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For details on our spring 2025 Bassini Writing Apprenticeships, click here.
English 3010.301
Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry and Fiction
Ahmad Almallah MW 10:15-11:45am
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This introductory workshop explores the main tools of writing poetry and fiction! Thematically, we’ll be reading a number of different examples to learn why poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Sylvia Plath turn to fiction as a way to revitalize their poetic practice, and why novelists such as Herman Hesse and Herta Müller turn to poetry. And we’ll read writers who work in both genres, such as Zbigniew Herbert and Salim Barakat. Students will learn to use the main tools of fiction, such as characterization, dialogue, and description, as well as the forms of poetry, such as sound, image, and enjambment. The workshop also aims at encouraging a philosophical exploration of the border between reality and imagination in the form of writing poems and short fiction pieces.
English 3010.302
Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry and Fiction
Andrew Smyth R 5:15-8:15pm
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This workshop introduces students to the art of writing poetry and fiction. Focusing on questions of form and process, we will experiment with a range of compositional devices for generating verse and prose. Concepts such as rhythm, sound, performance, repetition, genre, and duration will guide our movement between theory and practice. We will also think about relationships between seemingly minor textual elements such as grammar, syntax, and orthography and the politics of language under capitalism. While they build their own portfolios, students will study a number of literary and critical texts. These may include writings by Myung Mi Kim, Layli Long Soldier, Samuel Beckett, and Dambudzo Marechera.
English 3015.301
Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction and Journalism
Anna Badkhen T 5:15-8:15pm
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This workshop is an introduction to writing fiction and journalistic writing. We will focus on the main tools of prose writing that are indispensable to both genres, including characterization, dialogue, description, research, and revision. Our resources will be multi-genre—we will look at visual art, music, dance—and global. We will encounter a broad stylistic range of international aesthetic and narrative models, and discuss the narrative responsibility each of them entails. Our guides will likely include Teju Cole, Shailja Patel, Jamil Jan Kochai, Edward P. Jones, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Anne Carson, Ousmane Sembène, Okwui Okpokwasili, Anjali Sachdeva, Binyavanga Wainaina, Isaac Babel. Suitable for beginners or more experienced writers who want to return to fundamentals.
English 3018.301
Introduction to Creative Writing: Memoir and Creative Nonfiction
Taije Silverman TR 3:30-5:00pm
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A workshop focused on the way writers combine public and personal narratives to investigate self and world. Through your own prose and the prose of celebrated contemporary essayists (such as JoAnn Beard, Kiese Laymon, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ross Gay, and Tressie McMillan Cottom), you will learn to render events in language that surprises—whether recounting family drama, describing campus protests, or mapping the mating cycle of an octopus onto memories of adolescence. Students will be asked to write (and rewrite) short prose pieces throughout the semester, with slightly longer midterm and final essays that mean to situate a private life in the collective world. All writing in the course will be creative, and both beginners and experienced writers are welcome.
English 3023.301
Introduction to Creative Writing: Fantasy and Magical Realism
Abbey Mei Otis M 1:45-4:45pm
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This class will use two genres of nonrealist writing as an introduction to the core concepts of writing creative prose. We will read work in fantasy and magical realism across the traditions of surrealism, science fiction, slipstream, Afrofuturism, fairy tales, and speculative memoirs, and we will try our hand at creating our own original work in these forms. Core craft concepts—including characterization, point of view, imagery, embodiment, pacing, scene and structure—form the foundation of our study, essential for all prose writing and particularly works of invented worlds and altered realities. In addition, we will discuss concepts such as world-building, entertainment, escapism, wonder, cognitive estrangement, and the grotesque BOTH as vital forces that inform our relationship to the world, AND as tactics to be cultivated through practice. The literature of the imagination comprises a tradition older, more extensive and more varied than the literary realism that is the focus of so much creative writing study. We will find a place in a long historical tradition of storymaking for magical realism and the fantastic. We will also discuss the role of strangeness and defamiliarization as an essential tool for creating work that is resonant and urgent in the contemporary world. Potential readings include: Marlon James, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Louise Erdrich, Shirley Jackson, Kelly Link, Julio Cortazar, Ursula Le Guin, Mary Shelley, the Brothers Grimm, Pu Songling. Students can expect to write frequently and workshop writing by their peers in a collaborative setting.
