Writing Courses

Lives in Brief
K30.1026 4 CR MW 7:45-9:00 Christopher Bram

This course provides grounding in how to create short, compelling biographies of intriguing people. We will explore the form by reading examples drawn from classical and contemporary literature, discuss research methods including the use of archival sources and interviews, and investigate the techniques of various writers. Students will write two short papers and one long one using different approaches to biography, including one based on interviews. Readings include Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey, The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm, Footsteps by Richard Holmes, and profiles by Lawrence Weschler, Susan Orlean, and others.

Writing About Performance
K30.1034   4 CR   MW   12:30-1:45     Julie Malnig

This writing seminar will train students to become critical viewers of performance and translate their “looking” into descriptive and analytical prose. Students will be introduced to a variety of critical strategies and approaches - from formalist to ethnographic to various forms of sociological and cultural criticism - to develop their interpretive skills.  These analyses will help students discover how various performance mediums are constituted, how they “work”, and how they create meaning for viewers. Assignments will include interviews, artists’ profiles, performance documentations, cultural reviews, and critical and/or theoretical analyses. Occasional group excursions to performances will be arranged, as well as class speakers. Some of the authors, essayists, and artists whose works we may read include: Susan Sontag; Michael Kirby; Edwin Denby; Deborah Jowitt; Joan Acocella; Joyce Carol Oates; Anna Deavere Smith; Spalding Gray; and Henry Louis Gates, jr.

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 6:20-9:00 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 Letter as Literature
K30.1326     4 CR TR 3:30-4:45 Victoria Blythe

The letter as a genre of literature is situated in a middle space between private and public discourse.  This writing seminar will inhabit the “space of the letter” to experiment with the letter-format as a unique modality of self-inscription.  We will examine the “space of the letter” as an especially productive location for writing, and the literary letter as a vehicle with the potential to transport our writing from personal communication to literary work.  We will theorize the letter by reading other people’s mail, such as Sylvia Plath’s “Letters Home,” Kafka’s “Letter to My Father,” and Rilke’s “Letters on Cezanne,” letters written as literary works, and letters never intended to be read.  We will investigate the rhetoric, psychology and economy of the letter, a trajectory that will take us through the dead letter office (Derrida’s “Post Card”) and into the realm of blackmail (Poe’s “Purloined Letter”).  As a community of writers we will “send and receive” letters in various literary formats, and take our place on the cutting edge with the electronic letter as it shifts the paradigm of this familiar, but strange, literary genre.

New York City Stories
K30.1327    4 CR   W 3:30-6:10  June Foley

It’s been said that there are eight million stories in the city, and this class invites you to write your own. We begin by conjuring up images from songs, movies and TV, only to challenge, complicate or exorcise those images. We read great works as diverse as the city itself, by writers who may include Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, James Baldwin, Jane Jacobs, Joseph Mitchell, Jose Marti, I.B. Singer, Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion. We also read the online Subway Chronicles; the electronic newsletter, Voices That Must Be Heard, which translates stories from hundreds of New York City ethnic presses; and blogs, from the general (gothamist), to the more focused (queenscrap), to those on specific topics, e.g., real estate (curbed), to the personal and “bitterly nostalgic” (vanishingnewyork). Then each of us walks the streets in search of her or his New York, adopting a building, a block, a dog walk, a borough; discovering a sacred spot, an obscure museum, an independent bookstore, a “new” (to us) festival or food or sport (cricket, anyone?) and writing about it.

Writing Your Ancestry
K30.1336  4 CR    M 3:30-6:10  Nancy Agabian

This workshop will give students the opportunity to practice elements of creative nonfiction through a multi-faceted approach to writing on ancestry and cultural heritage. The main goal will be a written exploration of the self to consider wider issues of history, community, identity, place, and family. The major assignments will be structured around various tasks: a personal essay will help to define themes and set scenes in the present; memoir writing will involve mining your memories of family to identify possible leads into the past; a reported piece will entail interviews of family members, archival research, and/or a visit to an ancestral site. These essays will be developed gradually with the help of shorter at-home assignments and in-class exercises on style, structure, and strategy. Revision will be built into the process, and we will read each other's work and give supportive feedback throughout the semester. Likely authors to be read and discussed for inspiration will include Ian Frazier, Honor Moore, Lawrence Weschler, Sarah Vowell, Bliss Broyard, Brenda Lin, Tara Bray Smith, and D.J. Waldie.

The Monster Under Your Story: Exploring the Possibilities of Genre
K30.1526   4 CR    F 12:30-3:15   Scott Snyder

From the Gothic mansions of Poe to the gleaming hovercrafts of Gibson, genre fiction is often a craft of extremes: extreme imagination, extreme emotion. Do the trappings of "literary fiction" sometimes feel constraining to you as a writer? Do the settings feel too familiar, the conventions too tame for the story you want to tell? Could your story use a cowboy? A flesh-eating zombie? In this course, students will examine and write in different genres, from mystery to science fiction, western to horror. While the course will include close, textual readings of works by authors such as Stephen King, Kelly Link, Ursula K. Le Guin, Koji Suzuki, Walter Mosley, Karen Russell, Elmore Leonard, and Max Brooks, the majority of each class will be spent workshopping student fiction.

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 R 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 F 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 T 6:20-9:00  Dave King
Students may take Fiction Writing two times.

This course provides students interested in writing fiction an opportunity to explore and discuss various forms of fiction writing in a workshop environment. The main objective of the course is to help students develop and revise at least one complete work of fiction, and in the process hone individual styles and voices. One route to this goal is an inquiry into a range of techniques available to contemporary fiction writers. Emphasis is on characterization, structure, and narrative cohesion, and a variety of the craft aspects of fiction writing will be explored through exercises. These include point of view, narrative voice, plot, tension, time, sequence, dialogue, symbolism, and so on. Students will present their own fiction, respond to the writings of others, and pose questions about literature, editing, and publishing, all within the supportive and responsive environment of the workshop group.

Advanced Fiction Writing
K30.1555 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Chris Spain  
Prerequisite K30.1550 or V39.0815 or V39.0816 or V39.0820 or permission of the instructor.  Students may take Advanced Fiction Writing two times.

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.

The Art and Craft of Poetry
K30.1560 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Emily Fragos
Students may take The Art and Craft of Poetry two times.

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  F 11:00-1:45  Scott Hightower  
Prerequisite K30.1560 or V39.0817 or V39.0830 or permission of the instructor.  Students may take Advanced Poetry Writing two times.

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 oral English or mentors at such institutions as the University Settlement,  Turning Point, International Rescue Committee, and the 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 create a portfolio of writing that includes on-site observations, lesson plans, a policy brief, 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.