Experimental Writing Workshops

English 297II: Up, Up, and Away: Reading and Writing the Graphic Novel Emily Renaud & Brian Mihok
Thurs. 4:00-6:30

What is the difference between graphic novels and comic books, and why do they have such a bum academic rap? This semester, we’ll discuss and analyze the graphic novel through a critical lens. By reading examples of hero-based stories as well as stories that break the traditional boundaries of the superhero narrative, we will get an in-depth look at the composition of the genre. We’ll also pay careful attention to the craft and philosophy behind the graphic novel as a medium through which artists struggle for intellectual respect.

English 297LL: Telling It Straight, Telling It Slant, Telling it Digital Anjali Khosla & Peggy Woods
Tues. 4:00-6:30

What are the rules of narrative? Can these rules be broken? But more importantly, how can we tell stories as we transition into the new digital age? In this course we will write stories that follow and break traditional rules, as well as stories that are told through sound and visual images. As we move through these different ways of telling stories we will explore how what gets told is shaped by how it is told.

English 297MM: Queer Texts: Writing Queer Experience, Representing Queer Bodies Nadia Cannon & Sara Jaffe
Tues. 4:00-6:30

This course will allow students—both queer-identified and not—to use writing to express queer experiences and identities. Using creative and theoretical texts, we will examine the ways in which queer experience is often implicitly or explicitly “written out” of dominant discourse, and investigate how writers have subverted, spoken back to, or otherwise counteracted this exclusion. We’ll then go on to write in various genres about personal and cultural experiences of queerness.

English 297NN: American Lyrics Ari Feld & Ata Moharreri
Thurs. 4:30-7:00

The writing communities from which songs emerge exist not only in the record store or on the Internet, but also with the people you know. In that sense, all music is folk music. This semester, we’ll express a collective and eclectic lyrical community by studying the songwriting and poetics that the American experience has produced. Focusing on the orality of texts, we will listen to recordings, recite compositions, and write our own. This course is not a survey of the American song; rather, it is a chance to participate in that song. No musical training required!

English 297OO: Mission Improbable! Mark Koyama
Mon. 4:00-6:30

Your mission: Find and describe Jane Austen’s bicycle. Channel Holden Caulfield. Create a Kafkaesque treasure hunt.

Welcome to the class in which students send each other on literary escapades! Students make up literary “missions” that include a reference to a literary figure, movement, or era. “Agents” then investigate the references and creatively complete the mission. Finally, we anthologize. Become an impressionist guerilla!

English 297PP: “It Figures!” Writing Metaphors: A Metaphorical Study of Metaphors Alejandro Cuellar & Sarah Stanley
Tues. 4:00-6:30

This course will blow your mind and your pen! We will be experimenting with metaphors, living with metaphors, seeing metaphors, and writing metaphors (literally!) all semester. How do we “read” metaphors, especially when they are established and their meaning is “understood” via cultural and contextual norms? By playing with metaphors of popular culture, art, psychology, and more, we will build our awareness of our audience, our culture, and ourselves. You will fall in love with metaphors all over again!

English 297QQ: “Do You Want to Role-Play?” Role-Playing as Revising: Multiple Identities and Heterotopic Spaces Linh Dich & Gustavo Llarull
Thurs. 3:00-5:30

What kind of identity do we take on when posting a profile on online “worlds” (e.g., Facebook, WoW, Amazon.com)? In what way(s) does it differ from the identities we assume when we live our everyday lives? Our many and messy selves don’t always form a coherent whole—or do they?