Literature, Writing and Publishing
Phone: 718.489.5284
Literature, Writing and Publishing Department Mission
The Literature, Writing, and Publishing (LWP) department uses literature from around the globe and digital tools to teach students how to hone critical reasoning skills, build compelling positions, and employ a range of technologies to share those ideas. Coursework combines readings from western and non-western traditions with intensive examinations of strategies for writing, presenting, and publishing in print and on digital platforms. Majors also participate in internships that provide students with real-world experience in literary and digital spaces where critical thinking and the clear expression of ideas are paramount.
LWP has been designed to help students acquire the skills that can directly benefit them professionally, with graduates pursuing careers in law, communications, marketing, technology, digital media, education, social work, and entertainment, as well as advanced degrees. All members of the Literature, Writing, and Publishing department are active scholars, writers, and creative artists deeply committed to teaching.
Program Student Learning Outcomes:
Literature, Writing and Publishing
PLO 1: Organize thoughts into sentences and paragraphs with clear structure using forceful and energetic prose
PLO 2: Examine multiple identities and communities in personal and global contexts through the study of diverse literature and experiences.
PLO 3: Demonstrate competence in multimodal forms of written expression.
PLO 4: Employ a set of skills in publishing, analytical, research-driven, and creative writing.
Masters of Fine Arts in Creating Writing (MFA) Mission
The program’s 10-day residencies convene twice per year, January 2nd - 12th and July 5th - 15th. Residencies consist of intensive faculty workshops, lectures and daily publishing panels with top agents, editors, and publishers. During the 6 months in between residencies, students will regularly exchange writing online with their faculty mentors, continuing the work that began in residency. Students will take 4 online workshops and attend 5 residencies to earn the 36 credits for their MFA degree. The 5th and final residency will culminate in a creative thesis—a novel, a chapbook of poetry or a short story collection.
This structure reflects the realities of life as a working writer. Aspiring writers learn how to be productive in their everyday lives with editorial feedback and contact, without giving up their day jobs. Unlike traditional MFA programs that demand a full-time commitment, our low-residency model represents the working life of the overwhelming majority of professionals in the field.
Program Student Learning Outcomes:
PLOs shared by all tracks:
PLO 1: Revise and edit creative writing
PLO 2: Demonstrate their personal aesthetic
PLO 3: Generate a body of work worth performance or publication
Creative Writing: Fiction Track
PLO 4: Develop an understanding of structure as it relates to the short story, novella and novel.
PLO 5: Experiment with a variety of techniques and styles in the art of short and/or long form fiction writing.
Creative Writing: Graphic Writing Track
PLO 4: Students will diagram the formatting standards of writing graphic novels via direct instructions and selected textbooks.
PLO 5: Students will prepare for the rigorous practices of entering professional creative fields.
Creative Writing: Nonfiction Track
PLO 4: Diagram structure as it relates to the essay, memoir, article, op-ed, narrative podcase script, nonfiction video segment script, and all other forms of writing that involve reported fact.
PLO 5: Practice techniques of reporting and research.
Creative Writing: Poetry Track
PLO 4: Enhance their understanding of poetry as a dialogue, a conversation that takes place within a theoretical, historical and literary context, and occurs both between author and reader and between poets both past and present.
PLO 5: Learn the art and science of poetic practices. These practices include working within both received form and free verse, mastering the use of meter and rhyme, developing writing strategies, and workshopping.
Creative Writing: Screenwriting Track
PLO 4: Develop through writing exercises, script-in-hand readings and classroom critiques, the art of dramatic writing incorporating theater, film and other modes of writing for performance.
PLO 5: Gain a thorough understanding of the concepts of action, character, voice; and mood, atmosphere and setting, and their function in advancing dramatic narrative.
MFA Requirements
All applicants to the program must have a baccalaureate degree from an accredited institution. Applicants will submit a creative writing sample consisting of 25 pages for dramatic writing or 20-25 pages of fiction. Poets will submit up to 20 pages of poetry. The application must also include a statement of purpose.
LWP-1000 Introduction to Digital Humanities (3 Credits)
How does digital representation work in the context of the Humanities? How is literary content created for digital media? Will digital media be the death of traditional print culture? This course will examine, through an interdisciplinary viewpoint rooted in the Humanities, the ways in which technology can be used to present, archive, locate and evaluate information. It will provide an overview of the Digital Humanities, using English literature as a foundation, and will also examine questions about the appropriate use of digital media in creative and academic projects. Meets ITML1.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: ITML1
Typically offered: All Sessions
LWP-1101 Literature Across Cultures (3 Credits)
This course introduces students to a diverse range of literary works from around the world. As students make their way through selected texts and genres, they will gain insight into a variety of social and cultural issues and participate in vibrant cross-cultural dialogues. Ultimately, students will leave the course better prepared to navigate and interact with multiple identities and communities as citizens of the world.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: All Sessions
LWP-2000 Walt Whitman's America (3 Credits)
Walt Whitman revolutionized American poetry with the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855. This course will focus on the poetic career of Whitman, a 19th century resident of Brooklyn and lifelong devotee to American democracy. Special attention will be paid to Whitman in the context of metropolitan New York. The course will examine Whitman's poetics through interdisciplinary study. Interdisciplinary topics will include history, psychology, politics, art, music, science, philosophy, and theology. The class will listen to musical settings of Whitman's poetry and watch staged adaptations of his poems. We will discuss his love of opera and popular culture, his work as a journalist and novelist, his political activism and egalitarianism, and his revolutionary attitudes towards sex, class, and gender. We will also explore his philosophical and religious insights in the context of his work as a Civil War nurse and diarist. Field trips and walking tours will be included in the course, and students will be given the opportunity to do archival research through a partnership with the Brooklyn Historical Society.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE, WHG
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2001 Introduction to Digital Publishing (3 Credits)
This course provides students with the necessary theories, methods, and tools to navigate the digital publishing industry. To prepare students for cutting-edge writing and publishing jobs, the course includes hands-on experience in helping to run Unbound Brooklyn, the literary journal of the St. Francis College MFA program in Writing.
Typically offered: All Sessions
LWP-2100 Writing and Publishing (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): WRI-1100
This course is designed to demystify the world of publishing and the life of the working writer through a series of readings and visiting professionals. Each visitor will speak to a different aspect of the publishing world, providing a survey of the profession. The focus will be paid to the intersection of creativity and commerce, where writers, editors, and publishers share their experiences finding an audience for the written word. Students will work on their own creative projects with specific assignments geared toward understanding those projects in view of finding an audience. Students will learn the processes of both the initial creative work and the editorial and critical review that goes into publishing. Students will practice thinking as both creatives and as publishing professionals, including pitching, editing, marketing, and discovering audiences. Prerequisite: WRI 1100. 3 Credits
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2104 Story in the Digital Age (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-1100;
In this course students will explore the various ways stories are told in the digital age across a range of media and will also learn how to make their own digital stories.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2105 Exploring American Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-1100;,One LWP 1000-level Course
Survey of major authors, periods, genres, and themes in American literature from the narratives of the colonial period to the novels and poetry of the modernist period.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2106 Exploring British Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-1100;
Survey of major authors, periods, genres, and themes in British literature from the epic Beowulf up to a novel in the Modern period.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2107 Exploring World Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-1100;,One LWP 1000-level Course
Survey of Modernist, Contemporary, and post-Modernist periods of World Literature, including the study of novels, stories, poetry, theatre, and essays by authors from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2108 Latinx Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-1100;,One LWP 1000-level Course
This course introduces students to the literatures of Latinx writers in the United States. Specifically, the course will focus on four major Latinx communities: Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Dominican American, and Cuban American. Students will also be introduced to the multiple genres of Latinx creative works, including poetry, fiction, film, essays, and memoirs.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2109 African Diaspora in Caribbean/US Lit (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-1100;
This course introduces students to the literatures of the African diaspora in the Caribbean and the United States. Specifically, the course will focus on major literary periods and themes in African American and Afro-Caribbean literature such as slave narratives, the Harlem Renaissance, protest literature, literature of the Civil Rights movement, Afrofuturism, anticolonialism and postcolonialism, the politics of language, transnationalism, migration and immigrant narratives. Students will also be introduced to multiple genres of creative works, including poetry, fiction, film, essays, and memoirs.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2125 Immigrant Literature (3 Credits)
This course will explore the immigrant experience of Jews, Irish, Italians, and other groups in 19th- and 20th-centuries. American readings in literature, history, and other non-fiction is read in the context of ongoing discussions about the construction of the notion of America; what it means to become American, including the influences of class and gender; and constructions of identity.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE, SEH
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2130 King Arthur: Then and Now (3 Credits)
Arthurian Romance from the early period of Marie De France, _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_, and Sir Thomas Malory, for example, to Alfred Tennyson and T.H. White and more contemporary cinematic interpretations of a richly historical as well as cultural figure in search of the Holy Grail.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2135 Myth of Prosperity: Class in American Literature and Culture (3 Credits)
Is the American Dream a myth? From the optimism of Benjamin Franklin to present-day corporate greed, this course investigates various manifestations of the American search for freedom from poverty, self-sufficiency, and social mobility.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2140 Greek and Roman Epic (3 Credits)
This course offers an introduction to the classical epic with a specific focus on the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer and Vergil's Aeneid, with a consideration of some other examples of the genre. Topics explored include oral and literary epic, their historical, social and political contexts and the influence of classical epic on later literature.
