Creative Writing Courses
Courses
Narrative Theory and Poetics (3-0) Intensive readings in literary theory and criticism as they relate to aesthetics, form, and the creative process. The course will cover a spectrum of critical reflection by philosophers, theorists, fiction writers and poets regarding poeisis and the making of fiction. Students will undertake a research paper or project. Prerequisite: Department approval.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
Writing Children's Literature This cass will be a combination of reading and writing Children's Literature. I will provide a library of children's books simply because children's books are very expensive. We will be reading a few classic tales from the Brother's Grimm and The Little Prince. That said, most of our focus will be on contemporary children's books. In the first hald of the semester we will read, analyze and discuss children's books and then turn our attention to our own writing and the class will convert into a workshop. At the end of the semester each student will be expected to turn in a finished children' books as their final project.
Forms and Techniques of Fiction (3-0) A course in directed reading and writing that leads the student to an understanding of the creative process through analysis and imitation of important works of fiction. Prerequisite: Department approval.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
Forms and Techniques of Poetry (3-0) A course in directed reading and writing that leads the student to an understanding of the creative process throught analysis and imitation of important works of poetry. Prerequisite: Department approval.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
Advanced Fiction Writing (3-0) Intensive study and practice in the various forms and approaches of fiction writing, including workshop discussion and individual student manuscripts. Prerequisite: Department approval.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
Advanced Poetry Writing (3-0) Intensive study and practice in the various forms and approaches within the writing of poetry, including workshop discussion of individual student poems. Prerequisite: Department approval.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
Variable Topics in Creative Writing (3-0) Genres and forms not normally covered in the MFA curriculum, eg., the short novel, libretti, the dramatic monologue. Writing consists of both criticism particular to the course focus, and writing representative of the form or genre itself. May be taken once as a workshop course and once as a literature course.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
Advanced Playwriting (3-0) Intensive study and practice in the various forms and approaches of playwriting, including workshop discussion of individual student playwriting.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
We will discuss the theory, practice, and play of translation, focused mainly Spanish to/from English translation of poetry. In addition to conventional translation, we will also engage in language games and translation exercises, such as homophonic and transliteral translation. Our aim with these exercises is to tune our ears and eyes to the subtleties and range in tone and diction poems offer - and also to explore the ludic qualities of writing and translation. This is a hybrid course that combines extensive reading and discussion of translated poetry and theory, critical writing, and a workshop component to discuss and critique student translations. Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321 and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval is also required. Restricted to level of GR and to majors of Creative Writing-Graduate.
This is an intensive workshop designed to guide students through the process of planning, researching, writing and editing the novel. Readings include essays on the craft of writing. The course is organized in a workshop format in which students turn in a number of pages per week, as they develop their projects towards a final portfolio which consists of the first part of a professionally written novel. This course counts towards the fiction workshop requirement. Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321 and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval also required. Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
Advanced Screenwriting (3-0) Intensive study and practice in various forms and approaches of screenwriting, including workshop discussion of individual student screenwriting.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
Advanced Creative Non-Fiction (3-0) Intensive study and practice in the various forms and approaches of creative non-fiction including workshop discussion of individual student creative non-fiction.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
This is an examination of ten of the most common problems fiction writers might find in their work. The course includes a number of essays on fiction writing, and examples of works of fiction, but its main focus is on the students' writing examined within a workshop format. The final project is either a complete short story or the first chapter of a novel. This course counts towards the fiction workshop requirement. Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321 and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval also required. Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
In this course we will look at the ways in which writers throughout century have engaged popular music and popular musicians in their work as a means toward understanding a rapidly changing society. Reading assignments will include poetry and fiction by Theodore Dreiser, Langston Hughes, Frank O'Hara, Alice Walker, Don DeLillo, Amiri Baraka, Sherman Alexie, and others; and cultural theory such as Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Raymond Williams, and Jacques Attali. Writing assignments will include critical responses to the reading, creative exercises, and a final critical project. Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321, and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval also required. Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
In this course we will look at the ways in which American fiction writers of the 1960s began to question and reimagine the art of fiction in the context of a newly ubiquitous consumer culture. Reading novels and theoretical essays, we will examine some of the issues facing these writers and their artistic responses to these new challenges. Reading assignments will include fiction by John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, and Philip K. Dick; and theoretical work by Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, donna Haraway, Frederic Jameson and others. Writing assignments will include critical responses to the reading, creative exercises, and a final critical project. Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321, and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval also required. Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