English 3027.301
Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry and Life Writing
Laynie Browne T 3:30-6:30pm
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This is a course for students who are interested in exploring a variety of approaches to creative writing, including poetry, prose narratives, autobiography, and hybrid genre writing. Readings will include poetry and memoir, and will represent various approaches to writing from life, including works by Hoa Nguyen, 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. Students will write new creative texts weekly and create a portfolio of their work from the semester.
English 3102.401
Attention Poetics
Julia Bloch R 10:15am-1:15pm
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In this poetry workshop, students will learn how to use a range of poetic forms—which may include list, lyric, documentary, collage, erasure, epistolary, sound-based, prose, performative, and other shapes and experiments. Students will explore how poetry—both their own and poetry by a number of modern and contemporary practitioners—makes us pay a different kind of attention: to identity, to the social, to the political and historical, to the beautiful, and to the ordinary. Students will write in response to readings and creative prompts, read and discuss work by visiting writers, and workshop each other’s writing throughout the semester before producing a final portfolio of approximately 15 pages of work as well as a statement of poetic practice. New and experienced poets alike are welcome. This class is cross-listed with Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies.
English 3111.301
Experimental Writing: You Talkin' to Me?: Speaking as Writing
Kenneth Goldsmith R 1:45-4:45pm
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Wouldn’t it be great if writing were as easy as speaking? In this class, we’ll explore ways of alchemically converting everyday speech into literature. Beginning with an examination of ourselves and the words we use daily, we’ll use extensive techniques of recording and transcription in order to transform spoken words into poetry, fiction, essays, and screenplays. Diving deep into the nature of dialogue, we’ll learn to recognize, decode, decipher, and edit enunciated language in order to craft gripping works of art. This course is ideal for aspiring playwrights, novelists, screenwriters, comedians, journalists — or anyone else wishing to unlock the creative potential of everyday speech.
English 3201.301
Flash Fiction Workshop
Weike Wang M 1:45-4:45pm
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This writing workshop is devoted to the shortest forms of fiction. Short-form fiction is any story under 1,000 words. We will consider the art of condensation, brevity, sudden stories, and microfiction. We’ll read a large array of arresting work written in both English and in English translation. Assigned readings will include the writing of Lydia Davis, Rivka Galchen, Amy Hempel, Vi Khi Nao, Garielle Lutz, Can Xue, Russell Edson, Daniil Kharms, and several others. The majority of our workshops will focus on creating our own very short stories through a variety of styles and approaches. Students will be responsible for writing four pieces throughout the semester to be workshopped by their peers, as well as weekly responses.
English 3208.301
Advanced Fiction Writing: Short Fiction
Max Apple T 1:45-4:45pm
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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.
English 3214.301
Points of View: Writing Polyvocal Fiction
Piyali Bhattacharya T 5:15-8:15pm
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What makes a piece of fiction “voicey”? What does it mean for us as writers to be inside our character’s voice? How do we switch into the voice of a different character in the same piece of fiction? How much page time does a character need in a story with multiple voices? Do characters experience the same event from different points of view, or do they examine different events in kaleidoscopic perspectives? This polyvocal fiction workshop will interrogate how we write one story from the point of view of two or more characters. Our characters might all speak in the first person, or one may be in first while another is in third. We might have two narrators, each speaking for the other. The list of possibilities is long. But most importantly, we will look at a story from inside the mind of more than one person in it. We will then decide how that story might be told by each of those people. To set ourselves some examples, we will read for class works by Jacqueline Woodson, Elizabeth Acevedo, Jennifer Egan, Tommy Orange, and Lisa Ko, and workshop our own original writing.
English 3215.301
The Art of Fiction
Karen Rile R 3:30-6:30pm
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Is it art, or is it craft? Truth is, it’s both. In this generative, interactive workshop we’ll investigate literary fiction technique through a series of directed prompts designed to unfetter your imagination and bring your fiction writing to the next level. Through weekly creative assignments, you will produce a portfolio of work ranging from quirky experiments to fully realized stories. Course readings from a diverse selection of contemporary fiction will illustrate varied approaches to the techniques we’ll explore. Every week you will read, write, react, and workshop in a supportive, inclusive environment. This class is appropriate for fiction writers of every level. Come prepared to take creative risks as you deepen your art and advance your craft.
