experienced fiction writers of every level, from intermediate through advanced. Come prepared to take creative risks, work hard, and bring your technique to the next level. Admission to this class is by instructor permit. Please email me at krile@writing.upenn.edu with a brief introduction, plus a sample of your fiction as a .doc or .pdf attachment.

Common fiction writing rules—Focus on imagery! Hook the reader! Don’t use too many exclamation points!—can act as important guardrails for writers new to the form. But as our writing instincts develop, those rules often become constraints that prevent us from pursuing strange, exciting developments in our work. In this course, we will read and discuss literature that breaks the rules of conventional fiction by defying genre, mixing media, and troubling our understandings of “standard english.” Readings will include work by Ishmael Reed, George Saunders, Fran Ross, Karen Russell, Marlon James, and Lydia Davis, among others. Our classes will function as a kind of writing lab, a space where students will do weekly writing that challenges them to experiment with the content and form of their writing, and helps them develop their own writing aesthetic.

Poetry is where the personal is always political, especially when it’s not. Often described as “the art of language,” poetry is the oldest literary genre, one that can be practiced in thousands of different ways; it is both the most traditional of art forms and the one most given to innovation. This class will both examine the constituent elements that come together to make a poem as well as sample the many types of expression and social investigation poetry makes possible: sonnets, performance poetry, documentary, visual poetry, conceptual writing, found language, prose poems, haiku, collaboration. Students will write poems weekly, build a personal anthology of poems important to them, maintain a journal, etc. There will be a lot of reading. Prior experience with poetry is not a requirement; nor is a major in English.

This course is designed as a hands-on workshop in the art and craft of dramatic writing. It involves the study of new plays, the systematic exploration of such elements as story making, plot, structure, theme, character, dialogue, setting, etc.; and most importantly, the development of students’ own short plays through a series of written assignments and in-class exercises.

Since a great deal of this work takes place in class—through lectures, discussions, spontaneous writing exercises, and the reading of student work—weekly attendance and active participation is crucial. At the end of the semester, students’ plays are read in a staged reading environment by professional actors.

The class will be conducted as a seminar. Every student will write four 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 active class participation are essential. Permit from the instructor is required. Please submit a brief writing sample to maxapple1@verizon.net.

A novel can provide a writer with endless space, and while that may be freeing or daunting, there is a common misconception that because one is writing a ‘novel,’ the story must be ‘epic’ and thus long. In this course, students will explore the medium of the novella. A novella is defined as a long story or a short novel. It is an ideal form in which an narrative can expand without compromising elements of craft. How can we efficiently create a sense of world and fullness? How can we capture character in the lightest of brushstrokes? Lean prose is something students will study and learn to adapt in their own writing. Students will be expected to read six novellas and to participate in weekly workshop. Authors will include Joyce, Spark, Hempel, Murata, Torres, and Kaysen. Course requirements are a novella outline, a novella draft of approximate 40-50 pages, and final revisions. The course will mainly focus on literary fiction, and while aspects of speculative fiction are welcomed, fantasy may be difficult to accommodate. Please reach out to the instructor if you have any questions or need further clarification. Permit from the instructor is required. Please send email a 5-10-page writing sample, ideally of fiction, to weikewang01@gmail.com.

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 to the instructor to kathydemarco@writing.upenn. Permit from the instructor is required. This course is cross-listed with Cinema and Media Studies 116.

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 to bujo@sas.upenn.edu. This course is cross-listed with Cinema and Media Studies 116.

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 to bujo@sas.upenn.edu. This course is cross-listed with Cinema and Media Studies 116.