LWP-2141 Greek Drama (3 Credits)
This course offers an introduction to ancient Greek drama with a specific focus on selected plays from the works of the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides as well as a representative work of the comic playwright Aristophanes. Students will explore the historical and cultural context of Greek drama and its role in ancient Greek society. Topics explored include the origins of dramatic art forms, ancient performance practices, religion and drama, Greek dramatic festivals and the significance of theater within Athenian democracy.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2150 Constructing Gender in American Literature & Culture (3 Credits)
This course explores how male and female identity is constructed and represented in a wide variety of American texts. We will explore the changing ideals of manhood and femininity in an attempt to uncover how these texts present both acceptable and marginalized gender roles.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2175 Native People and Explorers (3 Credits)
Early diaries will be read as performing the cultural work of constructing indigenous peoples for domestic audiences; as windows into the ideologies of dominant cultures; and as part of a dialectic with indigenous peoples. Diaries of explorers, missionaries, travelers. Readings may include the writings of Native Americans, Hawaiians, Maori, Aborigines, and diaries of Capt. Cook, Columbus, and Lewis and Clark.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2200 Writing Poetry (3 Credits)
Students will learn the art and craft of writing poetry in a workshop environment. They may read from published poetry and criticism. And will be encouraged to develop their own poetry writing skills and understanding. The workshop process includes having student's work discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow writers. Class participation is essential.
LWP-2220 War and Writing in American Letters (3 Credits)
This course surveys war literature from the colonial battles of King Philip's War to recent conflicts, such as Vietnam. Special attention will be paid to the writings of the Civil War in shaping the American Identity.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2310 Epic: Poetry, Film, and Fiction (3 Credits)
This course studies elements of the epic from the Greek classical models of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and the Roman models of Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses. We will consider the epic film and the epic novel along with the original poems to see how the ancient poems inform our modern perception of heroic action and character. Looking at contemporary values and comparing them with classical values of nation and hero should help us to gain insights into our culture and other national cultures. Films might include: Gone with the Wind, Das Boot, Lord of the Rings, Death in Venice, Eugenie Grandet, Notes from the Underground.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2400 Writing Fiction (3 Credits)
Students will learn the art and craft of writing fiction in a workshop environment. Participants will read from master writers; they will write original pieces and revise them. The workshop process includes having student work discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow students. Class participation is essential.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2410 Advanced Fiction Writing (3 Credits)
Students develop the art and craft of writing fiction in a workshop environment. The primary objective of the course is for students to write and revise original works of fiction. The workshop process includes having student work discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow writers, so class participation is essential. At the end of the semester students will have produced and will read publicly from a portfolio of their best work. In addition, reading and writing about selected short fiction (contemporary and not, American and not) and in-class and out-of-class writing exercises are an essential component of the course.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2555 America in the 1940S (3 Credits)
The 1940s was a unique decade in American history. Dominated by Americas entry into World War II, the 1940s were also a boom time for American creativity in the arts and sciences. During these ten years, the country saw the emergence of the American musical on Broadway, while at the movie theaters Americans watched Westerns and, later in the decade, the stylistic films noir. The first successful use of penicillin came in the 1940s, along with the launch of commercial television stations, and the shocking arrival of Abstract Expressionism. Americans listened to Big Band music, radio comedies and dramas, and Edward R. Murrows broadcasts from London during the Blitz. American Letters saw the publication of John Crowe Ransoms The New Criticism, the use of traditional forms in the work of poets such as Robert Lowell, the coming of American realism in fiction, and the staging of the stark plays of Eugene ONeill. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this course will examine a number of American works (novels, poems, radio broadcasts, films, Broadway cast recordings) to help students come to an understand of the singular nature of the American experience in the 1940s.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-2570 Contemporary American Literature (3 Credits)
Undeniably, we live in a visual culture. Film and television have become the dominant creative modes. How do today's writers compete in a world dominated by image? What are their concerns? How have they experimented with and challenged traditional narrative forms and genres? This course surveys some of the most dynamic contemporary poets, novelists, and dramatists who are making a name for themselves today.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2580 Readings in American Literature: 1950-2001 (3 Credits)
Cold War politics, Civil Rights and the Women's Movement, the Vietnam War, the Me Generation, Wall Street, Cyberspace. How did U.S. writers and artists respond to all this? This course investigates how poets, fiction writers, and playwrights dealt with some of the major questions of their generation. Works may include poets Allen Ginsberg, Anne Sexton, W.S. Merwin, and Rita Dove; fiction writers James Dickey, Bernard Malamud, James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler; and playwrights Arthur Miller, Amiri Baraka, Edward Albee, and Anna Deveare Smith.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2590 Literature of New York City (3 Credits)
No other city in America (or perhaps the world) has fired the literary imagination more than New York. We will look at the incredible diversity of this literature, from immigrant narratives and migration tales to essays, comic strips, and short stories. We will also investigate what it is about New York that provokes such interest among writers. What is New York a metaphor for--power, prestige, poverty, diversity, American exceptionalism? Why does the rest of the country continue to care about New York stories?
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2600 American Poetry (3 Credits)
Arguably, modern American poetry stems from two mid-19th-century master poets: Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. This course closely analyzes the canon of both poets and may also provide an overview of subsequent poets influenced by the lady from Amherst and grey man from Camden.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2602 Topics: Classical Mythology (3 Credits)
Classical Mythology is a literature course that surveys the evolution of Greek and Roman beliefs about gods, heroes, monsters, and the creation of the universe and considers the continuing influence of these archetypes and myths on the art, literature, and culture of the Western world. Theories regarding the purpose and function of myth are also explored. Readings include both ancient texts and secondary sources. 3 credits.
LWP-2603 Topics: Literature and Photography (3 Credits)
This course explores literature and photography as ways of seeing the world, and as artistic and evidentiary ways for human beings to represent the world around them and to express themselves. Photography and literature are examined as companion forms in artistic movements such as realism, expressionism, and modernism. We will also develop and explore our own photographic eye. During spring break 2013, we are planning to go on a trip to Cuba along with St. Francis students from sociology, Spanish, and creative writing. The trip is optional.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
LWP-2605 Topic: Spoken Word Poetry (3 Credits)
This course will explore spoken word as a literary and performance movement by examining historical and contemporary eras of the genre. It will also facilitate the beginning of a journey for participants to craft writing skills and share dynamic work with various audiences. Over the semester, be prepared for writing prompts, editing sessions, readings, screenings, and guest speakers.
LWP-2606 Topic: Telling Our Stories Theory and Practice of Autobiographical (3 Credits)
In this course, we will experiment with autobiographical writing exercises of our own as we read, listen to and view works of autobiographical writing-from memoir and autobiographical fiction to graphic memoir, podcasts and stand-up comedy. Students will become familiar with critical concepts, terms and approaches used to analyze life narratives, and with debates relating to authenticity, identity, truth, memory, culture and self-representation.