English 3216.301
Revising Speculative Fiction
Abbey Mei Otis W 5:15-8:15pm
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How can revising your writing be a transformative act? Generating a rough draft is a great first step, but the real work of story craft comes in revision. This class will focus on rewriting, revising, and workshopping previously generated works of speculative fiction. Short stories, novellas, and novel projects are all welcome. The semester will be divided into units on scene, sentence structure, and narrative design—with the goal of expanding your focus on each element of your writing, from the granular to the gestalt. You will be challenged to wholesale abandon your initial ideas about your work, and to see it through new perspectives, new styles, and new structures. Through author-centered work-shares and collaborative discussion, you will develop a vocabulary for understanding the work of your fellow writers, with the idea that generous scrutiny is the highest form of respect. This class welcomes, though is not limited to, works of genre writing, including fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, and experimental prose. Our study of revision will encompass discussion of worldbuilding, defamiliarization, and the principles of imagination, all tactics that can also be applied to works of realism. Throughout the class you will complete multiple drafts of multiple projects, and end the semester with at least two polished final drafts. Permission to enroll is required. Please send instructor 1-2 paragraphs about your interest in the course. In addition to this, you have the option of sending a single-page PDF of the first page of the project you are interested in revising during the class.
English 3300.301
Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Anna Badkhen R 5:15-8:15pm
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This workshop will touch on how to write (almost) anything nonfiction. We will read nonfiction across ages and continents, and also within the genre—memoir, essay, reportage, travel writing, literary journalism, art criticism. During the semester, you will write four short pieces of different kinds of nonfiction, which we will workshop in class. Readings will likely include Toni Morrison, Ibn Battutah, N. Scott Momaday, Georges Didi-Huberman, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Valeria Luiselli, Sabrina Orah Mark, Michael Herr, Annie Dillard, Ahmad ibn Fadhlan, Ryszard Kapuscinski. Suitable for all levels. This class is here to help you discover and strengthen your own voice.
English 3351.301
Writing about Mental Health and Addiction
Stephen Fried M 5:15-8:15pm
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There are many reasons mental illness and addiction are so pervasive, and so difficult to treat and discuss—leading to all-time high rates of suicide and overdose. But there is one baseline problem we can immediately address: learning how to do more effective, affecting, and evidence-based writing about behavioral health. In this advanced writing course, one of the first of its kind for undergraduates in the country, students will explore some of the most powerful American nonfiction writing on behavioral health, in publications and books, and will have some of the authors as guest lecturers. During the class, each student will read and do a presentation on one major piece of mental health or addiction writing, and then will create, workshop, and rewrite one major piece of nonfiction writing of their own. Projects can be reported memoir, narrative longform, investigative reporting, medical science writing, or some combination of these. Taught by Stephen Fried, lecturer, CPCW; director, Columbia Narrative Medicine Journalism Workshop; National Magazine Award-winning health journalist and best-selling author of Rush (biography of founding father of American mental health care), Bitter Pills, and Thing of Beauty; coauthor, with Patrick Kennedy, of A Common Struggle and Profiles in Mental Health Courage; coauthor of National Council Medical Director Institute white paper, “Mass Violence in America: Causes, Impacts and Solutions.”
English 3355.301
Memoir Workshop
Lise Funderburg M 1:45-4:45pm
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Memoir is more than well-told anecdotes; it’s crafted prose that transforms personal experience into art. Like all great art, great memoirs may challenge or comfort, affirm or elucidate, but they always connect audiences to the fundamental prospect of what it means to be human. In this workshop intensive, you’ll combine your lived experience and point of view with literary techniques and tools to create work that connects to the world outside yourself. You’ll try out different structures, such as personal essay, lyric, hermit crab, epistolary and satire, all while keeping your anchor in nonfiction. We’ll look to masters of the craft for inspiration and insight, including readings/videos from Naomi Shihab Nye, Jonathan Lethem, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Joan Didion, Marlon James, Barry Lopez, Zadie Smith, Eula Biss, Jenifer Sang Eun Park, Phillip Lopate, and others. Through assigned readings, exercises, writing (so much writing!), workshopping, and revision (so much revision!), expect to become a stronger writer (technically and artistically), a more discerning reader, and a skilled editor.
