Courses
A Creative Writing Concentration within and in addition to the English major is offered as another option in development of skills in creative writing. The requirements for the concentration are specified in the “English” section of the course catalogue.
EN141f Beginning Playwriting Listed as Theater and Dance 141.
An introduction to the playwriting process for students interested in dramatic storytelling and the process of new play development. Student work focuses on 1) close reading and analysis of representative plays in order to understand dramatic structure, characterization, rhythm, imagery, etc.; 2) creative experimentation through a series of writing exercises; and 3) participation in the process of workshopping class products, including offering and receiving constructive criticism.
Four credit hours. A. OLDHAM.
EN278fs Fiction Writing I. A course in writing short literary fiction. No prior experience with fiction writing presumed, only interest. Class sessions will be devoted to talking about fiction basics, analyzing short stories, and critiquing fellow students’ fiction in workshops. Outside of class, students will be writing fiction exercises and complete stories, as well as reading professional stories. By the end of the semester, students should have insight into the creative process. They should have learned the basics of the craft of writing, and they should have practiced what they have learned through writing and rewriting.
Prerequisite: English 115. Four Credit Hours. A. BRAUNSTEIN.
EN279fs Poetry Writing I. Students will learn to identify and internalize the fundamental techniques and strategies of poetry. Each week you will read the work of published poets, write your own poems, read poems aloud, and critique the work of your peers. To help hone writing abilities and aesthetic judgment, there will be practice in revision and in analytic craft annotation. By semester’s end, you will produce a portfolio of revised poems and a statement of what you have learned about your creative process, your aesthetic preferences, and your growing mastery of craft. This class presumes no prior experience with poetry writing.
Prerequisite: English 115. Four Credit Hours. A. BLEVINS.
EN280f Creative Nonfiction I. A creative writing workshop that introduces students to the forms and possibilities of creative nonfiction, including essays of time and place, memoirs, profiles, and literary journalism. Progresses through a review of models, writing exercises, drafts, and finished pieces, with an emphasis on the workshop process, in which students share work and comment on each others’ efforts.
Prerequisite: Any W1 course. Four Credit Hours A. BURKE.
EN378f Fiction Writing II. An advanced workshop in writing fiction. Focuses on the writing and revision of the literary short story, with particular attention to the structure of dramatic action, character, texture and tone, inspiration, and the process of revision.
Prerequisite: English 278. Admission may require submission of a manuscript.
Four Credit Hours. SPARK.
EN379fs Poetry Writing II. This course presupposes basic familiarity with the poetic uses of metaphors, images, lines, and fresh and rhythmic diction. It will require students to read more extensively and analytically in contemporary poetry and continue their practice working with the kind of divergent thinking that makes poetry possible. Students will also undertake a more sophisticated investigation of the interplay of syntax with lineation, the nuances of pacing and structure, the resources of associative thinking, the gambits of rhetoric, and the complexities of tone. Final portfolio, emphasis on revision.
Prerequisite: English 279. Four Credit Hours. BLEVINS.
EN380f Creative Nonfiction. Run as a writing workshop that helps student find their own voices as well as their most distinctive and authentic material. A sequence of writing assignments and revisions provides practice in various aspects of creative nonfiction, including essays of time and place, memoirs, profiles, and opinion pieces. These lead up to a longer personal essay on a topic of the student’s choice.
Prerequisite: English 115 (or exemption). Four credit hours. A. BURKE.
EN380s Creative Nonfiction Writing II. Advanced course in creative nonfiction. Students will refine their knowledge of the types and tropes of creative nonfiction, and will advance their ability to produce quality nonfiction, through the use of the workshop method. Students will be urged to focus on memoir; personal, reflective, or juxtaposition essays; literary journalism; or adventure narratives. Familiarity with particular examples of nonfiction, exercises, and intensive drafting and review of student work are required. Prerequisite: English 280 or other nonfiction writing course.
Four credit hours. A. BURKE.
[EN382] Environmental Writing: Writing on Place. A creative writing course that uses the workshop method to teach students about the principles, strategies, and achievements of writing about the relationship of human to nonhuman. Focus on the role that place plays in that relationship. Students study professional models, draft exercises, workshop their peer’s writings, and produce finished essays and narratives for a final portfolio.
Four credit hours. A. BURKE.
EN386s Special Topics: Documentary Radio. Students will learn how to conceive and research a topic that lends itself to a sound-rich medium, writing scripts that weave their own narrative with the best moments from their field interviews. They will also learn how to use a natural sound bed to help listeners imagine themselves in the setting. Final projects will be produced for the Web.
Four credit hours. SPARK.
[EN386] The Mother Tongue(s): Grammar, Syntax, and Style for Writers. A shame-free and stress-free conversation on the grammar, syntax, and style of contemporary written English. We will re-familiarize ourselves with the rules and conventions of Standard American English in order to better employ them when necessary and ignore them if not. We will also ferret out the contradictions, exceptions, and myths surrounding the written linguistic behaviors of everyone from “Abercrombie & Fitch” to James Baldwin. We will work with our own prose in a metawriting (writing about writing) workshop. Readings on writing, usage, and style will include essays by Steven Pinker, David Foster Wallace, George Orwell, E.B. White, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and many others.
Prerequisite: English 278 or 27. Four credit hours. BLEVINS
Other courses offered when the schedule allows: Imaginative Writing, and Feature Writing.