LWP-2610 Chaucer (3 Credits)
Close reading of the major works of Geoffrey Chaucer, including _The Canterbury Tales_. Medieval culture and thought formulate essential background for an understanding of Chaucer's works.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-2620 Shakespeare (3 Credits)
An examination of William Shakespeare's life and works with readings selected from poems, sonnets, and plays. Included is a study of important cultural history of Tudor and Stuart England.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2630 Milton (3 Credits)
An examination of John Milton's life and works with a focus on _Paradise Lost_ but including his sonnets, elegies, and selections from his prose and dramatic works.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE, PEM
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2700 Drama Survey I (3 Credits)
This course will survey plays from world drama and theatre traditions from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the early nineteenth century. Readings will include such plays as Oedipus Rex, Lysistrata, The Second Shepherd's Play, Volpone, School for Scandal, and Faust. Students will attend at least one live performance.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2730 Drama Survey II (3 Credits)
This course will survey plays from world drama and theatre traditions from the late nineteenth century to contemporary. Readings will include such plays as A Doll House, Trifles, Six Characters in Search of an Author, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Laramie Project, and Arcadia. Students will attend at least one live performance.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2810 American Multicultural Literature (3 Credits)
This course looks at the long neglected fields of Native American, African-American, Asian-American, and Hispanic-/Latino-American literature. Possible authors include: Momaday, Morrison, Lahiri, Silko, Erdrich, Anaya, Cisneros, Alexie, Hijuelos, Kingston, Tan, Ng, and Kogawa.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2815 Sports and American Culture (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT) 2000 or higher
This course takes an interdisciplinary look at American sports writing and film as cultural expression. Possible focuses include but are not limited to: baseball, football, basketball, and the Olympic Games.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-2851 Special Topic: Dystopian Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature Course(AML, BRL, DRA or LIT)numbered 2000 or,higher
This course will examine the literary tradition of stories set in a speculative universe. Dystopian novels create worlds that revolve around a set of principles that enlighten and heighten social, scientific, technological, political, personal or psychological conditions. We will discuss the interplay between major authors, scientific and sociological foresight, and how our world today has been influenced by ideas from speculative fiction. Works may include: Labyrinths, Jorge Louis Borges Neuromancer, William Gibson A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller JR Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K Dick The Night of the Long Knives, Fritz Leiber Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card The Watchman, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-2901 Special Topic: Multigenre Creative Writing (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): WRI-1100
Students will read and create original works in a range of creative genres, including fiction, poetry, performance poetry, creative nonfiction, drama, comics, journalism, film, graphic design, and multimedia.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-3010 Critical Writing and Analysis (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): WRI-1100
This course will provide instruction and practice in close reading of literary texts; an introduction to the techniques of literary creation; practice in writing analytically and critically about works of literature; and an introduction to literary criticism as an aid to understanding and as a resource in extending the conversation about literature.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-3110 Women and Modernism Women and Modernism (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT) 2000 or higher
Some of the most highly praised and canonized women authors emerged during the modernist period. This course investigates their literature and think about why this is such a fruitful literary period for them. While the authors in this course write from different traditions and disparate positions, they are also responding to common events and ideologies. Authors could include Gertrude Stein, Amy Lowell, Carson McCullers, Nella Larson, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Wolfe, Stevie Smith, Jean Rhys, and Djuna Barnes among others.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-3111 Modernity and Truth (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) course 2000 or,higher
Modernism consists of experimental literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In some ways, the literature was experimental in style. More often, however, literary themes became more open and daring, ranging from subjects and themes dealing with evolution, the horror of war, women's issues, sexuality, the fragmentation of identity, or the politics of colonialism. While emphasis might fall on literature in English, this course is international in scope.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-3112 American Modernism (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT course 2000 or higher
This course will chart the evolution and development of European Modernism from Parisian salons to the backyards and front porches of American towns. Writers such as Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Pound, Faulkner, Stevens, and William Carlos Williams may be considered.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-3113 Postmodernism (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT) 2000 or higher
Postmodernism is the term used to describe art and literature since mid-20th century, a period showing the effects of totalitarian states, the threat of nuclear and thermal annihilation, environmental catastrophe, globalization of industry and culture, and the digitalization of communication. This course offers an introduction to ideas surrounding postmodernism by looking at some of the work of John Updike, Paul Auster, and other writers or artists routinely identified as postmodernist.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-3130 Crime, Justice, and American Fiction (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) course 2000 or,higher,AMS-1001 for students pursuing AMS minor
Cross-listed with: SOC-3130. This course is designed as an introduction to representations of crime and justice in contemporary American society. The course will focus on constructions of crime and justice in literature, comic books, and film. We will explore the social construction of crime and the cultural meanings that these images provide. We will debunk various crime myths and deconstruct stereotypes perpetuated by popular images of criminality. The course is interdisciplinary, providing students with multiple perspectives on crime and criminality and explores ways of critically analyzing and interpreting media images.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-3140 British Romanticism (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG, LIT)2000 or higher
A cultural, historical, and aesthetic study of, for instance, the prophetic and profound visions of William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to, for example, Lord Byron's _Don Juan_, with an examination of poetry and letters by writers such as P.B. Shelley, John Keats, and Edward Fitzgerald (_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_). Readings could also include prose by William Hazlitt, Thomas DeQuincey, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (_Frankenstein_).
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-3145 Hawthorne, Melville, Poe (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT) 2000 or higher
A close analysis of three master writers from the American Renaissance period. Close attention is paid to topics such as memory, nationhood, identity, religion and the unknown, race, class, and gender.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-3150 Hemingway, Fitzgerald & Stein (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT) 2000 or higher
Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby are a core of readings for this course which will turn to the influence these writers have on 20th-century literature and thought. Other selections of representative poetry, fiction, and prose will be included.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-3155 Victorian Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take 1 courses;, From Levels AMLA AMLC BRLA BRLC LITA HON;
Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, John Henry Cardinal Newman, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, George Eliot, Thomas Henry Huxley on the pains and joys of human life, love, and marriage at home and in society, the role of men and women, liberty, arts and letters, and science, where particular attention to historical and cultural considerations prevails.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-3230 Postcolonial British Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT) 2000 or higher
This course will explore the literatures and cultures that arose as a result of English colonial domination. The postcolonial issues of hybridity, unhomedness, indigenous essentialism, contestedness of the English language, among others, will be explored. Literature and theoretical readings may include works by Naipaul, Hulme, Mukherjee, Ondaatje, Achebe, Friel, Rushdie, Bhabha, Said.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-3315 From Detective Fiction to Romance Novels: Studies in Genre (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any AML, BRL, DRA, LIT or LWP course 2000 or higher
This course will examine significant works of genre literature through the lens of literary theory. By reading, analyzing and writing about genres such as detective fiction, horror stories, and romance novels, students will come to an understanding of the complex nexus in which theory and literature meet. In the course of their semester of inquiry, students will find that the very genres they are studying are expanded, explicated, and even problematized through the application of literary theories.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-3503 The Comic Vision (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature Course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG, LIT) 2000 or,higher
This course will examine the nature of comedy, including its relation to the normative values of the society that produces it. Plays and theoretical writings from classical to contemporary times will be read. The class will attend a live performance.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-3504 American Drama (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any AML, BRL, DRA, or LIT course 2000 or higher
This course examines the development of American Drama; the great age of innovative American Drama and theater practice; and the great theater houses. Playwrights may include O'Neill, Miller, Williams, Mamet, Albee, among others. The class attends a live performance.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-3507 Topic: Literature of the American Civil Rights Movement (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature Course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT)2000 or,higher.
July 2, 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This legislation was the culmination of many decades of difficult, often dangerous, work by both civil rights leaders and ordinary Americans who believed that all people were created equal and should enjoy equal protection under the law. This course examines the American civil rights movement through its literature: speeches, editorials, novels, poems, short stores, music and film. Students will trace the course of the modern battle for civil rights from its roots in the abolitionists of the 1800s through A. Philip Randolph and his March on Washington Movement of 1941 to the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and beyond.
LWP-3601 Special Topic: Hitchcock (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (ENG, AML, BRL, DRA, LIT) numbered,2000 or higher.
This course will examine the stories and novels upon which many of Alfred Hitchcock's films are based, as well as some of the films themselves. Hitchcock transformed these literary works into unparalleled film masterpieces of mystery and suspense, giving students the opportunity to analyze the process of adaptation from page to screen. In this course we will view such classic films as 39 Steps, Rope, Rear Window, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds and others.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-3602 Special Topic: Murder and Mayhem (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT course 2000 or higher
This course will explore the American obsession with murder and mayhem, the killer, the psycho in the American Psyche. From the Indian wars to the opening of the west, the mutual mass murder of the Civil War and its aftermath, from the growth of cities, the immigrant experience, racial inequality and urban blight, through depression and world war, the atomic age and beyond, violence, murder, mayhem, both organized and chaotic, individual and collective, has been part of the American imagination. Through the works of such writers as Poe, Hammett, Flannery O'Connor, Richard Wright, Brett Easton Ellis, Stephen King, as well as such filmmakers as Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, the course will examine the dark side of the American Dream, both real and imagined.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-3603 Topic: Brooklyn: Film & Fiction (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) course numbered,2000 or higher
The course will provide a way of looking at urban literature as a momentary connection to the sensible and the intelligible world around us. Brooklyn is that world. As an introduction to literary themes in fiction, poetry, and film within the frame of Brooklyn, we will look into themes or motifs of works by authors and poets such as Bernard Malamud, Jonathan Lethem, Charles Perry, Colson Whitehead, Walt Whitman, Paul Auster, and David Amsden.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-3608 Special Topic: American Women Writers Rights Movement (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) 2000 or,higher.
This 3000-level course would look at American women's writing from 1880-the present. We will primarily read fiction and short stories. Topics would include: Race, Sexuality, Women's Rights, Immigration, and Class. Literary time periods and women's output would also be addressed, looking specifically at Realism, Modernism and Post-Modern writing. Authors would include: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Gertrude Stein, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O'Conner, Tillie Olsen, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Sandra Cisneros.