English 3356.401
Asian American Nonfiction Workshop
Weike Wang M 10:15am-1:15pm
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Contemporary literature has seen a recent rise of Asian American nonfiction writing, particularly in the form of essays and memoirs. Asian American writers are reshaping the form of the immigration story and the personal narrative, and are adding their voices to the pressing topics of political activism, STEM, and mental health. This course will include readings by authors such as Hsu, Hong, Nunez, Chang, Fan, Wang, Jacob, and Kalanithi, among others. For memoir and personal pieces, we will discuss how these writers transform their own material through craft, structure, and perspective. For essays, we will discuss how writers use research (and, yes, craft!) to present difficult and/or technical information in an engaging way. Students will write and workshop their own pieces of nonfiction (8-12 pages), with a choice of memoir or essay. No prior experience is necessary except for an eagerness to engage with the material and an open-mindedness during workshop discussions. This class is cross-listed with Asian American Studies.
English 3400.301
Journalistic Writing: Exploring the Genre
Matt Katz M 5:15-8:15pm
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Journalism is the practice of asking a simple question—What’s happening in the world around us?—and turning that answer into a story. The form journalism takes has always changed dramatically amid technological innovations. News about World War II arrived via radio and newspaper; TV brought visual images of the Vietnam War; the internet opened up new avenues of content delivery, blurring lines between the audio, written, and visual forms of traditional media and upending how outlets like The New York Times and NPR deliver news. Journalists for legacy media outlets continue to tell critically important and compelling stories, but their reporting is increasingly displaced by podcasts and WhatsApp, TikTok and Substack. This disruption means a wider array of stories are being told in a multitude of interesting ways, but it also makes deciphering accurate information from partisan falsehoods far more complicated.
In this class, we will explore the implications of journalistic disruption for civil society and democratic institutions. Required reading and listening will be high-quality journalism that holds true to the core tenets of news reporting: to give voice to the voiceless, hold the powerful to account, and connect communities. This workshop-based course explores what makes a good news story, including gathering facts, interviewing, writing ledes and kickers, and crafting narratives. And it examines how journalism is practiced in various media, including newspapers, TV, magazines, digital outlets, social media, and podcasts. While it’s geared toward building savvy and sophisticated news consumers in an increasingly complex and multidimensional media environment, students will also apply what they’ve learned and act as journalists by doing research, conducting interviews, and writing articles. Students will be required to create short audio stories that include recorded sound, basic editing techniques, and effective story structure.
English 3408.301
Long-Form Journalism
Dick Polman W 1:45-4:45pm
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Students will read and workshop some of America's most talented “long-form” nonfiction reporter/writers. Prominent guest journalists will also share their expertise. Meanwhile, students in this course will nurture their own semester-long journalism projects.
Long-form journalism is storytelling that rings with the truth of reported fact. Common fictional techniques—narrative sweep, dramatic arcs and scenes, structural cliffhangers, shifting points of view, writing style/voice, vivid dialogue—are employed to seize and sustain the reader’s attention. Indeed, contemporary journalists typically take these techniques for granted, perhaps unaware that they were developed by journalistic pioneers during the 1960s.
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. Each student will nurture one project from January to April. And during the semester, we will schedule the time to workshop those works in progress—with class feedback and feedback from the instructor, functioning as an editor would.
English 3425.301
Station to Station: The Art and Life of David Bowie
Anthony DeCurtis R 1:45-4:45pm
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This course will focus on the songs, films, performances, painting, gender play and self-invention and reinvention of David Bowie 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. Bowie obsessives—you know who you are—are, of course, more than welcome. However, if you are new to the man and his music and merely curious about how they might inspire your own creativity, your adventurousness, sense of wonder and willingness to take a deep dive into his work are all that is required.
We will listen to and discuss Bowie's songs, watch documentaries and performances, explore his influence across the arts and culture (very much including style and fashion), and engage critics and artists who have grappled with his work in meaningful ways. For those reasons, the course will be more improvisatory than strictly schematic—that is, we will follow various threads in Bowie'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 his work that is as visceral as it is intellectual.
The class will do some analytic and critical writing, of course. 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 Bowie's life and music will be acceptable projects to complete the course's requirements. You will be allowed a great deal of freedom in charting your own independent course, in other words, as appropriate to our subject, who regarded his very life as a work of art under endless, restless revision.
English 3428.301
Deep Dive Arts and Culture Writing
Anthony DeCurtis TBD
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This 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—including writing about the fine arts, popular culture, fashion, comedy, sports, or some other related topic—while meetings with individual students will focus and help realize the individual projects that will constitute the course’s main work. Writing produced in this course will typically be a lengthy feature (5,000+ words) of the sort that regularly appears in publications like The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine or Rolling Stone. 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 Writing about the Arts and Popular Culture with the instructor, but that is not a firm prerequisite and other students should absolutely feel free to contact the instructor for more information. Permission to enroll is required. Please send an email describing your interest to ADeCurtis@aol.com.
