Writing Courses
Telling Truths: The Skill of Autobiography
K30.1316 4 CR TR 10:00-1:00 Susan Weisser
How can one tell the “truth” about one’s life in narrative form? In this course we will explore the pleasures and dangers of telling stories about our lives through writing autobiographical essays, as well as through reading the autobiographies of selected others. Readings may include texts by Joan Didion, Nancy Mairs, Mary Karr, Augusten Burroughs, and Alexandra Fuller. We will analyze the way in which self-narrative is constructed from the tangled materials of real life, how we read and understand the life writing of others, and how others’ stories can influence our own. Topics include memory, identity, voice, point of view, the body, and relationships.
The Journal in the City
K30.1324 4 CR TR 1:30-4:30 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 intriguing 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.”
Writing Contemporary Urban Fiction
K30.1342 4 CR MW 5:30-8:30 Nettie Jones
This class will introduce students to writing fictions set in cities, with a special focus on American cities experiencing twentieth and twenty-first century tensions and crises. Students will locate their work in an American city whose people are striving—sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding—to survive in changing neighborhoods and communities. The selection of the city is the student's choice. Through exposure to readings, films, speakers and neighborhood walks in New York City and Newark, New Jersey, students will learn about gathering historical information and vivid present-day details for their work. Readings will include selections from Lance Freeman's There Goes the Hood, Georgakas and Surkin's Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, as well as newspapers, magazines, and short stories. Excerpts from films such as Do the Right Thing, The Wire and The Cruise may be included. The goal of the course is for each student to garner information and inspiration to passionately create a completed piece of fiction or a work in progress that will be developed in the future as a short story, novel, play, film or other artistic endeavor.
