In this workshop-based course, students will continue to learn and hone the basic elements of writing for the stage: voice, craft, and process.  Playwriting work will be augmented by a focus on studying full-length plays and perspectives from global playwrights to expose students to a variety of forms, genres, structures, and narratives. A central goal of this course will be understanding the wide possibilities of creating a theatrical work from outside of a Western Naturalism perspective.

A first course in writing fiction. Emphasis will be on experimentation as well as on developing skill and craft. Workshop (discussion) format.

Limited to 15 students. Fall semester section 1: Lecturer Sweeney. Fall semester section 2: Visiting Lecturer Gaige. Spring semester: Postdoctoral Fellow Mysore.

How to handle overenrollment: The instructor will seek to achieve representative equity (majors, class years, gender, background, etc.).

Poetry is an act of discovery. We write to discover what we don't know or understand about ourselves and the world around us. To make these discoveries we must pay attention: practice close observation, question our assumptions, and test our truths. 

We must also pay attention to what’s happening in our bodies as we write: the breath, pulse and heartbeat that gives poetry life. When we practice embodied writing we include our whole selves in our creative work. 

This course, an introduction to media studies, examines the relationship between contemporary media forms and the environment with an emphasis on media’s role in the ongoing global environmental crisis. We will analyze the environmental aspects of a range of media objects including science-fiction films, documentary photographs, reality TV shows, video games, and others. But we will also explore the environmental impact of broader media technologies like video streaming platforms and fiber-optic cable networks.

[Before 1800] Students will learn how to read and write about anglophone poetry from different time periods by focusing on one particular poetic form: the sonnet. Students will have opportunities to engage with poets and the local poetry community, handle rare books, and learn how to use the library’s resources, with a view to writing both poetry reviews and argumentative essays about poetry. As one of the most enduring poetic forms in the Western tradition, the sonnet is a form that contemporary engage with in order to have a dialogue with poets from the past.

Home is where we live in every sense, but "home" is more than the physical structure we reside in: it is also the psychological, societal, emotional, and even the mythical. In this course, we will read a variety of fiction and non-fiction and explore the importance of space, be it physical or metaphysical, as well as the construction of home. We will consider how these terms (whether we accept them, shun them, or experience them via travel and immigration), dictate to us and others a sense of self and identity via our own writing.

How does migration transform identity? Which techniques do writers use to express and recreate this complex experience on the page? What role can language and narrative technique play in forging a sense of self and home? How might writing be related to refuge? Reading across genres of poetry, fiction and memoir, this class explores how writers have described the experience of locating themselves while departing, arriving or living in between. The course will cover topics such as alienation, assimilation, generational memory, survival, nostalgia, hybridity, and transformation.

A double course, to be taken with permission of thesis advisor.

How to handle overenrollment: null

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Independent scholarly work; assessment based on completion of substantial thesis project.

Independent work on an extended academic, creative, or pedagogical project on a topic relevant to the field. Thesis progress will be assessed by the department at the end of the first semester as a precondition for entrance to the next semester of thesis work. 

How to handle overenrollment: null

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Independent scholarly work; assessment based on completion of substantial thesis project.