English 3502.301
Writing and Borders
Ahmad Almallah W 1:45-4:45pm
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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.
English 3517.401
Plague Lab: Writing through Infection and Affliction
Annie Kopecký W 3:30-6:30pm
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How do we write through a plague? How do we make sense of it and ourselves? Do plagues also super-charge creativity? Is it a coincidence that so many famous literary works seem driven by pandemics? In this creative writing workshop we will begin with the question of how plagues make and disrupt meaning. We’ll start with ancient and classical examples: from Homer’s Iliad to Boccaccio’s Decameron, pandemics inspire both social upheaval and uncanny forms of insight. Oedipus Tyrannus seeks to solve the riddle of a social disease: Oedipus’s contact tracing leads to self-mutilation. Merits of the Plague, via 15th-century Islamic Egypt, subversively maps disparities between actual and “governmental” death counts.
In English 3517, our own plague laboratory experimentation, we will juxtapose literary texts with found cultural objects, including artworks, films, and performances. In addition to canonical examples, we’ll explore off-center, anti-colonial, and non-Western literary and popular culture works. Our lab will also investigate reactionary, paranoid, and cult-like pandemic meaning-making: theories conflating 5-G transmission and vaccines, for instance, and the persistence of xenophobic viral “origin stories.” We will use these examples to ask questions about our contemporary “plague(s)”: did/does Covid-19 represent a break with social norms and expectations? Does a work like Octavia Butler’s Parable help us understand whether our current pandemic began with Covid-19, or was already forecast in what Butler terms the “Pox”? Is Covid-19 “over”? How has it changed us? Are we still living in other, less visible pandemics? We will perform our own archival assemblage and collective work of evidentiary gathering:—the CDC refers to epidemiologists as “disease detectives,” so how might we as writers do our own detective work? Students will be encouraged to produce across a number of genres including poetry, fiction, memoir, zines, double-blind studies, sculpture, installation, performance, or found object scavenging. This course is cross-listed with Theatre Arts.
English 3600.401
Screenwriting Workshop
Kathleen DeMarco Van Cleve M 1:45-4:45pm
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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.This class is cross-listed with Cinema & Media Studies.
English 3600.402
Screenwriting Workshop
John Scott Burkhardt R 1:45-4:45pm
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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.This class is cross-listed with Cinema & Media Studies.
English 3601.401
Advanced Screenwriting
Kathleen DeMarco Van Cleve W 1:45-4:45pm
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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? This class is cross-listed with Cinema & Media Studies.
English 3603.401
Writing for Television
John Scott Burkhardt W 5:15-8:15pm
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This is a workshop-style course for those who have an interest in writing for television. The course will consist of two parts: First, students will develop premise lines, beat sheets and outlines for an episode of an existing television show. Second, students will develop their own idea for a television series which will culminate in the writing of the first 30 pages of an original television pilot. This class is cross-listed with Cinema & Media Studies.
English 3609.401
The Short Film: Writing, Producing, Directing
John Scott Burkhardt R 5:15-8:15pm
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In this class students will write and prepare a short film for production with the INTENT to direct it. The first half of class is devoted to coming up with an idea and writing a short film with a total run time of around 8-12 minutes. This is the ideal length for a short. The second half of the class is devoted to preparing to shoot the film which will include scheduling, budgeting, casting, crewing up, location scouting and creating a directorial look book for the film. At the end of class each student will have a short film script and all the necessary materials to start production of that film. This class is cross-listed with Cinema & Media Studies.
English 3610.301
Podcasting Workshop
Nate Chinen W 5:15-8:15pm
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Two decades since the invention of the podcast, we’re confronted with a niche format that also functions as a mass medium. Peruse a contemporary feed (or entrust your perusing to the algorithm) and you’ll find sound-designed narrative miniseries jostling for attention with the celebrity clubhouse, the critical wheelhouse, and all manner of explainers, disquisitions and diversions. In this workshop course, we’ll learn to navigate that complex landscape with expertise and to record and edit our own original podcast material. We’ll consider the cultural and formal evolution of podcasting while we engage with the medium firsthand — in a discussion-forward seminar, with listening and reading assignments designed to spark creative practice. We’ll hear from prominent guest speakers, applying their insights as we hone our own skills as interviewers, editors, and audio producers. A series of writing responses and other exercises will lead us toward the development of our own podcasts. As a final project, each student will submit a pilot episode, refined through workshopping and instructor feedback and recorded using campus resources.
