Fall 2008 Undergraduate Course Schedule
Note: Effective Spring 2006, the prefix to all Creative Writing Program course codes begin with V39 (instead of V41). All V41 courses will automatically be changed on your transcript to reflect the new numeration.
INTRODUCTORY WORKSHOPS
V39.0815 Creative Writing: Introduction to Fiction & Poetry
Section 001, Instructor TBA, MW 9:30-10:45
Section 002, Instructor TBA, MW 12:30-1:45
Section 003, Instructor TBA, MW 3:30-4:45
Section 004, Instructor TBA, MW 4:55-6:10
Section 005, Instructor TBA, MW 4:55-6:10
Section 006, Instructor TBA, TR 9:30-10:45
Section 007, Instructor TBA, TR 12:30-1:45
Section 008, Instructor TBA, TR 3:30-4:45
Section 009, Instructor TBA, TR 4:55-6:10
Section 010, Instructor TBA, TR 4:55-6:10
Section 011, Instructor TBA, MW 12:30-1:45
Section 012, Instructor TBA, TR 12:30-1:45
Section 013, Instructor TBA, TR 8:00-9:15
Section 014, Instructor TBA, TR 9:30-10:45
Section 015, Instructor TBA, TR 12:30-1:45
Section 016, Instructor TBA, MW 8:00-9:15
Section 017, Instructor TBA, MW 9:30-10:45
Section 018, Instructor TBA, MW 9:30-10:45
INTERMEDIATE WORKSHOPS
V39.0816001 Intermediate Fiction Workshop
Elissa Schappell, MW 9:30-10:45
Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent
V39.0816002 Intermediate Fiction Workshop
Jennifer Gilmore, MW 4:55-6:10
Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent
V39.0816003 Intermediate Fiction Workshop
Jonathan Rabb, TR 3:30-4:45
Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent
V39.0817001 Intermediate Poetry Workshop
Catharine Barnett, MW 3:30-4:45
Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent
V39.0817002 Intermediate Poetry Workshop
Miranda Field, TR 11:00-12:15
Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent
V39.0817003 Intermediate Poetry Workshop
Gregory Pardlo, TR 4:55-6:10
Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent
ADVANCED WORKSHOPS
V39.0820001 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Shaping Fiction
Paul Lisicky, M 2:00-4:45
The ideal writing workshop is a place where a variety of forms are encouraged and respected, where we attempt to create a version of a model literary community: a thriving ecosystem, as Richard Powers might call it, rather than a monoculture. It requires an openness at every turn, a fierce generosity, and a willingness to consider each story on its own terms. This advanced, application-only workshop is for those who have written some stories that they want to make better. We'll briefly discuss the work of a contemporary writer as part of each class meeting, but your own fiction will be the primary text. We'll talk about the all-important matters of style, character, structure, and meaning, but we'll also consider, in casual terms, contemporary fiction in relationship to music, poetry, visual art, and film. Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent. Application required.
V39.0820002 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Narrative Art from the Inside Out
Darin Strauss, T 3:30-6:10
Our class will emphasize shop talk: how to begin a story, say, and how to introduce a character. And we'll take up such questions as, “What is the relationship of plot to sub-plot? How does one hold the reader's attention?” Of course, in Art, rules must be flexible—but I ask my students to think of writing in strategic terms; each story-telling decision needs to make tactical sense. With that in mind, we'll examine—with so much esprit de corps as to arouse envy—the tenets of the Art of Fiction. Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent. Application required.
V39.0820003 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Finding One's Voice
Irini Spanidou, W 2:00-4:45
The workshop is open to students interested in writing short stories or novels. The emphasis will be on discovering and encouraging each student’s individual voice. For the first four weeks, exercises will be given that are designed to generate new material and also demonstrate some of the more technical aspects of writing. After that, the students will be required to complete two stories or two chapters from a novel. Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent. Application required.
V39.0820004 Advanced Fiction Workshop
Fiona Maazel, R 3:30-6:10
Here’s Thomas Mann: “A writer is someone for whom writing is
more difficult than it is for other people.” Sound right? It is. The stakes are
enormous; your forebears are oppressive; this is too hard. And yet, the joys.
So welcome to class. We’re going to workshop your short fiction—likely two
stories, or one and a revision, depending. Workshopping has its drawbacks, but
it’s not a jury. We’ll talk about what works and what doesn’t, and, most
importantly: why. Why doesn’t it work? Writing is a mysterious business, equal
parts talent and know-how. One you can’t do anything about. But the other is
craft, which can be learned. Dialogue, tone, pacing, point of view, tense,
diction, syntax, these are your tools. They can be sharpened. So we’ll be
workshopping student work and also published work, by way of exploring specific
feats of craft. We’ll agree on what to read together, based on what you feel are
your weaknesses. You will also be writing all semester—on your fiction for
workshop and also on exercises designed to hone your technique. The class will
be tailored to fit your needs; no point doing it otherwise. Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent. Application required.