The Rolling Stones formed in London nearly sixty years ago, and the band is still actively touring and recording. This course will focus on the band’s songs, films, solo projects and lifestyles as a source of creative inspiration. The course will, in part, take its shape based on the interests of the students who enroll in it: while Stones obsessives—you know who you are—are, of course, welcome, if you are new to this music and these lives, curious about how these iconic musicians might inspire your own creative output, then your curiosity, adventurousness and willingness to take a deep dive into this work are all that is required. We will listen to and discuss Stones songs, watch movies and performances, explore their influence across the arts and culture (very much including style and fashion), and meet critics and artists who have engaged their work in meaningful ways. For those reasons, the course will be more impressionistic than strictly schematic—that is, we will follow various threads in the Stones’s work as they emerge in our discussions and as our mutual fascination guides us. The goal is for us to achieve an understanding of this work and these artists that is as visceral as it is intellectual. The class will do some analytic and critical writing. But students who are so inclined will be encouraged to pursue their own creative work—which is to say that, in consultation with the instructor, short stories, songs, poems, plays, paintings, photography or videos inspired by the Stones will be acceptable projects to complete the course’s requirements. You will be allowed a good deal of freedom in charting your own independent course, in other words, as appropriate to our subject and the gift their work has given to us all.

This workshop is especially valuable for creative writing concentrators in poetry within the English major, for those who are working on longer works, or for those who wish to work on a series of poems connected by style and subject matter. See the English Department’s website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.

English 123 is a pop-up writing community. We will focus on creating: stories, yes, and connections, within our group, the university, and the city. This term will focus on writing about voting during one of the most exciting election years in our lifetimes. Your task will be to engage Big Questions about our moment in clear, fun prose, fiction and nonfiction, about this difficult subject for and about young people. Throughout spring term, you’ll practice real-world skills without which even excellent writers may founder: initiative, scheduling, public events preparation, and a meditative habit of observing—as if the same old world were born fresh every day. Which it is. This course is designed as a group internship in association with #VoteThatJawn, a multimedia blog and social movement devoted to promoting safe, nonpartisan havens for children and youth to understand and deepen their connection with the adult structures that govern our lives.

You will work on and off campus, conduct workshops, curate, write, research, edit and publish. You will promote stories and events. You will write compact and engaging prose for blogs. You will also write Facebook posts and Tweets to accompany your own and your colleagues’ work. You will give a workshop to high-school or middle-school students, and you will edit their work (writing, podcasts, or videos) for possible publication, too. If we do the job right, we will shine a light on those among us who make young people safe in an era of fear. If we make it fun to read, look at, and listen to, then, we’ll be on our way to creating community—and stealth culture change.

Writers come into class wondering whether we’re good enough. My question to you is: Are you hungry enough? This class is cross-listed with Africana Studies 123.401 and is an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course.

Chance operation and nonlinear arrangement are elemental to literary vision. “The Tarot is an ancient story system, a pack of cards that tell a multitude of tales depending on the ways in which they’re placed alongside one another,” writes novelist Michelle Tea in her introduction to Modern Tarot. “Discard an axiom,” reads one of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies “worthwhile dilemma” cards. If we tap into a conduit of seekers and guides, we can use oracular knowledge in our writing practice. Extended contemplation of the Fool’s Journey (as Tarot is known) in the context of chance operations and nonlinear reading/writing practice gives us archetypal imagery to work with, presents concrete ways to think about structure, sequence, form and format, and offers aleatory paths to link interpersonal and sociocultural transformation. We will take a comparative literary approach to study the underlying systems of card- based divination, as we use an inclusive array of print and digital decks, guidebooks, experimental poetics, and computational algorithmic generators to explore the intersections between literary and oracular traditions. Attention to the varied structure of these visionary and literary tools will give us analogs for the ways seeing and telling are formally indicated. We will develop a practice of nonlinear reading to direct, inflect, and workshop our writing. Meanwhile, we will consider the potential for related methods of extended technique and chance operation (automatic writing, procedural constraint, aleatory visual prompts, collage, bibliomancy, shuffle soundtracks), as we investigate precedents in music and literature. Course resources include: John Cage, Silence; Geeta Dayal, Another Green World; Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop, Keeping / the window open; Michelle Tea, Modern Tarot; Robert Grenier, Sentences; John Ashbery, Three Poems; Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch; Vi Khi Nao, Sheep Machine; readings on Oulipo; Bernadette Mayer’s Writing Experiments; and Charles Bernstein’s Experiments.