English 3670.401
What’s Love Got to Do With It?: Art and Desire
Ricardo Bracho R 3:30-6:30pm
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Within this course, students will have the opportunity to make work in a variety of mediums that address desire, love, lust, romance, friendship, kinship, heartbreak and loss. We will look at work from visual artists, writers of all genres, film and performance that question and center matters of the heart and the libidinal. While placing sexual and relational dynamics at the core of our artistic endeavors we will address through readings of queer, feminist and left scholarship the social and political implications of acts of love and art. Students can make work in all artistic genres: video, writing, sculpture, performance, painting, photography, collage, drawing and mixed media. In class we will do a variety of writing and some drawing exercises; look at film, video and visual art; and discuss work read and viewed outside of class. Artists, writers, and filmmakers we will study will include Jean Genet, Juan Goytisolo, tatiana de la tierra, Zadie Smith, Miranda July, Honey Lee Cottrell, Mel Odom, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lorraine O’Grady, Ai, Eileen Myles, Ana Maria Simo and many others. Work developed can be based in autobiography or history and as much about the desire for social justice as they are about the erotic. While work developed can be about the parent-child bond, lifelong friendships or sibling rivalry/solidarity, students should have ease in viewing, reading, discussing and critiquing art works that are sexually explicit. This class is cross-listed with Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; Cinema and Media Studies; and Latin American & Latinx Studies.
MLA Courses
English 9009.640
Creative Research: A Writer’s Workshop
Jay Kirk M 5:15-8:15pm
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Many writers think of research as a “task” that is somehow separate from writing. In truth, it’s as much a part of the process as waiting for le mot juste, and requires the same level of creativity, whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction. Research is not only what you do to “get started,” but remains key whether you’re just brainstorming or are already immersed in your sixteenth draft. Research is much more than gathering material and filling in the blanks. It is the process of discovering your material at its deepest source. In this 6-week course, students will adopt a mindset of discovery and experiment as we explore a variety of innovative research methods, from how to interview an expert, how to ask better questions, and how to mine end notes, to finding truth in serendipity and honing the fine art of looking right under your nose.
English 9011.640
Screenwriting
Zachary Vickers T 5:15-8:15pm
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This workshop-style course will introduce students to the fundamentals of screenwriting, including classical dramatic structure, formatting, and various storytelling strategies. Writing exercises, discussions, readings and short film screenings will further students’ understanding in developing scripts that are both sound in narrative and conducive to a visual medium. Students will draft an original short film script, approximately 10 pages in length, that will be workshopped by peers who will provide feedback that reflects proficiency in the previous class discussions and lectures.
English 9013.640
Writing & Remembering: A Memoir Workshop
Kathryn Watterson W 5:15-8:15pm
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Our voices as writers take shape, in large part, when we create from the complex ground of our inner landscapes, seeded by our childhood fantasies, family dynamics, myths, dreams, and emerging awareness of the cultural, psychological, and social context of the world around us. A major goal of this seminar is to help you explore, discover and write stories that transform into art some of the life experiences that have shaped you and the people around you. During class sessions, we’ll discuss the ethics of memoir, including the power of “truths” to harm other people’s lives. We’ll talk about “facts” and “fiction” in life and literature, and mine a deeper understanding of the art of memoir by reading and discussing a wide range of writers. This course is designed to help each of you foster new ways to generate ideas, write with more comfort, and learn how to construct and revise your writing. To help you access authentic voices within yourself and write more vividly about key experiences in your own lives, we will use breathing exercises, meditation, guided visualization, and a mindful practice of listening. We will practice the art of letting go, the art of being in the moment and writing out of that moment. We will create scenes, dialogue and descriptions that allow readers to inhabit the story. Our schedule will include in-class exercises; daily free-writing; personal responses to readings; work on stories, oral presentations; group work; class participation and critique workshops in which you will read aloud and receive feedback to help you find fresh ways of re-envisioning your own work. Throughout this semester, you will gain insight into ways in which all of us build narratives in an effort to make sense out of our lives and the complex process of being a conscious, mindful human being on this earth during this point in time.