We are culturally trained to see movies as entertainment, but while they are often entertaining, there is so much more in cinema. The art of film has a unique potential to combine, investigate, and confront ideas across cultures and time. The course will interrogate the way cinema produces, engages with, and represents ideas, extending beyond the sheer visual spectacle and entertainment. Each film will be considered as a sovereign work of art as well as an intersectional field wherein other cultures and ideas are present and investigated. This approach would require both a close reading of each film and a comparative analysis.
Creative Writing Courses
Creative Writing
What does it mean to pay attention? What do we see when we stop to look? We've been told our attentions are broken, fractured. In this class we will attempt to re-acquaint ourselves with seeing. To do so, we will try to look and wonder for longer than is comfortable: we will read 2 books—Marcel Proust's Swann's Way and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse—and look at a handful of paintings for extended periods. We will go in close on the textures and rhythms of each; think, talk, and write about how each re-calibrates our concept of seeing and then submit a final paper with a different eye toward engaging with sensations, ideas, questioning.
This seminar will explore, primarily in American literature, themes of individual and cultural identity from 19th century texts (Irving, Poe, James) to 20th and 21st century fiction and selected works of art, photography, and film. Students will write 1-2 page papers each week, present an analysis and discussion of a text or art-work, and write a paper of 12-15 pages. Questions will be: Is the "American Dream" an ideal, a shared cultural identity, or is it a chimera? How does the "Dream" manifest itself in individual works of art?
Practice in the original composition of poetry supplemented by the reading and analysis of standard works. Criticism by practicing writers and talented peers encourages the student’s growth as both creator and reader of literature.
The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers a perspective on the place of literature among the liberal arts. Criticism by practicing writers and talented peers encourages the student's growth as both creator and reader of literature.
This is a workshop in the fundamentals of writing plays. Through writing prompts, exercises, study and reflection, students will be guided in the creation of original dramatic material. Attention will be given to character, structure, dramatic action, monologue, dialogue, language and behavior.
Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format.
Speculative fiction is where the impossible happens. Though this expansive genre is often tagged as escapism, it connects to a deep part of our nature. Our foundation myths and fables are speculative fiction, and their current of fear and wonder runs straight through to contemporary science fiction, fantasy, and horror. In this class, we'll learn about some fascinating genre traditions, embrace experimentation, and try to build universes that won't (per Philip K. Dick) fall apart two days later. A mix of mind-bending readings, stimulating class discussions, and eccentric writing assignments will inspire our own forays into the slipstream.
This is an intensive reading course, which focuses on the skills to read and reread like a writer. A wide selection of readings—novels, stories, plays, poetry—will be covered in the course, a guided tour of books and their authors. Students will be expected to read at least an hour a day, and the average weekly reading load will be between ten and fifteen hours. Students are expected to keep a detailed daily reading journal and participate in group discussions and class presentations.
This course is designed to inspire and instruct students on how to write the literary longform non-fiction. Excellent non-fiction requires rigorous fact-based reporting to craft eloquent prose. In this class, students will learn to do both. They will build a spine of interviews, timelines, and sources, workshops, and craft story elements. The course focuses on going deep on a single subject and crafting one longform piece, with close reading of top non-fiction practitioners.
Advanced practice in the original composition of poetry for discussion in regularly scheduled workshop meetings. The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers perspective on the places of literature among the liberal arts.
Advanced practice in the original composition of fiction for discussion in regularly scheduled workshop meetings. The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers perspective on the place of literature among the liberal arts.
A continuation of work begun in Introductory Playwriting, in this class, students will complete either one full-length play or two long one-acts (40-60 pages) to the end of gaining a firmer understanding of characterization, dialogue, structure, and the playwriting process. In addition to questions of craft, an emphasis will be placed on the formation of healthy creative habits and the sharpening of critical and analytical skills through reading and responding to work of both fellow students and contemporary playwrights of note.
Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format.
What motivates us to write about our own lives? What is the relationship between the "I' who experiences and the "I" who writes? How scrupulous must we be about telling the truth? What are our moral obligations to the people we write about? In this workshop, we will consider different approaches to the people, places and things that have formed us.
An interdisciplinary navigation into the field of narratology, the structure of (hi)stories, centering creation myths and origin stories. African mythogenesis paves our primary path of investigation, but we also consider the universality of myth, and students will write to their interests and experiences. This creative nonfiction class combines ethnographic research, critical reading, and literary hybridity. A polished 10-page piece presents an original, research-intensive mythscape alongside informed analysis and careful contextualization. Every person has a story we should hear. This unconventional class equips Tigers to tell theirs.
Writing People is a seminar focused on the many ways in which a journalist rooted in the disciplines of reporting and research, boosted by the techniques of creative nonfiction can convey the fleeting, inimitable virtues, quirks, and foibles of real people. By reading and dissecting examples of writing from a bevy of genres, including magazine profiles, arts reviews, and newspaper obituaries, students will learn how to use a mountain of facts to form a human shape.