Writing Courses
Style and Substance: Tools for Writing
K30.1025 4 CR F 12:30-3:15 Melanie Hulse
Writing is a deliberate, conscious act. Whether it is short or long, fiction or nonfiction, the finished work is as meticulously designed and executed as a cathedral. This course examines how writers use the various elements of narrative to realize their ideas with precision and grace. Specific craft elements—plot and structure, characterization and dialogue, and point of view—are explored through close reading of exemplary writing, in-class exercises, and take-home assignments. Class discussions analyze storytelling strategies in the published work of established writers; workshopping students’ writing is scheduled in the second half of the term. The readings include personal essays, journalism, excerpted fiction, and scripts. Taped interviews with writers and other professionals are screened and discussed, and information about interacting with the publishing industry is offered.
Writing about Popular Music
K30.1033 4 CR MW 2:00-3:15 Stephen Wetta
Popular music is a product of integration: the melding of Anglo-Celtic folk ballads, African-American laments and rhythms, Eastern European accordian tunes, Calypso, jazz, country, blues and more. In turn, American popular music, more than any other cultural trend in recent history, has left its mark on literature, film, classical music, art and politics. In this class, students will explore the rich world of popular music, and write responsive, critical, and research essays on the music’s form and content. Essays will engage with the politics and social forces involved in popular music as treated by particular performers. Research may focus on the social and material forces that might have created music as we now know it, and how the music has in turn recreated us. Readings will include works by Nick Tosches, Peter Guralnick, and Greil Marcus.
Writing on Wealth and Power
K30.1047 4 CR F 12:30-3:15 Nettie Jones
Part of the story that Americans tell themselves about themselves has to do with the Horatio Alger tales about how talent, hard work and a little luck yields success, money, status, fame and power. Going from “rags to riches” in the span of one generation has thus, become part of how we define the American dream—even as that dream recedes further and further away from the grasp of most citizens. Using autobiographies such as Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal and classic sociological works such as The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, this writing seminar focuses on researching and writing fiction and non-fiction about “making it in America.” Students will write experiential, narrative, and academic essays on the economic power of the men and women who have achieved or inherited it. We will also devote time in the class to discussing editing, revising, and publishing.
Lives of New York
K30.1319 4 CR T 3:30-6:10 Leo Rubinfien
This course is organized around a set of assignments on living in New York City. Students work from direct observation and write about their own experiences, people who interest them, places, and past, present or imaginary events. The course aims to help a student to write a concise, powerful essay with steady dramatic development; to sift through his or her own observations with honesty; to see how a specific fact can unfold into a general truth; to better appreciate the beauty and expressiveness of the English language, and to find ways in which writing can surprise a reader. Meanwhile, all students will learn a great deal about New York itself, a city so vast and dense that it can never really be known by any one person. The course also includes readings of work by Louis Auchincloss, John Cheever, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alfred Kazin, Joan Didion, J.D. Salinger, James Salter, I.B. Singer, and others.
Travel Writing
K30.1321 4 CR M 9:30-12:15 Susan Brownmiller
A sense of place, dialogue and dialect, the creation of a narrative through a sequence of anecdote: these are some of the particular demands in travel writing. Students will be required to take a few short trips in the New York area in order to experience an ethnic neighborhood or a cultural milieu that is not familiar to them. When writing their pieces they will practice the literary skills that convey adventure and sensory impressions while incorporating a fair amount of factual information and historical background. They will look for the unique, revealing detail, and learn to exploit the value of the unexpected encounter. They will discover that there are many ways to write about a journey, and many different reasons to read a travel story. Texts for this class are Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar; M.F.K. Fisher, Two Towns in Provence; and pertinent magazine pieces.
Writing the Fragment
K30.1329 4 CR TR 3:30-4:45 Victoria Blythe
This writing seminar will explore the fragment as a literary genre and as a modality for literary production. Our engagement with the fragment will focus on interruption as a force for generating writing, a dynamic that leaves in its wake literary debris to be collected and recouped. Revisiting our own literary scenes of destruction we will develop a writing technique based on bricolage. Using the writing workshop as a literary archeological dig we will learn to recognize our usable fragments, to reconfigure and recontextualize them into revitalized works. (Students will bring fragments from their own work to the project). We will look at some famous literary fragments such as the classic “Anaximander Fragment” and the remains of Sappho’s odes on love. Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Eliot’s “Wasteland,” Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” and selections from Benjamin’s monumental bricolage-work will figure in our itinerary among the ruins. Theoretical writings may include Said's “Beginnings” and Blanchot's “Writing the Disaster.” Students will revisit and redeploy their own literary fragments and will also work within the genre of the “intentional fragment.”
Writing the Documentary Film
K30.1495 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Robert Seidman
Writing the script for a documentary film involves integrating several kinds of writing. It is part journalism, part history, and part narrative film; depending on the subject matter, it may also involve social criticism, biography, sociology, and several other disciplines. This course will examine this unique genre of writing and help students write their own documentary film scripts. We’ll concentrate on the entire process of writing the script, from the conception of the initial idea, through the research process (including doing interviews), and into the organizational stage. We will examine the three-act and five-act structures as well as the issue of chronological narrative versus alternative organizational principles. We will examine several excellent documentaries, including Terry Zwigoff's Crumb, Tony Silver and Henry Chalfont’s Style Wars, the Maysles’ Running Fence and at least two films that the instructor was involved in writing, “A Life Apart: Hasidism in America” and “Riding the Rails” (nominated for an Academy Award). Students will develop and write their own documentary scripts, and some class time will involve a workshop approach in which students share and discuss their work.