This workshop is about experiments in writing that exceeds the limits of form: when the drive to put down experience in poems spills out into prose, or when the borders provided for the experience seem to hold for the moment, only to collapse the moment after. This particular writing drive seeks to occupy space, not in the real sense, but in the abstract—where the insider goes out, and the outsider hides in. This ever-acting dichotomy in writing poems is often brought out in times of personal crisis, but most distinctly in times of conflict and war (and where the lines and borders on the ground need to be drawn clearly, the disillusionment with the human self provides a most fertile ground for breaking out of the poem, for seeking the poetic outside defined lines). We will explore the possibilities of these statements in our own experimentations in achieving form in a poem, and then breaking out of it in prose. We will be guided in this process by some of the following texts: 1. modern rewritings of The Iliad, such as War Music by Chris Logue and Memorial by Alice Oswald; 2. autobiographies such as The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster and The Words by Jean-Paul Sartre; and 3. the poems and prose of poets such as W.B. Yeats, Zbigniew Herbert, Paul Celan, and Mahmoud Darwish.

Magazines, a staple of mass media, play a big role in our nation’s conversation. From general-interest to niche and special-interest publications, the writing you find here draws on in-depth reporting, the use of voice and close attention to narrative structure. And the skills that make you good at this form can be useful in any career. Magazine writers play with the medium and with their readers, using tone, point of view, dialogue, suspense, the timely revelation of truths, rich characterization, vivid scenes—anything that brings the reader the texture and tangibility of what happened. Nonfiction, built upon facts and accuracy, does have its own rules. Doing it well depends on seeing the big picture and the telling detail. Every week we will read, discuss and write different types of magazine stories, drawing on publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine and their websites. We’ll explore the techniques that make a good story, from the selection of topic to the reporting required. We’ll talk to some brilliant journalists, and practice pitches to editors so we have a sense of how to enter the field. We’ll create the plan for a magazine, a mission statement, audience projection, table of contents, and sample stories—a “short” for the front, an essay for the end, and a 2,500-3,000-word cover story. Immerse yourself in a creative and surprisingly durable medium that has both depth and impact.

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 students’ 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. Permit from the instructor is required. This course is cross-listed with Cinema and Media Studies 130.

Inner Outer Space Travel Writing is a creative writing workshop focused on writing work within the science fiction/speculative fiction/alternative futurities, science/land/travel writing, and creative-critical nonfiction traditions. Students will work within a variety of genres, with an emphasis on the essay, the short story, screen/tele-play, play, blog and performance. Students will read recommended texts from within their particular interests, and the course will culminate in both a public performance and dissemination/publication via another media platform (zine, website, podcast, etc). All levels of experience, from none/first-time writer to published writers, are encouraged to register for the course. This course is cross-listed with Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; Theatre Arts; and Latin American and Latino Studies.

In Self-Scripting, students will write through a variety of exercises and activities that put text into play with the body and space. Over the course of the semester, students will actively engage space and composition as they develop and explore scriptwriting for performance. We will explore exercises in an active laboratory setting. This course aims to expand on techniques for writing plays, poetry, and experimental biography. This class is cross-listed with Theatre Arts.

Memory arrives in fragments. Truth erupts; it finds us. A button on a sweater flashes us back to a day of gift giving. A childhood book recalls the one who read the tale out loud. In this class we’ll explore the moments of our lives through prompts that range from the tactile to the auditory, the documented to the whispered. We’ll produce and share, each week, miniature essays. We’ll create, as a final product, a curated memoir-in-essays. We’ll take inspiration from writers such as Sonja Livingston, Beth Ann Fennelly, Terry Tempest Williams, Margaret Renkl, Charles D’Ambrosio, Leslie Jamison, Sallie Tisdale, Andre Dubus, Terrence Des Pres, James Baldwin, Helen Garner, and Lia Purpura. We’ll host at least one important essayist.

Food is so much more than what we eat. It’s a metaphor, a memento, a ritual, an art. It’s a window into community, comfort and love, justice and injustice, joy and obsession. In this writing workshop, we’ll explore the power of connection and community through the prismatic lens of food. You will enlist the creative nonfiction (CNF) genres of memoir and personal essay to explore the human condition, turning your lens both inward (e.g., personal essay, memoir) and outward (e.g., narrative nonfiction, feature story, profile) as you look at how ties of sustenance bind us to each other.

