Writing Courses
Lives in Brief
K30.1026 4 CR F 12:30-3:15 Melanie Hulse Formerly titled "Feature Writing: The Profile." Course is not repeatable.
This course provides grounding in the approaches used to create short, compelling biographies of intriguing people. We will examine the evolution of the form by reading examples drawn from classical and contemporary literature, explore research methods including the use of archival sources and interviewing, and investigate techniques propounded by established writers. Students will write two short papers and one long one using different approaches to biography: an obituary that encapsulates and celebrates the subject’s core achievements, a “just-the-facts” encyclopedia entry, and a profile based on interviews. Readings include Samuel Johnson’s Life of Savage, Virginia Woolf’s The Art of Biography, and Gay Talese’s Frank Sinatra Has a Cold. Field trips to archives are a required part of the coursework.
Writing Race in Contemporary America
K30.1045 4 CR F 2:00-4:45 Nettie Jones
In contemporary America, we have a multicultural and racially diversified population; our national image is no longer dominated by people of European descent. This is easily evidenced in our mass media and in the last U.S.Census Report where the statistics demonstrate that our African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and “Other” populations are rapidly growing and developing. We are interbreeding, intermarrying, interracial, and interlocked. In this writing course, we will increase awareness of the phenomenon of our multicultural identities by writing personal essays, biographies, and autobiographies. We will focus on exploring our own racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as exploring this theme in readings and in a variety of films.
Creative Nonfiction
K30.1300 4 CR W 3:30-6:10 Cris Beam
Creative nonfiction marks the intersection between journalism and literature, and bears the hallmarks of both. Stories feature strong character development, well-developed, nuanced scenes, and a tangible narrative arc. But they also privilege thorough research, live reporting and a writer’s quizzical, intelligent stance. In this course, students will not only learn the components of a good story, but what makes an idea compelling to a diverse audience to begin with. Students will choose their own topics, but we’ll all write and revise one profile and one long investigative-style piece of researched and reported literary nonfiction. We will workshop these longer stories in sections, and students will learn effective editing strategies for their own writing by working closely with their peers. We’ll read masters of the genre like Joseph Mitchell, Katherine Boo, and Alex Kotlowitz as well as some newer or more experimental voices like Pumla Gobodo–Madikizela and Lauren Slater. We’ll also look at broader ethical questions like going undercover, cloaking source identities, and writing outside of one’s own experience.
The Art of the Personal Essay
K30.1304 4 CR R 2:00-4:45 Sharon Friedman
The personal essay is a flexible genre that often incorporates rumination, memoir, narrative, portrait, anecdote, diatribe, scholarship, fantasy and moral philosophy. The title of Montaigne’s Essais (“attempts"), published in 1580, suggests the tentative and exploratory nature of this form as well as its freedom. The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy—the sharing of the writer’s observations and reflections with a reader, establishing a dialogue on subjects that range from the mundane to autobiographical and political meditations to reflections on abstract concepts and moral dilemmas. Style, shape, and intellectual depth lend the personal essay its drama, charm, and its ability to provoke thought. In this course, we will read and write personal essays that explore “persona,” “tone,” and “voice” in dialogue with concepts such as “the self,” “personal identity,” and “sincerity.” Readings may include essays by Seneca, Michel de Montaigne, Charles Lamb, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Wole Soyinka, Natalia Ginsburg, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Gloria Anzaldua.
Writing Your Life: The Memoir
K30.1310 4 CR W 2:00-4:45 June Foley
This course combines an exploration of the literary genre of memoir with a workshop in writing about your own life. While reading and analyzing a variety of twentieth-century American memoirs—beginning with Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican—students will use these works as models for evoking sense memories, recreating scenes, extrapolating plots from lives, placing lives in history, and discovering one’s own voice. Topics include the relationship between memoir, autobiography, and fiction; the impact of gender, class, and race on writing; and both theoretical and practical questions about the craft of writing. Readings may include Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican, James McBride’s The Color of Water, M. Elaine Mar’s Paper Daughter, David Sedzzaris’s Naked, and William Zinsser’s Inventing the Truth.
