Although he published relatively little in his lifetime, Robert Hayden is widely considered a leading figure in African-American poetry. In this advanced level craft seminar, poets will perform close readings of Hayden's poems as well as those of his predecessors (Auden, Hughes, Yeats) and progeny (Komunyakaa, Wright, Hayes), always with an eye toward "stealing" techniques that may enhance our own work. Prerequisite: Students must have taken at least one poetry workshop prior to enrolling in this course.

Students that take this course will learn how to equip themselves with the appropriate entrepreneurial skills so that they can actualize their ideas (whether big or small) for improving the world. This course will be a hands-on approach, through actualizing participant ideas, to getting things "out there" for broader benefit. Key topics covered will include clear articulation and presentation of your idea, how to know if your idea is viable, who might be interested, what's needed to put your idea into motion, action planning and measuring the success of your idea.

In this course, students will learn (and learn to subvert) conventions of the three primary modes of poetry: the lyrical, narrative, and the hybrid lyric-narrative. We will attempt to draw on the strengths of the traditional workshop model while avoiding its many shortcomings. Students will hone their critical skills through close reading of each others' work and in prose responses to outside reading assignments, but special emphasis will be placed on generating new poems, not up for workshop.

This course investigates new methods of design intelligence specifically associated with digital design and fabrication technologies. The computer is used in its capacity as a design tool, encompassing both digital skills and design thinking. Skills with 3D modeling and 2D visualization softwares are developed through a series of cumulative design exercises. Prototypes are generated using plotters, laser cutters, and 3D printers to confront the reality of virtual constructions. Design discourse is introduced through complementary lectures, readings, and discussions.

"Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal." exhorts T.S. Elliot. This course connects the reading and writing processes so that they are reciprocal and reinforcing. Every week we will alternate between reading a mosaic of U.S. American short fiction and analyzing the ways in which these narratives make their point, and practical writing exercises in order to build linguistic, literary and cultural skills. During the final month, you will workshop your own narratives, fiction or non-fiction, allowing you to give and receive feedback on the process and products of your practice.

A lively debate roars in both the popular and scientific press - will we run out of food? This debate seems to beg several crucial questions: what food, for whom, produced how and where, at what cost to the world's non-human biota (among others)? We might try to answer these questions politically, or ethically, or ecologically - in this class I propose to explore the implications of our food choices and production methods as quantitatively as possible using mathematical models. Many, many studies have produced models of this kind, so we have a good set of starting points.