Settings for the memoir/essay assignment might include the mess hall at camp, the Thanksgiving table, the one thing your grandfather knew how to cook. For the outward lens, you’ll connect with a food- related person, group, or business here in Philadelphia—this might be a close look at food insecurity in the city, a profile of a school cafeteria worker, undocumented workers in the restaurant world, the culture of a food coop, professional foragers, the pizza shop that gives away slices to homeless people, a gluten- free bakery, urban farming initiatives, or the inexplicable popularity of Wawa shorties.

CNF calls on the literary techniques of fiction (including character, scene-setting, plot, dialogue, description, structure, narrative/thematic tension, pacing, chronology, point of view, imagery, and metaphor) and the reporting strategies of journalism (interviewing, fact-checking, research). You will write and revise two longer pieces (1500-2500 words each) and several shorter ones. Through assignments, exercises, critiques and reading discussions, expect to become a stronger writer, a better reader, and an enthusiastic reviser.

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; fulfillment of writing requirement and permission of instructor required. This course is cross-listed with WRIT (Writing Program) 138. For more information, visit the Critical Writing Program.

Are you interested in testing the boundaries of creative nonfiction? Do you have a crazy idea that you’d like to write for class credit and also get it published? Send a quick pitch to English 145: Xfic, Penn’s journal of experiential nonfiction, to earn course credit in English 145 and get published at the same time. For this issue, we will be loosely incorporating the theme of space. We even have a handful of stories in search of a writer. Are you the writer for this story? Let us know, and if you can tell us why you’re the writer for this angle, we’ll assign it to you!

· Researching/visiting an immigration detention center; or something related to immigration in general/xenophobia/the wall
· Space Mirrors. Yes, there are actually scientists working to develop gigantic mirrors in space to deflect sunlight as to slow climate change. (One plan involves robotic space mirrors.)
· Infiltrating a secret society. Think ultra-wealthy clubs, Freemasons (there’s a temple in Philly), Scientology (in Philadelphia too!), secret societies at Penn…
· Flat earth society/moon landing deniers
. Researching/visiting a slaughterhouse/meat production plant. What goes on in places consumers aren't supposed to see?
· For some reason, we’re interested in that giant explosion at the refinery in Philadelphia last summer. If you’ve ever seen it from above while crossing the bridge to the airport, well, it’s an interesting space, right? A whole parallel city.
· Do you know any students doing something insane or insanely fascinating at Penn who could be the subject of a profile for XFic? Does it have something to do with space, however you define that term?

We’re also interested in the theme of space as it might speak to: What does it mean when you call a place home? Is there a place that used to be home but isn’t anymore? Where have you been, and where have you not yet visited? Can you think of a place you would want to investigate that is new, uncomfortable, somehow unwelcoming? A space you feel you don't belong? Or just a fun space that you want to explore? Or do you have an entirely different concept that has nothing to do with space that you just think would be fun to pursue? If so, let us know, and send a quick pitch to jaykirk@upenn.edu.

A 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 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 1965 red- leather, bucket-seat Mustang. 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.”

"Immersion journalism" is a term sometimes used to describe nonfiction in which the author seeks out new experiences and writes about them in the first person. The genre can include everything from travel writing, to undercover investigative reporting, to hilarious narratives of unusual self-experiments. Students will be expected to dream up their own adventures to write about, and we’ll critique student work in class each week as a group. Readings will include newspaper articles by the fearless nineteenth- century female reporters who invented the genre as well as essays by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, and David Foster Wallace, among others. Questions? Contact me at samapple@gmail.com.

This course is a writing workshop in which we contemplate the future of our fragile planet. Each student will engage with key issues facing society in the Anthropocene—the geologic epoch in which humans have come to recognize their own decisive impact on processes such as climate and evolution that until recently have been considered phenomena of "nature." You will tackle issues that are front-page news, in formats that range from the hard-news "science" story to the op-ed and editorial, to the journalistic profile. You will develop and argue fact-based opinion pieces on such questions as: Should we let some endangered species die out? Should genetic engineers proceed with research on the editing of human germline cells? Is it ethical to attempt to geo-engineer the climate, and if so, at what point in the current warming cycle? More generally: can or should we ever seek to impose limits or controls on scientific research and discovery? In addition to a 2,000-word profile of a scientist or tech developer at work in his/her lab, you will write and rewrite three op-eds and a personal essay over the course of the term, and submit revised drafts in a final portfolio at the end of the term.