LWP-3611 Topic: the Wire As Great American Novel (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) 2000 or,higher
This course will explore a range of historical, cultural, social, political, and literary issues at play in The Wire.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-3652 Topic: the Double Or Doppelganger in Lit (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) 2000 or,higher
The doppelg?nger, German for double walker, can be described as one's alter ego, that mirror image that reveals our darker, hidden selves. This course will explore the doppelg?nger in literature in such works as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, EA Poe's William Wilson, and Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-3653 Topic: Environmental Writers (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) 2000 or,higher
The aim of the course is to have students read environmentally oriented non-fiction texts by scientists or social scientists. Principally, the purpose is to engage students in a look at environmental concerns across the recent past by reading and discussing books by Carl Sagan, Kirkpatrick Sale, Rachel Carson, James Lovelock, E.O. Wilson, and Bill McKibben.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-3656 Topic: Psychological Thriller (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) 2000 or,higher
Nothing has inspired more fear and terror in fiction and film than stories of the human mind gone wrong. This course will explore - in such works as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Shining, Psycho, Vertigo, Silence of the Lambs, and others - the terrifying consequences that result when that fine line between fantasy and reality, between sanity and madness, ultimately disappears.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-3657 Topic: Contemporary Playwrights (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) 2000 or,higher
This course will examine contemporary trends in drama and theatre practice via readings and performance of works by playwrights such as Lauren Yee, Dominique Morisseau, Katori Hall, David Henry Hwang, Anna Deveare Smith, Suzan-Lori Parks. Attendance at one or more live performances will be a required part of this course.
LWP-3658 Stanley Kubrick: Literature and Film (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any Literature course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) 2000 or,higher
Literature and Film of Stanley Kubrick This course will examine how stories and novels by writers such as Nabokov, Burgess, Thackeray and Stephen King-inspired many of the great films of director Stanley Kubrick-known for their dark humor and realism-such as Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Paths of Glory , The Shining and others.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-3750 Women Playwrights (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): One Literature course (ENG, AML, BRL, DRA, LIT) 2000,or higher
Women have a long history of writing for performance. This course will introduce students to early playwrights such as Hrotsvitha and Aphra Behn and then focus on modern and contemporary playwrights such as Sophie Treadwell, Susan Glaspell, Lorraine Hansberry, Caryl Churchill, Ama Ata Aidoo, Yasmina Rez, Sarah Ruhl, Anna Deavere Smith, and Suzan-Lori Parks among others. Students will attend at least one live performance.
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-3810 Major Author: James Baldwin Rights Movement (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): One Literature course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT) 2000 or,higher.
This course will focus on the fiction and essays of James Baldwin as a means toward understanding the ongoing civil rights movement and other contemporary issues concerning identity and culture.
LWP-3811 Harlem Renaissance and Beyond Rights Movement (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): One Literature course (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG, LWP or LIT) 2000,or higher.
This course will begin by looking at the works of the major authors of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Nella Larsen, and Claude McKay. Then, during the second half of the semester, we will look at their lasting impact on Black writers in the United States during the second half of the 20th century, including works by James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Tony Morrison and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-4001 Topic: Holy War and Jihad (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
Special topics course
LWP-4003 Seminar: Dante (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
The general aim of this seminar is to study Dante's major work: The Commedia. The complexity of the poem in its canticles: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso and its beauty, require careful and regular reading of the text along with a consideration of some major commentaries. Pope Paul IV, also a Dante scholar, at the end of the Vatican Council, in solemn ceremony in the Baptistry in Florence, had Dante Alighieri declare the Poet Laureate of Christendom. The seminar will look to understand why.
LWP-4006 Willa Cather & the Politics of the Canon in Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
Willa Cather is considered by many to be one of America's best writers. She has a huge, dedicated following and the scholarship on Cather is immense. But she has never fit very easily into the accepted American literary canon. Part of this has to do with questions of literary genre: Is she a realist? A modernist? A regionalist? She also brings up many interesting debates around the place of biography when reading and analyzing literature. For example, what role does her sexuality play in understanding her fiction? Was she a lesbian? Does it matter? Does her gender and her sexuality have anything to do with her uneasy place in the literary canon? We will read Cather's fiction and a few of her short stories. We will also read sections of two famous biographies on Cather as well as scholarly articles on her fiction, her life and the politics of reading itself
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4007 Seminar: Character and Consciousness in Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
The Character and Consciousness English seminar offers a short survey of British novels from George Eliot (Middlemarch), Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D'Urbervilles), E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Passage to India), and D.H. Lawrence (The Rainbow). The novels are part of the literature of transition from late Victorian to early modern, and the focus of class conversation will deal with character, ethical behavior, and the question of self.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4021 Sem: American Playwrights (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 courses Literature courses (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT)
This seminar will focus on the works of Anna Deavere Smith and Moises Kaufman, whose groundbreaking plays have established the genre of documentary theatre plays created through extensive interviews with real people. What new sensibilities, insights, and techniques arise from such a process? What do we learn about our American character and identities? Among the plays to be read are Let Me Down Easy, Fires in the Mirror, Seven, The Laramie Project, and Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4024 Seminar: Melville (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 courses Literature courses (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT)
This seminar will explore the major fiction of Herman Melville. Possible topics include race, class, gender, sexuality, colonialism, epic, and ecology. We will also explore the ethical, moral, and political issues addressed in Melville's work. A large section of the course will be devoted to Melville's epic 1851 novel, Moby-Dick. Other works to be explored include: Typee,Bartleby-The Scrivener, Benito Cereno, The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, The Encantadas, and Billy Budd.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4029 Seminar: Theatre of Social Issues (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 courses Literature courses (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT)
This seminar will focus on the works of Anna Deavere Smith, Moises Kaufman, Jessica Blank, and other playwrights whose groundbreaking plays have established the genre of documentary theatre-plays created through extensive interviews with real people. What new sensibilities, insights, and techniques arise from such a process? Among the plays to be read are Let Me Down Easy, Fires in the Mirror, Seven, The Laramie Project, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and The Exonerated.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4030 Seminar: The Poet Bob Dylan (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 courses Literature courses (AML, BRL, DRA, ENG or LIT)
This seminar will explore the life, times, and work of the great American singer-songwriter, poet, and American icon Bob Dylan. Topics include: his musical (and literary) influences and influence; connections between his work and the social, political, cultural, and historical events and movements of the last half of the twentieth and early part of the twenty-first centuries; the nature of individual and collective identities.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4031 Epic Fantasy Series (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
In this seminar students will examine the modern epic fantasy series, and their historical, mythological and contemporary influences. Series such as A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin, Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, Harry Potter by JK Rowling, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, and The Earthsea Chronicles by Ursula K le Guin offer intricate cycles of hero stories. Using the scholar Joseph Campbell's work to decode mythic themes, the seminar will explore the authors' relationships with one another, the progression of sequence from one book or episode to the next, and the role of modern fantasy as a portal to the historical and mythic traditions of epic tales.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4032 British Women Novelists (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
The focus and emphasis of this course will fall on the character, consciousness and literary work of women writers in Britain. What does it mean to be a woman in a class-conscious society? What rights and privileges, if any, did women have at the end of the eighteenth century, during the nineteenth century, and at the beginning of the twentieth century in England? What types of domestic, social, and other constraints were imposed on women? What opportunities for love or work did women have? What choices did women have in terms of marriage and education? In addition to the seminal work about women's rights by Mary Wollstonecraft in the eighteenth century, how is it that a man, John S. Mill, comes to write The Subjection of Women (1869), rumored to have been written, and no doubt heavily influenced, by his wife Harriet Taylor Mill. In this way the course will consider the minds, manner, morals, and lives of women in England from the late eighteenth century up into the early twentieth century. Students will be encouraged to consider and discuss both sexuality and gender. Course content might vary, but authors covered may include: Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women), Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion), Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre), Elizabeth Gaskell (Mary Barton or North and South), George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss), and Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One's Own).
