Creative Writing Courses

Creative Writing

Introduction to Art Making

LCA 101 · Spring 2017

C01 · Mondays & Wednesdays, 11:00 am - 12:20 pm

Instructors: Aynsley Vandenbroucke · Boris Fishman · Daniel Heyman · Jane Cox · Ruth Ochs · Stacy Wolf · Susan Wheeler

How do artists make art? How do we evaluate it? In this course, students of all levels get to experience firsthand the particular challenges and rewards of art making through practical engagement with five fields — creative writing, visual art, theater, dance, and music — under the guidance of professionals.

How to Write a Song

CWR 211 / MUS 212 · Spring 2017

C01 · Tuesdays, 1:30 - 4:20 pm

Instructors: Paul Muldoon · Steve Mackey

An introduction to the art of writing words for music, an art at the core of almost every literary tradition from Homer through Beowulf to W.B Yeats and beyond.

Graphic Design

VIS 214 / ARC 214 / CWR 214 · Spring 2017

U01 - Alice Chung · Wednesdays, 12:30 - 4:20 pm

Instructors: Alice Chung

This studio course will introduce students to the essential aspects and skills of graphic design, and will analyze and discuss the increasingly vital role that non-verbal, graphic information plays in all areas of professional life, from fine art and book design to social networking and the Internet.

Graphic Design: Typography

VIS 215 / CWR 215 · Spring 2017

U01 - Francesca Grassi · Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:20 pm and 7:30 - 9:40 pm

Instructors: Francesca Grassi

This studio course introduces students to graphic design with a particular emphasis on typography. Students learn typographic history through lectures that highlight major shifts in print technologies and through their engagement in studio design projects.

Imitating Italians

CWR 216 / ITA 216 · Spring 2017

C01 · Wednesdays, 2:30 - 4:20 pm

Instructors: Jhumpa Lahiri

A beginning fiction workshop designed to introduce students to the craft of imitation as a point of creative departure.

Creative Non-Fiction

JRN 240 / CWR 240 · Spring 2017

S01 · Mondays, 1:30 - 4:20 pm

Instructors: Staff

This is a course in factual writing and what has become known as literary nonfiction, emphasizing writing assignments and including several reading assignments from the work of John McPhee and others.

Advanced Poetry

CWR 302 · Spring 2017

Multiple sections offered

Instructors: Paul Muldoon · Claudia Rankine

Advanced practice in the original composition of poetry for discussion in regularly scheduled workshop meetings.

Advanced Literary Translation

CWR 306 / COM 356 · Spring 2017

C01 · Thursdays, 2:30 - 4:20 pm

Instructors: Jhumpa Lahiri

Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format.

The Anthropology of Awe and Terror

ANT 313 / CWR 213 · Spring 2017

S01 · Tuesdays, 7:30 - 10:20 pm

Instructors: Nomi Stone

This course explores encounters with awe and terror via the "sublime" experience. How are these inner states generated and represented in a variety of cultural, political, emotive and artistic contexts?

Life is Short, Art is Really Short

CWR 315 · Spring 2017

C01 · Tuesdays, 1:30 - 4:20 pm

Instructors: James Richardson

All literature is short — compared to our lives, anyway — but we'll be concentrating on poetry and prose at their very shortest. The reading will include proverbs, aphorisms, greguerias, one-line poems, riddles, jokes, fragments, haiku, epigrams and microlyrics.

Women / Writing / Cinema

VIS 335 / CWR 335 / GSS 386 · Spring 2017

S01 · Thursdays, 1:30 - 4:20 pm

Instructors: Rebekah Rutkoff

This course will be structured around female artists, both contemporary and historical, whose work exists at the crossroads of writing and moving images.

Special Topics in Creative Writing: Writing Autobiography

CWR 345 · Spring 2017

C01 · Tuesdays, 1:30 - 3:20 pm

Instructors: Edmund White

Students will explore their own lives through various devices and discover that the truth is never elemental but can be released through literary strategies. During the semester each student will write either one long autobiographical piece or three shorter ones.

Special Topics in Screenwriting: Intermediate Screenwriting: Writing the Feature Film

CWR 403 / VIS 406 · Spring 2017

C01 · Tuesdays, 1:30 - 3:50 pm

Instructors: Afia Serena Nathaniel

How does a screenwriter, organize and develop the ideas that will form a feature narrative script? In this class, students will become familiar with feature film structure, plot evolution, character development, scene shaping and dialogue, and effective techniques for achieving the complex visual and emotional rhythm required by compelling narrative scripts.