wp home > general info > experimentals 2011
Spring 2012:
Experimental Writing Workshops
Thanks to support from both the Department of English and the UMass Amherst Graduate School, the following Experimental Writing Workshops will be offered in Spring 2011. To register for an Experimental Writing Workshop, see the English Department listings on SPIRE. For more information on the Workshops in general, click here.
English 297TU Rap and the Experimental Essay
Kate Marantz & Kelin Loe
Wednesdays 4:40 – 7:10
Room: tbd
We’ll encounter hip-hop through its different modes of publishing (mix tapes and solo, collaborative and collective albums), experimenting with the ethos and poetics we hear the artists craft. We will bring the craft we experience to our own writing in experimental personal and collaborative essays.
English 297TT Queer Writing
Christopher Hennessy & Rachael Katz
Tuesdays 4:00-6:30
Room: tbd
As we engage in writing as a queer practice through creative, historical, and literary applications and representations of queer experience, we will seek an ever-expanding aesthetic fed by variant forms of expression. We will examine and work to open up a multitude of ways queer experiences and queer subjectivity can be expressed through innovative, experimental and traditional forms of creative writing.
English 297TV Going Viral: The Art of Infectious Web-Videos
Christina Jones & Travis Grandy
Tuesdays 4:00-6:30
Room: A127 LGRC
Why are Internet users inundated with video clips of things like laughing babies, dramatic chipmunks, and surprise cameos by Rick Astley? Can the power behind “Keyboard Cat” or the “Numa Numa” dance be harnessed to make ideas “contagious”? This class will explore how viral video can help writers develop strategies for persuasion, on- and off-line. With the internet as our laboratory, we’ll work hands-on to analyze and create viral videos. No previous video-creating experience is required and you don’t need to become a technological whiz to succeed.
English 297TW Beyond Food Writing
Jenn Mar & David Bartone
Tuesdays 4:00 – 6:30
If food is merely what we eat, why does Rebecca Solnit claim she’s literally made of all the produce, water, and wine she’s been devouring since she was four? Why are our nightmares built of gingerbread? Why does food connect us to people we know—and don’t know? In this class, we’ll begin with traditional modes of food writing before we clear a path towards the indescribable—then off we go, following our writing into various forms of art: the memoir, manifesto, political cookery, etc. Expect to examine your personal, familial, cultural, and political relationships to food.
English 297 BG Intersections: Cross Genre, Cross Topic, Cross Form
Peggy Woods
Thursdays 4:00-6:30
Bartlett 303A
Poetic essays? A fictional cookbook? Romance and economics? We tend to think of different genres of writing (creative writing and academic writing), different topics (humanities and science) and different forms (cookbooks and computer manuals) as separate things that don’t mix. But what happens when the elements of creative writing mix with the elements of academic writing? When the form of the short story mixes with the computer manual form? When seemingly separate fields meet? We’ll begin at these intersections and explore where our writing takes us.
