Instructor: Kim Dana Kupperman is the author of a critically acclaimed collection of essays, I Just Lately Started Buying Wings. Students will come away from this seminar with 40 pages of good writing and a new understanding of how and why they want to write. We will read such authors as Ann Patchett, Dave Eggers, Joan Didion, David Sedaris, Junot Diaz, Zadie Smith, and Mary Gordon, as well as selected critical essays. Students will write and critique works of fiction and nonfiction, exploring the contingencies of form, the changing shape of memory, the specific demands of genre, and the choices writers make as they work. In this workshop we will explore the complicated and sometimes gossamer lines between fiction and memoir. “I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction,” Katherine Anne Porter famously said.

Authors include: Toomer, Hurston, Ellison, Selvon, Marson, Baldwin. This course will explore the work of canonical 19th Century writers in relation to contemporary theories of the body and of embodiment.Īnglophone literature of the African diaspora including canonical and less-well known of the Harlem Renaissance, the pre-civil rights era, and Britain’s Windrush generation. Text: Poems of New York edited by Elizabeth Schmidt (Everyman's Library Pocket Books).Ī close reading and critical study of Spenser’s major work, The Faerie Queene, with reference to Spenser’s other work and to relevant areas of early modern culture.ĮNGL 5324 Shakespeare: 5 Plays, 6 CenturiesĪ study of the changing performance and interpretation of Shakespeare's plays over six centuries, combining close reading with stage and film history.Ī study of the novels by the three Bronte sisters - Charlotte, Emily, and Anne - in the context of literary, cultural, and social developments in 19th Century England. Each student is also expected to respond in written memos to their peers, as well as guiding discussions in the classroom. Poets will also present their work on a weekly basis and can expect to have their work discussed every week of the semester. In this workshop, students will utilize assignments, writing exercises, models, and journals to develop their understanding of craft.

Any discipline requires practice, but it should also make room for error and improvisation. There will be a syllabus, but the students will contribute to the syllabus via individual presentations.

How do we understand poetry in a world where one can Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube a poem overnight? We will use text and other forms of media to develop our view of poetry as a communicative art. This workshop will explore poetry as an act of communication through the exploration of the poet’s craft. A professional skills course, introducing students to issues in bibliography, textual criticism, editing, and the sociology of book production, from Gutenberg to the e-book.

Joan didion everyman's library