The Journal in the City
K30.1324 4 CR TR 4:55-6:10 Victoria Blythe
Literary journalists have long been inspired by the urban muse. Paris, London, Berlin, Prague and New York have nurtured such noted journalists as Rilke, Woolf, Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Allen Ginsberg. As we look into the journals of these intriguiing writers we will immerse ourselves in the New York City milieu, asking what is the impact of the city on the text, as well as examining the effect of the city on our own journals. As writers, how do we interact with the city? Whom do we become in our journals in the city? We will keep and develop literary journals for the duration of the course: our “New York City Journals.”
Advanced Comedy Writing
K30.1511 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Barry Goldsmith
Building upon the ability to write basic humor, jokes, monologues, short comedic stories, and sketches, students in this workshop will write individual sitcom scripts and comedy screenplays. We will focus on learning the basics of plot construction, style, and applying humor to dialogue and characterization. We will also study great comedic plays and movies and adapt them to our writing needs.
The Short Story: A Workshop on Revising
K30.1536 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Carol Zoref
This workshop is dedicated to the oft-repeated observation that all writing is re-writing. Each writer will focus their efforts on only one or two short stories, rather than starting many new stories and abandoning them in favor of yet another new beginning. Students will take each of their stories through a number of drafts and revise them in response to (though not necessarily in accord with) questions and comments raised by other members of the workshop. The objective is to learn ways of staying with such challenges as maintaining the story’s voice, determining the order of experience, and arriving at an ending that satisfies the design of the story as well as the intentions of the writer. Workshop members share their stories in class throughout the semester and comment in detail on one another’s work. Participants should have some experience writing short stories.
Content is King: Editing Short Fiction
K30.1546 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Steven Rinehart
This class explores the hard decision-making involved in fiction, and attempts to give the students tools for deciding which content belongs in a story and which needs to be put aside for later use, or discarded altogether. We look at ways to discover what the first and second drafts are about, and which parts of the story add to that idea and which detract. We will also hold a traditional workshop, discussing student stories in a roundtable session.
Writers as Shapers: Strategies for Sculpting the Story
K30.1549 4 CR W 9:30-12:15 Meera Nair
A piece of fiction can be constructed in an unlimited number of ways and each week we will explore the formal possibilities that are available to us. We will study the choices we can make as writers—of narrative point of view, beginnings, resolutions, dialogue, description, pacing, plot and character development. We will isolate and inspect strategies that published authors have used. Students will produce and workshop their own fiction from exercises. In the conversation between student writing and the studied literature there will hopefully be a greater sense of writers as shapers, sculptors of the raw material of story. Readings: Mishima, Ha Jin, Russell Banks, Charles Baxter, C.J. Hribal, Carver, Flannery O’Connor, Isaac Babel, George Saunders, James Joyce and others.
Fiction Writing
K30.1550 4 CR Dave King
This course provides students interested in writing fiction an opportunity to explore (and practice) 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 are encouraged to become part of a community of writers where they will work with their peers in a safe, honest and considerate environment). Students will 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 W 6:20-9:00 Chris Spain Prerequisite K30.1550 or V39.0815 or V39.0816 or V39.0820 or permission of the instructor.
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.
Narrative Strategies
K30.1558 4CR MW 9:30-10:45 Susan Daitch
In this fiction workshop we will attempt to challenge the writer's and reader's assumptions about fiction writing and storytelling. We'll look at the kinds of ideas, whether formal, social, or structural, we might intuitively bring to texts as readers and writers and try to find other approaches to acts of interpretation and to writing itself. Besides workshopping stories, we'll be reading a range of traditional and non-traditional forms of writing and fiction: graphic novels, Truffaut's interviews with Alfred Hitchcock, a range of short fiction from Henry James to Aimee Bender. We will also attempt to question not just the formal considerations as far as the architecture of stories is concerned, but also the assumptions of how gender, race, and class are constructed in fiction. We will ask how forms such as cinema and comics inform the stories we tell. Stories will be critiqued in class in a constructive manner, and class participation is an integral part of this course.
The Art and Craft of Poetry
K30.1560 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Scott Hightower
In this workshop poets will focus on the foundations and intricate dynamics of poetry as a writer’s process. 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. The emphasis is on inhabiting the quality of language; some time is spent at defining clarity, aesthetics, elegance, and eloquence. The course also covers a brief review of some of poetry’s history, including metric and syllabic measures of writing.
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 and readings. 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 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 Making Meaning, Making Change (Auerbach); We Make the Road by Walking (Horton and Freire); and the journals, Focus on Basics and The Change Agent.