We’ll be reading and workshopping some of our most adventurous, pioneering nonfiction reporter/writers. At the same time, we’ll also shepherding semester-long projects that are due during exam period. The so-called “New Journalists” have thrived ever since the iconoclastic 1960s—the era when the craft was first developed and practiced. The term itself is very imprecise—the “New Journalists” were fiercely independent of each other, employing a wide range of reportorial and stylistic techniques not previously seen in American nonfiction—and their styles differ. But they’ve shared one fundamental trait. In the words of Marc Weingarten, who authored a book about the original New Journalists (The Gang that Wouldn’t Write Straight), they’ve all aspired to practice “journalism that reads like fiction” yet “rings with the truth of reported fact.”

We’ll closely parse some of their work, not because they are products of long-distant eras, but precisely because their novelistic techniques—narrative storytelling, dramatic arcs and scenes, structural cliffhangers, shifting points of view, author’s voice, dialogue as action—are routinely employed by the best long-form journalists today. Indeed, many contemporary journalists take these techniques for granted, perhaps unaware of their origins.

But this is not just a reading course. The ultimate goal is for each student to take the best of these techniques and use them in the reporting and writing of a long-form nonfiction piece that is due at the semester’s end. Each student will nurture one project from January to early May. And during the semester, we will schedule the time to workshop these works in progress—with class feedback and feedback from the instructor, functioning as an editor would.

The 2020 presidential primaries—most notably, the intense Democratic contest—will set the stage for what will arguably become the most consequential autumn election in American history. We will track those primaries week by week, assess their impact on the Democratic electorate, and chart the strategy and rhetoric of the Trump 2020 campaign. These fast-moving stories will be the focus of this commentary writing course, which could not be more timely.

National politics is a 24/7 staple on the stump, on social media, on TV, in ads, and in the minds of millions of Americans who struggle to make sense of the incessant noise. Political commentary writers have a great challenge: seemingly by the hour, they are tasked with making smart judgments, supporting those judgments with empirical material, and communicating those judgments in clear language. They have to cut through the clutter, and engage the reader—smartly, and entertainingly, in a climate where even the dictionary definition of “truth” is under assault.

For all those reaons, only true junkies of national politics—and those who aspire to write about it—are likely to love this course, which puts the spotlight on the difficult art of commentary writing and on the challenges that commentary writers face in polarized era stoked further by cable TV and viral social media.

Students who are passionate about writing and politics will track the ’20 campaigns as they unfold week by week, and write commentary posts about it—on an online blog that has been created for this course. At a time when Americans are more awash in opinions than ever before, our aim is to master the craft of writing clear, responsible, incisive, substantive, and entertaining point-of-view journalism—and backing it up with factual research. 

All political views are welcome—as long as they are argued and supported effectively. The ultimate goal is to successfully develop an “earned voice” via effective writing, effective reporting, and, above all, effective thinking. In addition, guest journalists will discuss their work.

This yearlong course, presented in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will focus on the vital contributions that women have made to the 20th-century avant-garde. Women were essential participants in male-dominated movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, and Constructivism; they made art in every conceivable genre and media including literature, performance, film, painting, movement, and design. Our focus will be global, exploring the roles that women have played in experimental art movements across Europe, Africa, the Americans, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, with an emphasis on how these works intersected with and responded to art produced by indigenous cultures. We will mine this rich vein of artistic production as the inspiration for our own weekly creative writings and reflection. We will have access to the treasures of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as personal interactions and class visits from the curatorial and educational staff of the museum. In addition, we’ll be making trips to New York to visit the studios of contemporary women artists—musicians, dancers, painters, performers—to find out how they connect with the tradition of women in the experimental arts. The class will culminate in a paper-bound publication to be copublished by the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Note: This is a two-semester course. Students will enroll in 165 in the fall and then re-enroll in 165 in the spring.

