2019-2020

At the core of fiction writing is dramatization, which allows the reader to "see" the world and characters of our story and to experience the ideas and emotions that we want to resonate. The primary vehicle for dramatization is the scene, and in this technical seminar, we'll look at all the elements of a traditionally well-made scene in a work of fiction-dialogue, action, characterization, description, etc.-and investigate the effects of each element and how they all work together to support the overall narrative. What are the various functions of a scene, beyond characterization and drama? Where is the best place to begin and end? What is the most effective way to organize and juxtapose our scenes over the course of a short story, a chapter of a novel, or an entire novel? How might we move beyond the traditional ideas of action and dialogue and expand our notion of what a scene is and what it can do? During the quarter, we'll look at exceptional scenes in short stories, novels, plays, movies, and even television shows, with an eye also on how all these genres of dramatic writing use scenes similarly and differently and what we might learn from these dynamics as fiction writers. Along with the reading material, assignments will include reading responses, creative writing exercises, short essays, and presentations.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 2:00-4:50

We all know them-The Great Gatsby, The Lord of the Flies, The Bell Jar, and other books that seem to have been taught or read in every high school in the country since the dawn of time. In this cross-genre Fundamentals course, we'll re-examine these and works by the likes of Henry Miller, Sandra Cisneros, Allen Ginsberg, and Zora Neale Hurston. We'll think about the cultural history of what makes a classic high school read, about coming-of-age stories, and what it means to be educated, enlightened, and/or entertained. We'll think, too, about how we learn to read, write, and speak back to texts as adults (whatever that means). You'll write creative exercises, critical responses, and a final paper on a work of your choosing.
Day/Time: Tuesday, 12:30-3:20

The main goal of this course will be to understand the reasons, traditions and methods behind the practice of literary adaptations. From Joyce Carol Oates's "Blue Bearded Lover," to Anne Sexton's "Cinderella", to Angela Carter's "Wolf-Alice" and Marina Carr's "By the Bog of Cats," there are stories that continue to resonate through the centuries, and others that are made to resonate through the labor of new story tellers. Each text will be explored both independently and within the context of its adaptive genealogy. Students will be expected to read each text carefully, come prepared to actively participate in class discussion and respond to both academic and creative writing prompts based on assigned texts and class lecture.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 9:30-12:20

In this core course, students will investigate connections between truth, art and beauty, by reading, watching, and writing works adapted from an historical record or "based on a true story." Weekly reading assignments include fiction, poetry, memoir, a graphic novel, and a film; students will be asked to write both critical essays and creative exercises that explore overlaps anddivergences between journalistic and artistic truth. Readings include works by Aristotle, Baldwin, Bechdel, Carson, Keats, Northup, and Rankine.

Day/Time: Wednesday, 1:30-4:20

This course invites writers to reconsider the influence of Chicago's public spaces on genre and artistic form. How does one tell a "Chicago story?" Is the "City on the Re-Make" best told in prose or poem? Is there a clear boundary between the city's South and North Sides? Is there a "Chicago epic?" Working through these questions, students will analyze and explore Chicago writers' work in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students will then develop their own creative responses, building connections to adopted critical approaches. To these ends, we will examine work by writers including Nelson Algren, Elizabeth Hatmaker, Aleksandar Hemon, and Margo Jefferson, as well as the city's rich legacies in documentary film, the visual arts, and music.

Day/Time: Thursday, 9:30-12:20

Do you believe in wizards? Are you a wizard? Then pack up your talismans, fetishes, and gamelans into the mysterious little satchel you carry at your side and get ready for some incantatory magic. We will investigate the figure of the wizard as an archetype, a literary symbol, a vehicle for fantasy, and as a commanding reality while considering such things as A Wizard of Earthsea, the figure of Merlin, The Teachings of Don Juan, Conversations with Ogotemmeli, the figure of Harry Potter, the poetry of W.B. Yeats and others, as well as additional things too secret to reveal at present, including the nature of esotericism.

Though we live in an era glutted with data, facts don't speak for themselves. It's story that moves us. In this class, we will engage in an exploration of "creative nonfiction," investigating how to shape lived experience into memorable story. We will identify the primary challenges and opportunities inherent in the genre. Together we will read exemplary forms of creative nonfiction, including: personal essay, memoir, lyric nonfiction, science writing, nature writing, and cultural criticism. We will ask how events are shaped into stories, facts into a meaningful narrative arc. This course will be conducted as a writing workshop, and we will examine our own work and others' from a critical perspective, looking carefully at issues of style, content, and relevance. In doing so, we hope to gain a more nuanced understanding of creative nonfiction as a whole, as well our particular positions within the genre.

Readings will include:"My Demons and My Dog and This Anxiety and That Noise" by Hanif Abdurraqib; "The Glass Essay" by Anne Carson; "Rain Like Cotton" by Jennifer Kabot; "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid; "This Is Not Who We Are" by Naomi Shihab Nye;"Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan;"I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness" by Claire Vaye Watkins; Heartberries by Therese Mailhot

Day/Time: Monday, 10:30-1:20

A personal essay can employ a chain of events, but it's essentially a train of thought. Like thought, it's protean, able to take any shape or form and still remain an essay. In this workshop you'll write three drafts of your own attempt at the form while line editing and critiquing your classmates' attempts. We'll also do close readings, starting with "Why I Write," by George Orwell, and "Why I Write," by Joan Didion. Then James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son." After this taste of the present we'll go back four thousand years to the essay's beginnings in Babylon, and follow its evolution in Greece and Rome-Heraclitus, Plutarch, Seneca-and its flowering in Europe: Montaigne, Natalia Ginzburg, and others, before returning to contemporaries like Adrienne Rich and Margaret Atwood. We'll end by reading Didion's essay, "Goodbye to All That," paired with Eula Biss' cover version, also titled, "Goodbye to All That." You'll leave this class knowing the history, theory, and practice of nonfiction's most fundamental form.

Day/Time: Friday, 9:30-12:20

This course explores some of the most basic approaches to writing poems through careful reading and discussion of modern and contemporary poets. We'll practice elements, such as rhythm, diction, syntax, and metaphor, at the same time that we explore the movements of mind and the moods that lyricism makes available. The class will practice literary community building by discussing peers' poems in workshops, by responding to poems and essays by contemporary and modern poets and critics, and by attending literary events on campus. For the first few sessions, our discussions will focus primarily on readings. As we move forward, we will spend the majority of time workshopping student work.

Day/Time: Friday, 10:30-1:20

Current talk of queering the lyric I shows a lack of historical perspective: the lyric 'I' was always been queer, a performance of guises and disguises, to be most mistrusted when most apparently sincere. In this course we'll become acquainted with ways of performing 'I' in English-language lyric and test our own abilities to fake, fragment, displace, cross-dress and project the I as it goes about its poetic work. You (whoever you are) can become stranger than you imagined - you will learn that in poetry it's always true that I is another, but perhaps the other you might become, or most need to disavow.
Day/Time: Wednesday, 12:30-3:20