English 325 - Writing Ancestors

In this creative writing workshop, we will engross ourselves in contemporary literary works that respond to, speculate about, and/or collaborate with ancestors and ancestral languages. We will explore the ways these works conceptualize time, truth, kinship, lineage, and narrative itself, and examine different formal approaches to writing into silences, gaps, and contradictions. In addition to reading and analyzing literature, we will also engage in writing exercises and research processes that borrow or reenact the methodologies of the authors we study. These methodologies may include archival research, intergenerational storytelling, speculative fiction, literary efforts of language revitalization, and engagement with local history. Through this course, students will produce creative works in the genre(s) of their choice, participate in large and small group workshops where they will give and receive written and oral peer feedback, and discover their own, unique process and vision for writing with/through/about ancestors. 

Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Myint.

How to handle overenrollment: Priority to creative or creative-critical English thesis writers, then to previously waitlisted students, then seniors, juniors, etc.

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Creative writing, workshops, literary analysis, close reading, independent research, archival research, oral presentations.