In this course we will investigate the ways in which fiction writers through the twentieth century begin to question the "politics" of narration-that is, the ways in which narration in fiction models, replicates, and reinforces political systems in the real world. Reading short stories, novels and theoretical essays, we will further examine the ways in which writers, through what are ordinarily understood to be "aesthetic" experiments, reconfigured their narrative models in an effort to discover a more ethical, and sometimes more democratic politics (of narration). Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321, and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval also required Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
The study of Franz Kafka helps us push metaphorical boundaries in our fictional landscapes, because as much as any other writer, he has changed the way we see not only narrative, but reality itself. Like Kafka, we want to be able to create landscapes that are full of metaphorical possibilities, not fixed allegory. The difference is fundamental, because superficial fiction cannot go beyond parable. Fiction writers should seek to create landscapes wherein an infinite number of parabolic meanings are possible. In Kafka's landscapes an image does not mean one thing only. You can only make suggestions. There are only possibilities. His work embodies the possibilities and the debt of the art of fiction itself. Prerequisite: CRW 5364, CRW 5321, and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval also required. Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
We will look at metaphors in physics--general and special relativity, the particle/wave duality, the uncertainty principle, singularities, black holes, super string theory, parallel universes, time travel, the God particle, etc.--and we'll practice using them in fiction and poetry. We'll also look at how culture translates quantum theory into a metaphor for reality. Readings will include physics books written for the laic person as well as fiction and poetry that use physics. Students will write essays on the metaphors and how they're used in literature. They will also write creative Etudes, responses to the material in the form of poems, stories, and short plays. Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321, and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval also required Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
Literary Translation: Theoretical consideration, reading and practice in various forms and approaches to literary translation, including individual projects.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
Studies in Form (3-0) Advanced literary and critical focus on a single author, movement, or period within a single major form, e.g. novel, drama, poetry, essay, screenplay. Prerequisite: Department approval.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
The Literary Marketplace (3-0) Consideration of practical and career aspects of writing, editing, and publishing. Presentation of developments and trends of literature in its cultural genesis and social dissemination. May focus either on specific aspects (e.g., the blockbuster syndrome, the growth of small press publishing) of the literary marketplace. Prerequisite: Department approval.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
3 Lecture Hours
0 Other Hours
This course is a study of the ways in which consciousness has been represented in fiction. Using as a basis theoretical texts from Descartes to Dennett, this course examines the ways in which contemporary ideas influence the representations of characters' minds in fiction, providing students with a panoramic view of the subject, but also a number of concrete narrative devices they can use in their own fiction, or further adapt to their own poetics. This course counts towards the literature requirement. Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321, and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval also required Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
This is a survey of the most important works of literature published in Latin America in the past thirty years. The novels selected are intended to show a panoramic view of the poetics that have emerged as a response to the success of the Latin American "boom" of the 1960s, but also a number of overlapping poetics, and their corresponding narrative devices and the ideas that inform them. Designed to elicit both creative and analytical responses, this course counts towards the literature requirement. Prerequisites: CRW 5321 and CRW 5364 and CRW 5365 with a grade of B or better. Departmental approval also required Restricted to major of Creative Writing; restricted to level of GR.
This course examines the cross-pollination between film and literature during the twentieth century from a writer's perspective. The course covers basic theory on film studies, and ficiton writing, but favors the comparative analysis of both media. In addition to theoretical texts, the course examines a select number of novels which are read and analyzed in light of their cinematographic adaptations. This course counts towards the literature requirement. This course is bilingual, English/Spanish. Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321, and CRW 5365 with a grade of B or better. Department approval also required. Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
This course is an examination of the influence of European Modernism on Latin American Literature. Though usually focused on one particular writer, this course also includes significant examples of influential Modernist writers, and the theoretical discussions around modernism. The course emphasizes analytical and creative responses with a dual final project that includes a short fiction piece and an analytical paper. This course counts towards the literature requirement. Prerequisites: CRW 5364, CRW 5321 and CRW 5365 with a grade of "B" or better. Departmental approval also required. Restricted to major of Creative Writing; Restricted to level of GR.
Independent Study (0-0-3) Individual projects in reading and writing. Cannot duplicate the content of course regularly offered. Prerequisite: Department approval. .
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
0 Lecture Hours
3 Other Hours
Thesis (3-0) Initial work on the thesis.
Department: Creative Writing
3 Credit Hours
3 Total Contact Hours
0 Lab Hours
0 Lecture Hours
3 Other Hours