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4033 The Vietnam War in Literature and Film (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
This seminar will examine a variety of artistic responses--memoirs, novels, shorts stories, poems, and films--to the Vietnam War.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4034 Ray Bradbury: Storyteller (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
Ray Bradbury is one of the great American storytellers. This seminar takes an in-depth approach to Bradbury's work through an examination of some of his most-famous stories and novels.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4035 The Anti-Hero in American Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
This course explores the ant-hero, the rebel, who has so completely captured the American imagination in literature and film. This is the outsider, the outcast, who struggles against the dark side of the American dream--its social inequality and moral bankruptcy, its political corruption, its economic greed and exclusion. This struggle, both internal and external, sometimes triumphant, sometimes fatal, will be illuminated in the works of Melville, Twain, Eliot, Hemingway, Anderson, Faulkner, Steinbeck, West, Ellison, O'Connor, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Bradbury, and others.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4036 What Does It Mean to Be a Citizen? (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
This seminar will focus on answering the question What Does It Mean to Be a Citizen? In addition to selected fiction and film, texts will include Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, essays of James Baldwin, selections from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and a range of interdisciplinary readings that address issues at play in our current social fabric related to, among other things, the following: individual and collective identities; protest, power, and privilege; rhetoric, truth, and artistic expression.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4037 Sem: Who Are You? Identity & Literature (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
In this seminar students will discuss questions and concepts of identity as they are explored in literary and autobiographical works, and as they are studied and defined in disciplines such as social psychology, sociology, and law.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4038 Seminar: World Indigenous Literatures (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
This seminar is an exploration of works by indigenous authors from cultures including Native American, Hawai'ian, New Zealand Maori, among others.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4039 Identity in Literature and Culture (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
This course examines Vietnam as a war that changed America, and as a resilient people and culture, both contemporary Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American. Vietnamese, American, and Vietnamese-American works of literature, non-fiction, photography, news media, and film will be the subject of our study.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4040 Topic: the Dark Side of Humor (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses (AML,BRL,DRA,ENG,LIT)
In literature as in film, dark humor often deals with the unlaughable, those taboo subjects that range from death and murder to family dysfunction to global conflagration. This course will explore-through literary works such as Catch 22, Slaughterhouse Five and the Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor and such films as Dr. Strangelove, The Trouble With Harry and Arsenic and Old Lace-how the dark side of humor can often illuminate the madness and absurdities of human life.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4041 Topic: The Wire (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Any 5 Literature courses ENG
This course will explore a range of historical, cultural, social, political, and narrative issues at play in the television series The Wire
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4042 Seminar Topic: Literary Mystery Novel (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Five ENG courses 2000 or higher
This course will focus on works of literary fiction that feature a working through of plot that applies the structures of the mystery genre. This course will examine the function of this genre device as a tool of revelation as used by literary novelists such as William Faulkner, Umberto Eco, and Iain Pears.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4043 Seminar Topic: David Fincher (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Five ENG courses 2000 or higher
This seminar examines the visual storytelling of film director, David Fincher. Students will examine film and literary influences, including brief examinations into his commercials and music videos, as well as excerpts from shows such as Mindhunter and House of Cards. Possible films to be included in the course include Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Game, Panic Room, The Social Network, Gone Girl, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Mank.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4044 Seminar: the Mask in Literature and Film (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Five ENG or LWP courses 2000 or higher
From the ancient Greeks to Shakespeare to Poe and Hawthorne to Black Mirror and the Rod Sterling's Twilight Zone, the concept of the Mask, has been used to obscure, to deceive, to hide, that which lies beneath the surface of human character, as well as to reveal and to illuminate the duality of human nature. In this seminar, we will explore the literary concept of the Mask through the works of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Poe, Hawthorne, Wilde, Stevenson, Dunbar, Highsmith, and others. We will also view some thematically related films such as Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Teshigahara's The Face of Another, and Peale's Get Out!
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4045 Seminar: Representing the Holocaust (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Five ENG or LWP courses 2000 or higher
This seminar will explore a range of artistic, humanistic, and literary representations of and engagements with the Holocaust in an attempt to better understand its roots, realities, and repercussions.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4046 Seminar: Telling Our Stories (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Five ENG or LWP courses 2000 or higher
In this seminar, we will experiment with autobiographical writing exercises of our own as we read, listen to and view works of autobiographical writing - from memoir and autobiographical fiction to graphic memoir, podcasts and stand-up comedy. Students will become familiar with critical concepts, terms and approaches used to analyze life narratives, and with debates relating to authenticity, identify, truth, memory, culture and self-representation.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4047 Seminar: Gothic Literature & Film (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Five ENG or LWP courses 2000 or higher
Gothic literature deals with a tension of opposites. Of the conflict between rational and irrational, the natural and supernatural, science and superstition, It is a literature of intense emotional intensity, of doubt and uncertainty, of exalted moments of joy and ecstasy, of the dead and the undead, of haunted houses, of unknown fears and desires that lurk in the unconsciousness mind. This course will study the Gothic literature from the Romantic and Victorian periods up until the present time. It will include such works The Fall of the House of Usher, Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Monk, Rebecca, The Haunting of Hill House, Interview with a Vampire, and others.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4295 Seminar Topic: Fiction's Futures (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Five ENG courses 2000 or higher
How does fiction imagine humanity's future? What lessons and warnings do they offer? What commonalities do they share? How do they reimagine community as well as the individual's relationship to a changed society? How are issues of race, gender and sexuality imagined or reimagined in these futures? And, what do they tell us about the fears and hopes of the time in which they were written? This course will look at both science fiction and literary fiction. Authors include Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Carmen Maria Machado, Charles Yu, Ted Chiang, Lucy Corin, and Tao Lin among others.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4403 Tutorial: Technical & Profssnl Writing Literature (3 Credits)
This tutorial will provide writing students with the opportunity to see their research and efforts materialize into an actual exhibition. The writing experience they get from this tutorial will be extensive. Grant writing, business letters, press releases, writing for the web, along with narrative and interpretive text will all be part of this tutorial.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4404 Writing Memoir and Fiction for Publication and Performance (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take 1 courses;,Any AML, BRL, or LIT course 2000 or higher
This tutorial will have students design and pursue a series of independent projects focused on the drafting and editing of short stories and/or memoir pieces, with a view toward public presentation of their work. The instructor will meet with students both during and outside the weekly tutorial session, and will engage the group in peer editing activities.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4407 Photography and Literature Cyborgs, Monsters and the Transhuman (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Chairpersons Approval
This tutorial will explore artistic and social developments in literature and photography, as well as the nature of storytelling in words and in images. Readings, photographers, and activities will include, among others, On Photography, How The Other Half Lives, excerpts from Leaves of Grass, Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, The Jazz Loft Project, photo essays, and a student group exhibit.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4409 Thesis Research and Proposal Cyborgs, Monsters and the Transhuman (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Chairpersons Approval
The tutorial to be offered will work on the process of designing, researching, and writing the senior thesis.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4411 Tutorial: Business Communications (3 Credits)
ENG 4411 is a writing tutorial intended to increase the student's ability to write effective business communications through memos and letters for both internal and external customer and clients audiences. Attention will also be paid to organization and communication skills needed to conduct meetings, projects, reporting, and daily communication. Prerequisite: Chairperson's approval.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4412 Tutorial: Advanced Creative Writing (3 Credits)
This tutorial is a continuation of Advanced Fiction Writing and, for many, will serve as a bridge to a creative English thesis. The primary focus will be on workshopping student work. We will also read and analyze published short fiction (some chosen by me, some chosen by students) as writers as well as selected essays on craft and process. Each student will be expected to read and write about a particular issue of craft in a particular collection of short fiction that they will choose in consultation with me. We will meet as a group every other week; in addition, there will be individual consultations throughout the semester. Prerequisite: Chairperson's approval.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4990 Internship in English (1-3 Credits)
This course provides the opportunity for students to work at department-approved locations for a structured, supervised, professional work experience within a company, non-profit organization, or approved institution.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4995 Independent Study in English (1-3 Credits)
Requisite(s): 9 credits from ENG Dept.(AML, BRL, DRA, ENG, LIT, or WRI,except WRI-1100) and Department Chair approval.
When a student has a particular interest which is not addressed by any of the offerings in the English curriculum. When a student has been pursuing an idea and feels the need to do it on a more formal basis, it is possible to propose the idea for independent study. The student would seek out a member of the English faculty who would be willing and able to oversee or guide the student through a semester's activity on the subject. Specific guidelines for Independent Study in English are available in the English offices. Students interested in possible independent study should begin the process of securing a mentor and filling out the required forms before the Registrar's Office begins formal registration for the next semester.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-4996 Thesis Preparation and Proposal (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Open to Juniors and Seniors. Department Chair approval,required.
This course provides students the opportunity to read, think, write, and discuss ideas for their senior thesis with their mentor. At the end of the course, students will have a completed proposal so that they can begin writing their thesis at the start of the following semester. At some point during the semester, the student must pick a second reader for their proposal and thesis.
Typically offered: Fall Only
LWP-4997 Senior Thesis (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): LWP-4996
Under the direction of an LWP faculty mentor, students develop an independent research or creative project (thesis) based on their thesis proposal in LWP 4996 Thesis Preparation and Proposal. Students will work with their faculty mentor to finalize their project, with regular meetings required throughout the semester.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-5401 Literature: Franciscan Tradition (3 Credits)
This Honors Seminar has the student think about Franciscan responses to the world: responses similar to or reinforced by the examined literature, particularly biographical vs. hagiographical elements in Francis of Assisi's life; the writings of Francis of Assisi and Clare of Assisi; writing about St. Francis and St. Clare; and an examination of their influence on society throughout history.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE, PEM
LWP-5402 American Nobel Laureates (3 Credits)
In this seminar, we will read, listen to, and view works of prose, poetry, and drama from American Nobel Laureates. Each student will explore the reasons why the Nobel Committee selected a particular author for this prestigious award. Students will also be expected to develop some familiarity with American culture and aesthetics through oral reports. Through course discussion, presentations, and writing, we will collectively attempt to articulate why certain American authors have been singled out for international literary and aesthetic fame and we will place these authors within a globalized aesthetic framework.
LWP-5404 Darwin and Science Writing (3 Credits)
A reading of On the Origin of Species (1859, first edition, complete text) by Charles Darwin, in the context of selections from Genesis, William Paley (Natural Theology), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, Charles Lyell, Alfred Russel Wallace, and T.H. Huxley. The emphasis of the course, however, is on Darwin's work, and so we will also read a very brief selection from Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871). Students will read (in the context of the period and other writings) what Darwin and Wallace mean in saying: evolution by means of natural selection of traits and characteristics through adaptive processes. The course will focus on rhetorical devices (such as substantive and evaluative claims; ethos, pathos, and logos; enabling assumptions and addressing opposition), the elements of argument, and how one assembles evidence in making a series of claims.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE, NPW
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-5405 Perspectives of Gender/Health (3 Credits)
This interdisciplinary course brings together psychology and literature in order to examine how our view of the body, health, and illness are connected to changing psychosocial and political ideals. Gender, as a specific factor of these ideals, is the underlying focus of the course readings and discussions.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE, NPW
Typically offered: Spring Only
LWP-5406 Blues, Jazz, and the Harlem Renaissance (3 Credits)
An exploration of blues, jazz, and the literature of the Harlem Renaissance. In the process of developing a stronger, more critical appreciation of these art forms, students study such legendary figures as Alain Lock, WEB duBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Duke Ellington. Lectures are supplemented with film, slides, and recorded examples. The class will attend live jazz performances.
LWP-5407 Utopian & Dystopian Literature Literature (3 Credits)
This seminar examines representative works of utopian and dystopian literature and considers how the conception of perfect societies, and of the radically imperfect ones, illuminates our values and priorities as citizens of a society and as individuals. Such works also invite reflection on the achievements and failings of our own society. Among the readings are such works as More's Utopia, The Handmaid's Tail, Ecotopia, and excerpts from Genesis, Dante's Inferno, and Plato's Republic.
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-5408 Sem: Neurodiversity in Fiction and Film Literature (3 Credits)
This interdisciplinary honors seminar will explore neurodiversity as it is represented in literature and film, and as a force in the creation of these works. What can literature tell us about neurodiversity? And what can neurodiversity tell us about literature? This interdisciplinary course brings together creative, medical, historical, philosophical, psychological, and analytical texts in order to explore issues and ideas related to neurodiversity in the context of a range of social constructs and beliefs, including race, class, gender, sexuality, politics, success, truth, goodness, power, and (dis)ability.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE, NPW
Typically offered: As Needed
LWP-5655 Women Primatologists Literature (3 Credits)
A study of work by Jane Goodall (In the Shadow of Man; Through a Window), Dian Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist), Birut Galdikas (Reflections of Eden), Shirley Strum (Almost Human), and Karen Strier (Faces in the Forest). Students will read remarkable narratives by women scientists who endured tremendous hardships and risks to engage in long-term field studies of wild chimpanzees, mountain gorillas, orangutans, olive baboons, and muriqui monkeys. While the field research in every case began as a species study, environmental and animal welfare concerns eventually took hold as well.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE, NPW
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-1000 Basic Writing (3 Credits)
Basic writing skills are practiced in order to improve and enhance verbal and written communication for college work. Students learn a variety of strategies for composing, editing, and polishing of written papers through individual student attention and peer workshops. A portfolio with a self-reflective introduction is assembled, submitted, and evaluated for successful completion of the course's requirements. Students who have successfully completed WRI 1100 cannot register for WRI 1000.
Typically offered: All Sessions
WRI-1100 Writing and Research (3 Credits)
Requisite(s): Complete WRI-1000 or placement by examination
The course guides students in the process of improving writing skills. Through individual work and peer groups. The course will offer instruction in writing as a revising and editing process for the creation of an effective thesis statement and cogent paragraphs in balanced written pieces ending in the completion of a required portfolio.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: WRI1
Typically offered: All Sessions
WRI-1500 Advanced Composition (3 Credits)
A writing portfolio-based course focusing the acquisition and practice of strategies a writer may use to predict a reader's response. The writing will be both academic and personal concentrating on expository pieces such as reports on research, persuasive essays for standard thesis papers, and informal writing as in journals and memoirs. Practice pieces will be revised, edited, and selected for the final presentation portfolio. Readings associated with stylistic development may be used.
WRI-2100 Writing Fiction (3 Credits)
Students will learn the art and craft of writing fiction in a workshop environment. Participants will read from master writers; they will write original pieces and revise them. The workshop process includes having student work discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow students. Class participation is essential.
Fulfills General Education Requirement: HCE
Typically offered: Fall Only
WRI-2250 Business Communications (3 Credits)
This course will provide instruction and practice in business writing and professionalism.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-2606 Topic: Telling Our Stories: Theory and Practice of Autobiographical (3 Credits)
In this course, we will experiment with autobiographical writing exercises of our own as we read, listen to and view works of autobiographical writing-from memoir and autobiographical fiction to graphic memoir, podcasts and stand-up comedy. Students will become familiar with critical concepts, terms and approaches used to analyze life narratives, and with debates relating to authenticity, identity, truth, memory, culture and self-representation.
WRI-7010 Introductory Residency (4 Credits)
The introductory residency takes place over a ten day, onsite period, where lectures, classes, workshops, readings and conferences create a community among writers. Students will spend 3 hours per day meeting in workshop groups of 6-9 students under the direction of a faculty mentor. The first residency will introduce new students to workshop procedure and etiquette. The residency workshop is dedicated to the development of student creativity. Students become a part of a community where student writers refine their art through writing, reading, rewriting, talking, debating, listening, criticism and praise. On an individual level, each writer learns the discipline necessary to produce new work on a regular basis, as well as to develop a fastidious editorial aptitude about both their own work and the work of others. Students will spend 3 hours attending lectures and symposiums on genre and craft, taught by faculty and guest faculty. Introductory residency topics will include: the writing process, story structure, language and voice, characterization, time and place, plot, pacing, point of view, imagery, dialogue, and revision. Some lessons will be genre-specific. In the two weeks leading up to each residency period, students will complete a pre-residency bibliography assignment by assembling a list of 10 books according to the individual student's stylistic influences, inspirations and literary ambitions. The introductory residency will focus on an investigation of artistic goals. Students will be paired with faculty mentors who will guide them through the two-year program. Additional hours will be spent attending industry related readings, talks and panels.
Typically offered: All Sessions
WRI-7020 Intermediate Residency 2 (4 Credits)
The intermediate residency takes place over a ten day, onsite period, where lectures, classes, workshops, readings and conferences create a community among writers. Students will spend 3 hours per day meeting in workshop groups of 6-9 students under the direction of a faculty mentor. The middle two residencies will focus on development of a body of work for revision, exchange of ideas, and aesthetic approaches. The residency workshop is dedicated to the development of student creativity. Students become a part of a community where student writers refine their art through writing, reading, rewriting, talking, debating, listening, criticism and praise. On an individual level, each writer learns the discipline necessary to produce new work on a regular basis, as well as to develop a fastidious editorial aptitude about both their own work and the work of others. Students will spend 3 hours attending lectures and symposiums on genre and craft, taught by faculty and guest faculty. Introductory residency topics will include: the writing process, story structure, language and voice, characterization, time and place, plot, pacing, point of view, imagery, dialogue, and revision. Some lessons will be genre-specific. Additional hours will be spent attending industry related readings, talks and panels. In the two weeks leading up to each residency period, students will complete a pre-residency bibliography assignment by assembling a list of 10 books according to the individual student's stylistic influences, inspirations and literary ambitions.
Typically offered: All Sessions
WRI-7030 Intermediate Residency 3 (4 Credits)
The intermediate residency takes place over a ten day, onsite period, where lectures, classes, workshops, readings and conferences create a community among writers. Students will spend 3 hours per day meeting in workshop groups of 6-9 students under the direction of a faculty mentor. The middle two residencies will focus on development of a body of work for revision, exchange of ideas, and aesthetic approaches. The residency workshop is dedicated to the development of student creativity. Students become a part of a community where student writers refine their art through writing, reading, rewriting, talking, debating, listening, criticism and praise. On an individual level, each writer learns the discipline necessary to produce new work on a regular basis, as well as to develop a fastidious editorial aptitude about both their own work and the work of others. Students will spend 3 hours attending lectures and symposiums on genre and craft, taught by faculty and guest faculty. Introductory residency topics will include: the writing process, story structure, language and voice, characterization, time and place, plot, pacing, point of view, imagery, dialogue, and revision. Some lessons will be genre-specific. Additional hours will be spent attending industry related readings, talks and panels. In the two weeks leading up to each residency period, students will complete a pre-residency bibliography assignment by assembling a list of 10 books according to the individual student's stylistic influences, inspirations and literary ambitions.