An advanced course in long-form nonfiction journalistic writing for a select group of experienced and self-starting student writers. (Ideally, each accepted member will have already taken one or two nonfiction seminars within the creative writing program.) The goal will be to tailor a reporting and writing project to your interest, one you may have long wished to take up but never had the opportunity. It could be a project in the arts. It could be a profile of a person or place. It might be documentary in nature, which is to say an extremely close-up observation of your subject. (An example: think of a hospital chaplain at Penn, going on his dreary, redemptive, daily rounds, to visit the sick and anoint the dying. What if you were there, for most of the term, as unobtrusively as possible, at his black-clad elbow?) The group will meet at to-be-determined intervals. In between, the enrollees will be pairing off and in effect serving as each other’s editor and coach and fellow (sister) struggler. When we do assemble as a group, we will be reading to each other as well as discussing the works of some long-form heroes—Didion, Talese, Richard Ben Cramer, one or two others you may not have heard of. In essence, this is a kind of master course, limited in enrollment, and devoted to your piece of writing, to be handed in on the final day. It will be in the range of 25 to 30 pages, something above 8,000 words. The course presumes a lot of individual initiative and self-reliance. If you’re interested, please email phendric@english.upenn.edu and suggest your qualifications. Permission to enroll is required.

This advanced course in writing about the arts and popular culture (interpreted broadly) is limited in enrollment and focuses on a semester-long project that each student defines in consultation with the instructor. The course will be run something like a group independent study, in which students pursue their specific, personal projects and share their work on an ongoing basis with the class as a whole. Ideally, students will informally serve as each other’s editors, sharing suggestions, sources, approaches and encouragement. Occasional meetings of the full group will concentrate on issues relevant to all aspects of arts-and-culture writing, while meetings with individual students will focus and help realize the individual projects that will constitute the course’s main work. Most typically, the semester-long project will be a lengthy feature (6,000+ words) of the sort that regularly appears in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine or Rolling Stone, among other publications. Other approaches to the project, however, will certainly be considered. Readings for the course will be geared specifically to the interests of the students who have been selected, and will be drawn from relevant work that is appearing at that time in journalistic publications. Ideally, applicants will have already taken English 117 with the instructor, but that is not a firm prerequisite and other students should absolutely feel free to contact the instructor for more information. A permit is required to join the course. Please send an email describing your interest to ADeCurtis@aol.com.

In this fiction writing workshop, we will be making a conscious effort to transcend our personal reading and writing preferences in order to be apprenticed by divergent literature—aesthetic achievements centered around objective reality, subjective life, and ecstatic confession and play! Most of the works that tend to affect us deeply are the ones that might have wearied us, or even greatly disturbed us. But in time, upon further reflection, we find them rather informative—or even illuminating! We will do a lot of new weekly writing, which will result in a draft and a final version of an original story. You and another classmate will be “hosting” at least one class in open discussion of a weekly reading, and critiquing each other’s drafts—focusing on craft, rather than content. You will challenge your self-censorship in a safe and supportive environment, and will read weekly what you write to develop your observational and listening skills in determining the effects of the spoken word.

James Baldwin, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, spoke to the issues of his times as well as to our own. This class will examine the intellectual legacy that Baldwin left to present-day writers such as Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thulani Davis, Caryl Phillips and others. We will spend time reading and discussing Baldwin’s novels, short stories, plays and essays. In doing so, we will be considering the complex assumptions and negotiations that we make in our day-to-day lives around our identities and experiences built upon gender, sexual preference, the social-constructs called “race,” and more. James Baldwin’s life and work will be the touchstone that grounds our discussions. We will read Go Tell It on the Mountain, Another Country, The Fire Next Time, and Giovanni’s Room and see films I Am Not Your Negro, The Price of the Ticket and The Murder of Emmett Till.

In the spirit of Baldwin, students will write personal responses to his novels, short stories, essays, and films. Students will research what it is about Baldwin that speaks to them, and will also create stories or essays inspired by his work. Requirements include 100 pages of reading per week; personal free writing journals; written responses to readings, films and speakers (2-3 pages), oral presentations, and revised stories or essays. Class limit: 16 (no audits). This course is cross-listed with Africana Studies and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies.