CRW 325E l Personal Essay

Instructor: Casares, O

Unique #:  34720

Semester:  Spring 2020

Cross-lists:  n/a

Prerequisites: One of the following: C L 315, E 303D (or 603B), (316K,) 316L, 316M, 316N, 316P, 316K, or T C 303D (or 603B).

Description: Students in this course will read, discuss, and write a wide range of personal essays.  Different from the persuasive and analytic essays students write for other classes, the personal essay is a literary genre related to the memoir and autobiography.  A major component of this form is the writer’s “voice” on the page, which we will spend a considerable amount of time identifying in various texts.  The goal here is for students to become more aware of the writer’s language, both in its tonality and rhythm, as well its impact on the reader, and then use this insight to write their own personal narratives. Every student will write two personal essays that will be discussed in a workshop setting.  Students will revise one of these essays by the end of the semester. During the workshop phase of the course, students will also write critiques for every essay discussed in class.

Requirements & Grading: Essays 50%; Revision 30%; Class Participation (including critiques) 20%

CRW 325F l Fiction Writing

Instructor: Unferth, D

Unique: 34725

Semester:  Spring 2020

Cross-lists: n/a

Prerequisites: One of the following:  C L 315, E 603B, (316K,) 316L, 316M, 316N, 316P, 316K, or T C 603B.

Description:  Our ambition is to create a literary community where we write fiction and explore together its beauty, importance, and the mechanics of its craft. We will focus on techniques, everything from intriguing first sentences to breathless endings.  We will spend time on description, setting, dialogue, character, and conflict. We will open the semester with short exercises, some of which we will discuss in class.  Then students will write two complete short stories for workshop, and revise one. Throughout the semester we will read stories by 20^thand 21^stcentury writers and focus on how these writers make use of plot, form, voice, and style.  

Through story workshops, generative exercises, discussion of published work, and individual conferences, students write new work and read the work of others always with an eye toward inciting fresh ways of thinking about fiction.  Students should emerge from the class with a solid grounding in narrative.

Texts:  reading packet.

Requirements and Grading:  Short story 1: 30%; Short story 2: 30%; Revision: 10%; Attendance and participation (includes responses to student work): 30%.

CRW 330 l Literature for Writers

Instructor:  LaSalle, P

Unique #:  34740

Semester:  Spring 2020

Cross-lists:  n/a

Prerequisites:  One of the following: CRW 325 (or E 325), 325F (or E 325F), 325M, 325P (or E 325P).

Description: Literature for Writers: A Study of Craft--

This is a class for those in the undergraduate creative writing certificate program, an opportunity to look at literature in a way different from what usually transpires in traditional literature classes.

Such traditional classes in the study of literature are good and valuable, but for the most part they are a matter of training in literary scholarship and have less to do with what a writer—and in this case "writer" applies to those writing in any of the three genres, fiction, poetry, and drama—actually does in day-to-day work in producing literature.

We will address that day-to-day work of a writer, reading some good literature and examining it from a writer's perspective rather than a scholar's.  The aim is to learn about essential craft and hopefully for that knowledge to help the student develop skills to be applied to the student's own creative writing for CRW workshop classes.

The reading will include work from the three genres, and there will be written assignments addressing this matter of craft in creative writing (two shorter, and one a longer final project).

Texts: "Signs and Symbols," a short story, by Vladimir Nabokov; The Short Stories,a story collection, by Ernest Hemingway; The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry,edited by J.D. McClatchy; Poems by Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Mark Strand,James Dickey, Yusef Komunyakaa,and others; Black Water, a novel, by Joyce Carol Oates; Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a novel, by Gabriel García Márquez; New Islands, a story collection, by María Luisa Bombal; A Streetcar Named Desire, a play, by Tennessee Williams; Labyrinths,a collection of short stories and essays, by Jorge Luis Borges.

Requirements and Grading: 85 percent on the written assignments; 15 percent on class participation and in-class quizzes (usually three).  There is no final exam.  Two absences are allowed, and more than that will affect the grade.

CRW 330 l Literature for Writers

Instructor:  Fry, J

Unique #:  34735

Semester: Spring 2020

Cross-lists: n/a

Prerequisites: One of the following: CRW 325 (or E 325), 325F (or E 325F), 325M, 325P (or E 325P).

Description:  This iteration of ‘Literature for Writers’ will explore texts that trouble the boundaries of genre and gender.  Both in literary criticism and the publishing market writers must navigate, genre functions as a concept used to classify texts into recognizable types—fiction, say, but also subcategories like fantasy or romance.  Gender, similarly, serves to identify persons in their respective cultural contexts.  While the relationship between these concepts reaches back to the Middle Ages, contemporary writers have increasingly put pressure on gender and genre as cultural constructs in the wake of feminist, queer, and postcolonial modes of critique (to name but a few).  The texts we will read in this class will reveal that notions of genre as well as gender prove far more complex than any binary opposition.  We will encounter a variety of literary forms that skew the boundaries between prose and poetry, blur where facts end and fiction begins, and question whether language itself can be reimagined to articulate queer truths.  Just as we will read as creative writers ourselves, we will also regularly experiment with various hybrid forms.

Tentative Texts:  Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller; C.D. Wright, Deepstep Come Shining; Kazim Ali, Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities; Jos Charles, feeld; Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red.

*Supplemental readings will be made available through Canvas and may include texts by writers like Gloria Anzaldúa, Matsuo Bashō, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Natalie Diaz, Joy Harjo, Layli Long Soldier, Agnes Martin, Carole Maso, Claudia Rankine, Ely Shipley, Carmen Giménez Smith, and Virginia Woolf.

Requirements & Grading:  Students will keep a regular reading journal of creative and/or critical responses to each week’s reading (30%); draft occasional pieces in response to specific prompts or exercises (20%); and create a final creative project incorporating or combining more than one genre (60%).

CRW 340F  l  Short Story Workshop

Instructor:  LaSalle, P

Unique #: 34750

Semester:  Spring 2020

Cross-lists:  n/a

Prerequisites: CRW 325F (or E 325F), or 325M.

Description: This is an intermediate fiction-writing course.

The student will be responsible for two complete short stories, 10-15 pages each.

Student work will be examined in class with workshop discussion, and the student will meet with the instructor in conference to discuss projects and progress.

There will also be discussion of some larger ideas concerning theory and technique of fiction writing, reading from an anthology of short stories, and a project involving reading and reporting on literary magazines.

Requirements & Grading: The grade will be a matter, essentially, of the quality of the written work (90%); in-class quizzes and class participation will also be figured in (10%).

This is a writing course with no final exam.

CRW 340F l Short Story Workshop

Instructor:  Pipkin, J

Unique #:  34755

Semester:  Spring 2020

Cross-lists:  n/a

Prerequisites: CRW 325F (or E 325F), or 325M.

Description: This is an intermediate course in fiction writing, designed for students who have already taken Fiction Writing (325F or 325M) and have a serious interest in writing fiction.  Since the class is primarily a workshop, we will discuss student work for the majority of the semester.  The workshops are intended to improve writing skills as well as reading and critiquing skills, so all students are expected to actively participate in the workshop discussions.  All work must be original, written for this class and not for another class taken earlier or concurrently.

Texts: This course will follow the workshop format, but we will also read some published stories for discussion of craft.  Additional stories and handouts will be provided in class or posted on Canvas.

Requirements & Grading: You are required to write two short stories (each 8-15 pages) that will be discussed in a workshop setting and later revised.  For all student work discussed in class, you will be responsible for writing detailed critiques (1-2 pages).

Grading:  1st story 30%; 2nd story 30%; in-class participation 20%; written critiques 20%.  Attendance is mandatory.  More than three absences will negatively affect the final grade.

CRW 340P l  Poetry Workshop

Instructor:  Bennett, C

Unique #: 34770

Semester:  Spring 2020

Cross-lists:  n/a

Prerequisites: CRW 325F (or E 325F), or 325M.

Description: In this workshop you will develop a distinctive writing practice within a community of fellow poets.  Our work will include weekly exercises in poetic craft, class workshops of student poems, and a wide range of readings in poetry and poetics.  Our goal will be to better understand both howdifferent poems achieve their effects and whypoets—including yourself—might seek those effects.

Texts: Course reading will consist equally of 1) original student poems and 2) published poems and essays on poetry and poetics that will provide models for considering and enacting your own poetic practice.

Requirements & Grading: Over the course of the semester regular assignments will include original poems to be workshopped, creative exercises, a memorization of a poem, and reading and responding to peer poems and other course texts.  Final grades will be based on the successful completion of these weekly assignments (40%); your thoughtful and generous participation in class discussions, activities, and workshops (30%); and a final portfolio of original poems and revisions (30%).  Attendance is mandatory.

CRW 370H l Honors Creative Writing Project

Instructor: John Pipkin

Unique #: 34785

Semester: Spring 2020

Cross-lists: n/a

Prerequisites: Consent of the honors advisor.

Description: The Honors Creative Writing Project is intended for advanced students in fiction, creative nonfiction playwriting, poetry, and screenwriting, those who have demonstrated a sustained commitment to writing and wish to work under supervision on a particular project to culminate in a final creative thesis.  In addition to providing an opportunity for creative concentration, the Creative Writing Honors Project allows students to further refine their analytical and critical capabilities through intensive peer review workshops.

Please note: Applicants must have completed or be enrolled in their third upper-division Creative Writing certificate course at the time of application. A University Grade Point Average of GPA of at least 3.33 and a grade point average of at least 3.66 in program courses are required for the Honors Creative Writing Certificate to be awarded.

Requirements and Grading: Grades will be based on the final thesis of original creative work (50%); thesis status reports (15%); class participation (25%); and a thesis reading (10%).

Attendance is mandatory.  More than three absences may negatively impact the final grade.