V39.830001 Advanced Poetry Workshop: The Sounds Those Words Make
Mark Rudman, M 2:00-4:45
In this workshop students are actively involved in the process of developing their own poetic voice with an emphasis on sound, which is exactly how Keats and Rimbaud approached it. In poetry sound tells you when and how the imagination is engaged: joyfully, open vowels, or angrily where t and d sounds predominate. And yet it's hard to pin down: Robert Frost tried when he spoke of "the sound of the sentences," but that implies something ongoing, even fluent, when brokenness may be what you're after. Any number of other genres and art forms, like songs and films and prose that is its own kind of poetry, are used throughout. A lot of the learning takes place through listening to where other poets in the class are "confused," and confused on the surface: what is going on. Creating context is the central problem that everyone has to address in beginning to write in a way that will capture the attention of others. There are great poets who never learned how to locate their poems and whose work failed to develop. It is necessary for the students in this class to immerse themselves in reading poetry, to cultivate the peculiarly reciprocal nature of the art, which rewards those who love it. A wide range of poets are introduced and suggested, "between," as Robert Duncan says, "tradition and innovation." And the students are encouraged to participate, and develop critical intelligence. It is through action and not introspection that people develop. Through reading their own poems and those of others aloud, students will learn how to identify the ways in which poetic energy and tension are conveyed through clusters of sound, which require cooperation from the body, "the lust for rhyme of the old Italians," as Osip Mandelstam might say in concordance with Whitman, for whom opera, with its demanding long and deep breaths, was the source for a new poetry: "the tongue presses itself against the roof of the mouth, the smile is merrily crimson." More on these matters can be found on www.markrudman.com. Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent. Application required.
V39.830002 Advanced Poetry Workshop: New Writing, New Strategies
Robert Fitterman, T 2:00-4:45
In 1871, Arthur Rimbaud declared that “the invention of the unknown demands new forms,” and for over 100 years innovative poets have been beckoned to uncover or invent forms for the unknown or for their own present condition. New times require new forms, and in the tradition of the avant-garde and experimental writing, this course will introduce you to several new poetic strategies and to the poets who employ them. In addition to workshopping, each week we will write poems in-class that are inspired by or modeled after the strategies we study. Some of these experiments might include: sampling, procedural writing, mixed media, collaboration, conceptual writing, appropriation, etc. The course also requires that you present your writing 2-3 times during the semester, participate in a collaborative project, and turn in a small “book” of your writing at the end of the term. Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent. Application required.
V39.830003 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Continuous Enterprise
Matthew Rohrer, M 11:00-1:45
This course is about writing as a continuous enterprise. The course is primarily a workshop, and will focus mainly on the close reading and consideration of each others' poems. We will also read a wide range of recent books of poems, with an eye to getting to the bottom of what it is each poet is up to, how he or she pulls it off, and what we can learn from them. Poets we will consider will include James Tate, Kevin Young, Brenda Hillman, and Tao Lin, among others. Writing exercises based on the readings will be one of the most tangible ways we can engage with these book. "Writing" is, in fact, a gerund; it (and its conjoined twin, Reading) is an enterprise we are to be engaged in, continuously, if we are to grow as poets. At the end of this course, students will have grown so much as poets they will need new clothes. Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent. Application required.
V39.0850001 Advanced Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Making the Personal Matter
Rachel DeWoskin, R 3:30-6:10
In this writing and reading workshop, students will conceptualize, research, write and revise personal stories and memoir. We will explore strategies for integrating research into first-person non-fiction, toward building narratives that move in contexts that matter.
V39.0850002 Advanced Creative Nonfiction Workshop: A Different Way of Saying ‘I’
Maria Laurino, W 11:00-1:45
How do we create essays and memoir that move beyond the personal “I” to a universal eye? We will explore the strategies of creative nonfiction in this writing and reading workshop, examining the roles of imaginative reconstruction, reporting, and research in developing personal narratives. We will focus on creating concise, shapely, and texturally rich essays and memoir. The participatory classroom setting will allow us, in Michel de Montaigne’s words, to “reserve a back shop all our own” – a supportive, creative environment in which students work on exercises, write and revise their narratives, and critically discuss the work of essayists and memoirists, including Montaigne, George Orwell, Primo Levi, Joan Didion, Patricia Hampl, and Jonathan Lethem. Prerequisite: V39.0815 or equivalent. Application required.