Typically offered: All Sessions
WRI-7040 Master Residency (4 Credits)
The master residency takes place over a ten day, onsite period, where lectures, classes, workshops, readings and conferences create a community among writers. Students will spend 3 hours per day meeting in workshop groups of 6-9 students under the direction of a faculty mentor. The master residency will focus on advancing student's creative and professional goals in preparation for the thesis workshop and practicum. The residency workshop is dedicated to the development of student creativity. Students become a part of a community where student writers refine their art through writing, reading, rewriting, talking, debating, listening, criticism and praise. On an individual level, each writer learns the discipline necessary to produce new work on a regular basis, as well as to develop a fastidious editorial aptitude about both their own work and the work of others. Students will spend 3 hours attending lectures and symposiums on genre and craft, taught by faculty and guest faculty. Introductory residency topics will include: the writing process, story structure, language and voice, characterization, time and place, plot, pacing, point of view, imagery, dialogue, and revision. Some lessons will be genre-specific. Additional hours will be spent attending industry related readings, talks and panels. In the two weeks leading up to each residency period, students will complete a pre-residency bibliography assignment by assembling a list of 10 books according to the individual student's stylistic influences, inspirations and literary ambitions.
Typically offered: All Sessions
WRI-7210 Intro MFA Fiction Workshop & Practicum (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-7010;
Students learn the art of writing fiction in a tutorial with an individual faculty member. Participants read from master writers, write original work and revise. Through steady interaction, this individualized method of study ensures that students maintain productivity in their daily lives. Students will produce, revise, and polish content, while analyzing and employing established literary and commercial techniques. Ongoing communication with faculty mentor assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. The Introductory Tutorial is distinguished by a focus on artistic process, an emphasis on writing exercises, and an exploration of a variety of forms and approaches.
WRI-7220 Interm MFA Fiction Workshop & Practicum (4 Credits)
Students learn the art of writing fiction in a tutorial with an individual faculty member. Participants read from master writers, write original work and revise. Through steady interaction, this individualized method of study ensures that students maintain productivity in their daily lives. Students will produce, revise, and polish content, while analyzing and employing established literary and commercial techniques. Ongoing communication with faculty mentor assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. The Intermediate Tutorial is distinguished by a focus on reading as a writer, an emphasis on revision and manuscript development, and an exploration of the various collaborative aspects of the writing process.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7230 Advanced MFA Fiction Wksp & Practicum (4 Credits)
Students learn the art of writing fiction in a tutorial with an individual faculty member. Participants read from master writers, write original work and revise. Through steady interaction, this individualized method of study ensures that students maintain productivity in their daily lives. Students will produce, revise, and polish content, while analyzing and employing established literary and commercial techniques. Ongoing communication with faculty mentor assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. The Advanced Tutorial is distinguished by a focus on self-assessment skills, an emphasis on craft issues, and an exploration of the larger literary community.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7240 Thesis: MFA Fiction Wksp & Practicum (4 Credits)
Students learn the art of writing fiction in a tutorial with an individual faculty member. Participants read from master writers, write original work and revise. Through steady interaction, this individualized method of study ensures that students maintain productivity in their daily lives. Students will produce, revise, and polish content, while analyzing and employing established literary and commercial techniques. Ongoing communication with faculty mentor assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. The Thesis Tutorial is distinguished by a focus on the literary marketplace, an emphasis on completing a polished thesis-length manuscript, and an exploration of writing as a profession.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7310 Intro MFA Poetry Workshop & Practicum (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-7010;
In this series of classes, students will be working with received forms (e.g. sonnet, villanelle, sestina). There will be a strong reading component with work by both classical and contemporary poets who wrote using poetic forms; students will be encouraged to write in response to, and sometimes in imitation of, the poems they read as a way to enrich their understanding of meter and rhyme. Prompts may be specific as to subject matter and form, or may merely tell students which form to use. Writing in received forms helps lay the groundwork for learning the art and science of poetic practices; adding the reading component allows students to experience some of the ways in which poetry is a dialogue between poets both past and present. While some class time will be devoted to discussing the poems students have read, the bulk of the time will be spent on workshopping poems written by students. The instructor will model good critical and analytical practices at first, helping guide students to where they will take over much of the workshopping of their own works. By helping others look objectively at their work, each student will begin to develop her own methods for evaluating her work.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7320 Intermediate MFA Poetry Wksp & Prac (4 Credits)
In this series of classes, students will be working with received forms (e.g. sonnet, villanelle, sestina). There will be a strong reading component with work by both classical and contemporary poets who wrote using poetic forms; students will be encouraged to write in response to, and sometimes in imitation of, the poems they read as a way to enrich their understanding of meter and rhyme. Prompts may be specific as to subject matter and form, or may merely tell students which form to use. Writing in received forms helps lay the groundwork for learning the art and science of poetic practices; adding the reading component allows students to experience some of the ways in which poetry is a dialogue between poets both past and present. This series of classes will build upon what students experienced in Workshop 1 by continuing with a strong reading component. While some of the poems students read may be in received forms, many of them will not; this will help students continue to expand their understanding of meter and rhyme by demonstrating how these components are used in poems which do not follow traditional forms. As with Workshop 1, students will be writing in response to the poetry they read. Prompts will be focused on topics (e.g. nature, the body) and/or may require students to imitate or even confront a poem they have read. Much of the class time will be spent on workshopping student writing.
WRI-7330 Advanced MFA Poetry Wksp & Practicum (4 Credits)
In this series of classes, students will be working with received forms (e.g. sonnet, villanelle, sestina). There will be a strong reading component with work by both classical and contemporary poets who wrote using poetic forms; students will be encouraged to write in response to, and sometimes in imitation of, the poems they read as a way to enrich their understanding of meter and rhyme. Prompts may be specific as to subject matter and form, or may merely tell students which form to use. Writing in received forms helps lay the groundwork for learning the art and science of poetic practices; adding the reading component allows students to experience some of the ways in which poetry is a dialogue between poets both past and present. While there may be a small reading component to this workshop series, most of each class will be spent workshopping student poetry. The focus here will be on beginning to prepare the thesis (a chapbook-length manuscript), and students may work on both poems from previous workshops and new ones. In addition to workshop sessions, there will be a number of meetings dedicated to discussing publishing procedures and opportunities. Instructors are encouraged to bring in editors and publishers who can speak directly to industry practices. By the end of this workshop, students should have a minimum of 15 poems they believe will be the basis for their thesis.
WRI-7340 Thesis: MFA Poetry Wksp & Practicum (4 Credits)
In this series of classes, students will be working with received forms (e.g. sonnet, villanelle, sestina). There will be a strong reading component with work by both classical and contemporary poets who wrote using poetic forms; students will be encouraged to write in response to, and sometimes in imitation of, the poems they read as a way to enrich their understanding of meter and rhyme. Prompts may be specific as to subject matter and form, or may merely tell students which form to use. Writing in received forms helps lay the groundwork for learning the art and science of poetic practices; adding the reading component allows students to experience some of the ways in which poetry is a dialogue between poets both past and present. While there may be a small reading component to this workshop series, most of each class will be spent workshopping student poetry. The focus here will be on beginning to prepare the thesis (a chapbook-length manuscript), and students may work on both poems from previous workshops and new ones. In addition to workshop sessions, there will be a number of meetings dedicated to discussing publishing procedures and opportunities. Instructors are encouraged to bring in editors and publishers who can speak directly to industry practices. By the end of this workshop, students should have a minimum of 15 poems they believe will be the basis for their thesis.
