This creative writing workshop is divided into two segments. The first will focus on creative non-fiction, with an emphasis on writing about place in the form of personal essay. Along the way we'll explore how a place succeeds or doesn't succeed in becoming a character, how much of one's self the writer develops through writing about it, and most importantly, perhaps, what is really being said. As a transition to the second segment, we'll explore the boundary between non-fiction and fiction. For instance, is the former more thesis-driven, argumentative?

Collaboration is a word often used in theater, but what exactly does that mean? What are some practical strategies we can use as theater artists? This course would be a good fit for students with an interest in an area of theater design or directing, and who have some experience in one of these areas. Students will bring ideas for specific learning goals in their area(s) of interest, and some assignments will be tailored to suit. Students will work in model production teams and explore different modes of collaboration.

Workshop members should arrive willing to explore and to expand their interests through the long poem and/or the lyric essay. We will experiment with the "malleability, ingenuity, immediacy, [and] complexity" available in these forms. Workshop members will keep regular journals, research areas of interest, submit formal (typed) passages and self-contained segments of writing for peer review, and respond to peer and published works. In addition to a portfolio of work that includes a critical introduction, each workshop participant will complete one analytical paper and one formal presentation.

This class will explore, through a series of projects, the fundamental questions of game design. What are the common features of hopscotch, Skyrim, boxing, Farmville, poker, and Tic-Tac-Toe? How do you create an engrossing, challenging, vivid, or surprising environment of play? How do you determine the value of skill, chance, cooperation, and competition in play? What effect does the social, sexual, gender, political, and economic environment of the game's creation have on the game play?

How has human sexuality been impacted by the network of socio-economic forces called "capitalism"? Have lifestyles and modes of consumption under capital benefited both heterosexual and queer cultures? Or does capitalism collude with structures of power to police sexual practices and orientations? Should we see sex industries as capitalist exploitation? Or should we see them as labors and pleasures that need to be recognized and decriminalized?

What constitutes a tragedy? Both "tragedy" and "tragic" have acquired a life of their own in the public discourse. Recent articles in The New York Times have employed these terms to describe untimely deaths and grisly murders, plane accidents and devastation of terrorist attacks, drug overdoses and environmental disasters.

This course explores how British fiction and cinema responded to the challenges of new social configurations from the rise of the welfare state in the 1950s to its crisis in the wake of Margaret Thatcher's rule in the 1980s. Our topics include shifting class relations, expanding definitions of 'Englishness' and 'Britishness,' changing constructions of gender identity beginning with the 'Angry Young Men' generation, and the rise of a multiracial society.

In this workshop, class members will read and respond to the work of contemporary poets, complete weekly writing exercises and drafts of poems, and participate in peer workshops. Each workshop member will complete at least one critical analysis paper and develop a portfolio work that includes both a statement of poetic disposition and a poetry chapbook. This workshop is designed for Division I students and is suitable for writers who have had at least one college-level writing class in which peer critique was a significant element.

This is an intermediate creative writing workshop that explores narrative structure. The focus will be on works that have pushed the boundaries of conventional narrative "girders" by using as building materials visuals, verse, and radical time/space-shifts, all while maintaining a clear cohesive whole. Course requirements will include reading several international novels and novellas; in-class presentations; critical response papers on the reading; original works of creative writing that must be interconnected in some way.

In this course students will explore the sculptural object as a self contained form and as an element within a found or created environment. Traditional materials such as steel, wood, plaster and concrete will be taught concurrently with more ephemeral materials including paper, wire mesh and found materials. Ideas originating within the traditions of modernism, postmodernism, minimalism, post minimalism, installation art and public art will be introduced through slide lectures, readings and independent research. The course will culminate in an independent project.