Writing Comedy
K30.1510 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Barry Goldsmith
This workshop introduces students to writing various forms of comedy, including the monologue (standup and TV talk shows), television sitcoms, comic plays and movies, and humorous essays. In order better to understand the many styles of contemporary comedy, the course examines several great works in the history of comedy which form the basis for today’s comedy. The course also explores how social context has historically shaped these comic genres and how the technological advances of the twentieth century have caused the multimedia culture to produce such a wide variety of comic expression. The course will also include celebrity guest speakers. Texts may include Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Plautus’ Pseudolus, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Voltaire’s Candide, Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, and films such as Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, and Sullivan’s Travels.
Creating Narrative Effects: Better Storytelling Through Craft
K30.1520 4 CR W 9:30-12:15 Meera Nair
Good writing is seamless and smooth, skillfully persuading us of the authenticity of the time and place and the emotional landscape of the characters. We are shown only what needs to be illuminated, carried forward at the right speed, kept at arm’s length sometimes and clasped close at other times. Great stories or novels work at every level because the writer has mastered the craft of fiction. This class will examine those elements of craft that lead to better storytelling—ingenious use of point of view, narrative voice, pacing, meaningful description and telling detail, effective dialogue and many more. We will read great stories illustrating these aspects of craft, and write stories which we will workshop. Possible text: The Story and Its Writer : An Introduction to Short Fiction edited by Ann Charters.
Crafting Short Fiction From the Sentence Up
K30.1537 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Steven Rinehart
This class explores the craft of writing, starting with the sentence and ending with the scene. Half of each class is devoted to craft exercises and the remaining half to a traditional workshop approach to discussing student submissions. By the end of the semester we’ll be able to talk intelligently about some of the ‘micro’ parts of a short story or novel, giving the students some practical tools for editing those parts.
Fiction Writing
K30.1550 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Steven Smith
This course provides students interested in writing fiction an opportunity to explore various forms of fiction—short story, novella, and novel—in a workshop environment. The main objective of the course is to help students develop their individual styles and voices and to make them aware of the various techniques available to them. Emphasis is on characterization, structure, and dramatization. Every aspect of the craft of writing fiction is examined: point of view, narrative voice, plot, tension, time, sequence, crisis, resolution, dialogue, symbolism, etc. Students present their own fiction, respond to the writings of others, and pose questions about literature, editing, and publishing. The workshop group and instructor provide a supportive audience that listens and responds to the work of each member.
Advanced Fiction Writing
K30.1555 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Matthew Pitt
Prerequisite K30.1550 or V39.0815 or V39.0816 or V39.0820 or permission of the instructor.
This semester will focus on craft as opposed to theory. We’ll concentrate on how to write well, and more importantly, how to tell the difference between what belongs in a story and what doesn’t. We will assume everyone at the table is a working writer—you’ll have plenty of work to do—and the dynamic will be similar to that of medical students examining a living patient. We’ll mostly discuss your work, but also will include some directed reading. Grading is a combination of participation and the quality of the submitted work.
The Art and Craft of Poetry
K30.1560 4 CR MW 4:55-6:10 Scott Hightower
In this workshop poets will focus on the foundations and intricate dynamics of poetry as a writer’s process and on poetry as a two-headed tradition, having an oral tradition and a written tradition. A brief review will cover some of poetry’s history including metric and syllabic measures of writing from the Anglo-Saxon to modern free verse. A weekly reading of a poem by each poet in the circle will serve as point of departure for discussions of the relationships of craft and expression.
Advanced Poetry Writing
K30.1564 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Emily Fragos
Prerequisite K30.1560 or V39.0817 or V39.0830 or permission of the instructor.
A workshop designed for serious poets, this class will teach students how to take their writing to another level both intellectually and artistically; depth of theme, imagination, and craft will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on developing and strengthening one’s personal style and voice. Through work-shopping, students will further refine their critical eye as poet and reader. The class will include exercises, readings, and guest poets; submission of work will be discussed and encouraged.
Literacy in Action
K45.1460 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Maura Donnelly
This course combines volunteer work in New York City adult literacy and English as a second language programs with an academic introduction to the philosophy, history, and current issues of basic education. Students will work as volunteer teachers of reading and writing oral English or mentors at such institutions as the University Settlement, Union Settlement, International Rescue Committee, and Fortune Society. In class they will read about and discuss such key issues as which “basic skills” U.S. adults now need, which adults lack these skills and why, the implications for our economy, families, communities, and democracy, the instructional approaches developed for adults, and the steps that might be taken to build support for high-quality, adult basic-skills programs. Throughout the course, students will relate such issues to their own on-site experiences in class discussion and role-playing, and create a portfolio of writing that includes on-site observations, lesson plans, reflections, and a final analytical paper. Readings may include Auerbach's Making Meaning, Making Change; Horton and Freire's We Make the Road by Walking; and the journals, Focus on Basics and The Change Agent.
Fiction Writing
K80.2550 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Chris Spain
This graduate course is open to advanced undergraduates (juniors and seniors) with permission of the instructor. Please contact the instructor by email (clspain@msn.com).
The aim of this course is to fathom why fiction works when it works, and why it doesn’t when it doesn’t. We will attempt to teach ourselves to read like writers, so we can learn from those who have come before, so we can began to write like writers. We will engage all the elements that give a fiction a chance at success—obsession, seduction, evoking of the senses, the removal of filters, scene and summary, theatre of the mind, et cetera. Students—and the teacher—will turn in three first drafts of fiction, each 10-14 pages long, to be critiqued in a workshop setting. The critiques will be rigorous but constructive; no nastiness allowed. We will also complete short, extemporaneous, writing exercises. Readings taken from The New Yorker, Zoetrope, and others.