WRI-7410 Intro MFA Playwriting Workshop & Pract (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-7010;
Students learn the art of writing for stage and screen in a tutorial with an individual faculty member. Participants read from master play writers, write original work and revise, focusing on dramatic staging, dialogue, and direction. Through steady interaction, this individualized method of study ensures that students maintain productivity in their daily lives. Students will produce, revise, and polish content, while analyzing and employing established performance techniques. Ongoing communication with faculty mentor assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. The Introductory Tutorial is distinguished by a focus on artistic process, an emphasis on writing exercises, and an exploration of a variety of forms and approaches.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7420 Interm: MFA Playwriting Wksp & Prac (4 Credits)
Students learn the art of writing for stage and screen in a tutorial with an individual faculty member. Participants read from master play writers, write original work and revise, focusing on dramatic staging, dialogue, and direction. Through steady interaction, this individualized method of study ensures that students maintain productivity in their daily lives. Students will produce, revise, and polish content, while analyzing and employing established performance techniques. Ongoing communication with faculty mentor assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. Intermediate Tutorial is distinguished by a focus on writing from the perspective of the audience, an emphasis on revision and manuscript development, and an exploration of the various collaborative aspects of the writing process.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7430 Advanced MFA Playwriting Wksp & Prac (4 Credits)
Students learn the art of writing for stage and screen in a tutorial with an individual faculty member. Participants read from master play writers, write original work and revise, focusing on dramatic staging, dialogue, and direction. Through steady interaction, this individualized method of study ensures that students maintain productivity in their daily lives. Students will produce, revise, and polish content, while analyzing and employing established performance techniques. Ongoing communication with faculty mentor assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. Advanced Tutorial is distinguished by a focus on self-assessment skills, an emphasis on craft issues, and an exploration of the larger theater community.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7440 Thesis MFA Playwriting Wksp & Prac (4 Credits)
Students learn the art of writing for stage and screen in a tutorial with an individual faculty member. Participants read from master play writers, write original work and revise, focusing on dramatic staging, dialogue, and direction. Through steady interaction, this individualized method of study ensures that students maintain productivity in their daily lives. Students will produce, revise, and polish content, while analyzing and employing established performance techniques. Ongoing communication with faculty mentor assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. The Thesis Tutorial is distinguished by a focus on the theater marketplace, an emphasis on completing a three-act play or equivalent, and an exploration of writing as a profession.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7510 Intro MFA Nonfiction Workshop & Pract (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-7010;
In this one-on-one tutorial with a faculty member, students create and revise original nonfiction through the analysis and use of established literary and commercial techniques. To inform their own work, students read from master practitioners and learn the techniques of research and reporting through real-world practice. The individualized method of study introduces students to the editor-writer relationship and assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7520 Intermediate MFA Nonfict Wksp & Pract (4 Credits)
In this one-on-one tutorial with a faculty member, students create and revise original nonfiction through the analysis and use of established literary and commercial techniques. To inform their own work, students read from master practitioners and learn the techniques of research and reporting through real-world practice. The individualized method of study introduces students to the editor-writer relationship and assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. Emphasis is placed on revision and manuscript development, the crafting of narrative, and the various collaborative aspects of the writing process.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7530 Advanced MFA Nonfict Wksp & Practicum Intermediate MFA Nonfict Wksp & Pract (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-7520
In this one-on-one tutorial with a faculty member, students create and revise original nonfiction through the analysis and use of established literary and commercial techniques. To inform their own work, students read from master practitioners and learn the techniques of research and reporting through real-world practice. The individualized method of study introduces students to the editor-writer relationship and assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. Emphasis is placed on self-assessment skills, craft issues across nonfiction practices, and an exploration of the larger literary community.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7540 Thesis Nonfiction Workshop and Practicum Thesis Nonfiction Workshop and Practicum (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-7530
In this one-on-one tutorial with a faculty member, students create and revise original nonfiction through the analysis and use of established literary and commercial techniques. To inform their own work, students read from master practitioners and learn the techniques of research and reporting through real-world practice. The individualized method of study introduces students to the editor-writer relationship and assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. Emphasis is placed on the literary and media marketplace, completing a polished thesis-length manuscript, and writing as a profession.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7610 Intro MFA Graphic Writing Wksp & Pract (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-7010;
In this one-on-one tutorial with a faculty member, students create original scripts for graphic novels, focusing on structure, visual storytelling, dynamic artists' instructions, pacing, and the differences between graphic storytelling and other types of writing. Students have a choice of writing an original comic book script, or writing a spec script based on existing characters, including iconic superheroes. To inform their work, students read from key writers in the genre and assigned chapters of key texts on creating graphic novels. Emphasis is placed on writing exercises, the revision process, and helping students develop a voice and style that best suits their chosen approach.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7620 Intermediate MFA Graphic Wri Wksp & Pra (4 Credits)
In this one-on-one tutorial with a faculty member, students produce and revise an original comic book of 20-22 pages, an original series of comics, or an original longer form graphic novel, with an emphasis on revision and manuscript development, and an exploration of the collaborative aspects of the comics creation process. To inform their own work, students read from master comics writers. Emphasis is placed on moving stories forward with images/artistic instructions, as well as with dialogue and action.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7630 Adv MFA Graphic Writing Wksp & Prac (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-7620
In this one-on-one tutorial with a faculty member, students produce and revise original work through the application of established techniques. To inform their own work, students read from masters of the genre, focusing on moving stories forward with descriptions of graphics, dialogue, and action. Ongoing communication with a faculty mentor assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. Emphasis is placed on self-assessment skills, craft issues, structural issues, career preparation, and strategies related to creating a long-form comics series or graphic novel.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7640 Adv MFA Graphic Writing Wksp & Prac (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): Take WRI-7630
In a one-on-one tutorial with a faculty member, students produce and revise an original comics series or graphic novel through the application of established production techniques. To inform their own work, students read from masters of the genre, focusing on voice, styles, dialogue, graphics descriptions, action, and suspense. Ongoing communication with faculty assures students of the support and critique needed to advance their literary and personal goals. Emphasis is placed on the comics marketplace and an exploration of careers in comics.
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7900 MFA Thesis Residency (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): WRI-7040,,Successful completion of all for residencies,WRI-7240, WRI-7340 or WRI-7440,,Successful completion of all four workshops/practicums in,program track
The thesis residency takes place over a ten day, onsite period, where lectures, classes, workshops, readings and conferences create a community among writers. Students will spend 3 hours per day meeting in workshop groups of 6-9 students under the direction of a faculty mentor. The thesis residency will focus on advancing student's creative and professional goals. The residency workshop is dedicated to the development of student creativity. Students become a part of a community where student writers refine their art through writing, reading, rewriting, talking, debating, listening, criticism and praise. On an individual level, each writer learns the discipline necessary to produce new work on a regular basis, as well as to develop a fastidious editorial aptitude about both their own work and the work of others. Students will spend 3 hours attending lectures and symposiums on genre and craft, taught by faculty and guest faculty. Introductory residency topics will include: the writing process, story structure, language and voice, characterization, time and place, plot, pacing, point of view, imagery, dialogue, and revision. Some lessons will be genre-specific. Additional hours will be spent attending industry related readings, talks and panels. In the two weeks leading up to each residency period, students will complete a pre-residency bibliography assignment by assembling a list of 10 books according to the individual student's stylistic influences, inspirations and literary ambitions. Thesis students will undergo workshop leader/teacher training, and each thesis student will give a lecture on craft, as well as a public reading. The submission of a creative thesis-a novella, a chapbook of poetry, a short story collection, a full script for a play or film-is to be finished and presented during the student's final semester. The aim is to produce work of literary merit that is worthy of publication or performance. The project must be approved the thesis adviser and the director of the Creative Writing Program. A second reader is agreed upon by the mentor and director of the Program. MFA candidates complete theses which must meet the following guidelines: Poetry: minimum 30 poems for a chapbook Fiction: 5 short stories or at least 150 pages of a novel Screenwriting/Playwriting/Writing for Performance: full script. 80-120 pages in length
Typically offered: As Needed
WRI-7990 MFA Thesis Residency (4 Credits)
Requisite(s): WRI-7040,,Successful completion of all for residencies,WRI-7240, WRI-7340 or WRI-7440,,Successful completion of all four workshops/practicums in,program track
The thesis residency takes place over a ten day, onsite period, where lectures, classes, workshops, readings and conferences create a community among writers. Students will spend 3 hours per day meeting in workshop groups of 6-9 students under the direction of a faculty mentor. The thesis residency will focus on advancing student's creative and professional goals. The residency workshop is dedicated to the development of student creativity. Students become a part of a community where student writers refine their art through writing, reading, rewriting, talking, debating, listening, criticism and praise. On an individual level, each writer learns the discipline necessary to produce new work on a regular basis, as well as to develop a fastidious editorial aptitude about both their own work and the work of others. Students will spend 3 hours attending lectures and symposiums on genre and craft, taught by faculty and guest faculty. Introductory residency topics will include: the writing process, story structure, language and voice, characterization, time and place, plot, pacing, point of view, imagery, dialogue, and revision. Some lessons will be genre-specific. Additional hours will be spent attending industry related readings, talks and panels. In the two weeks leading up to each residency period, students will complete a pre-residency bibliography assignment by assembling a list of 10 books according to the individual student's stylistic influences, inspirations and literary ambitions. Thesis students will undergo workshop leader/teacher training, and each thesis student will give a lecture on craft, as well as a public reading. The submission of a creative thesis-a novella, a chapbook of poetry, a short story collection, a full script for a play or film-is to be finished and presented during the student's final semester. The aim is to produce work of literary merit that is worthy of publication or performance. The project must be approved the thesis adviser and the director of the Creative Writing Program. A second reader is agreed upon by the mentor and director of the Program. MFA candidates complete theses which must meet the following guidelines: Poetry: minimum 30 poems for a chapbook Fiction: 5 short stories or at least 150 pages of a novel Screenwriting/Playwriting/Writing for Performance: full script. 80-120 pages in length
Typically offered: All Sessions