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Cleveland State University:
Craft and
Theory: Playwriting. Geither.
M 5:15-7:45 pm. The primary feature of this course is the discussion
and analysis of historically significant theatrical forms, styles and relevant
criticism beginning with Ancient Greece and ending with contemporary drama
(Sophocles, Aristotle, Euripides, Lee Breuer, Scribe, Buchner, Ibsen, Chekhov,
Strindberg, Pirandello, Treadwell, Lorca, Brecht, Pinter, Churchill, Fornes).
While the majority of class time will be spent engaging this discussion, we will
make special emphasis on the craft of the writer(s) involved in order to help
you to explore your own playwriting. For those of you whose primary genre isn’t
playwriting, this course will serve as an introduction to understanding
playwriting as a collaborative and temporal art. We will devote time to
building our awareness of the stage as a physical environment and to
understanding a range of structural possibilities. We’ll see and respond to
three plays, write a substantial essay, complete a number of craft exercises and
enter into discussion with local theatre professionals.
Workshop: Fiction.
Schwartz. Th 5:15-7:45 pm. English 610 (Fiction) will be a workshop which
focuses on two elements of the writing process: generating new drafts,and
revising earlier ones. Before the semester begins, students should select one or
more pieces of fiction they've already worked on which they'd like to take
through the kind of serious revision process which leads to publication. During
the semester, students will work on these revisions in small groups. Each week,
these small groups will meet for part of our class time to offer feedback on
these drafts. We will also take the time to discuss publishing venues and
revision techniques. There will be some handouts aimed at helping this process
along. It's extremely important to be persistent in revising until the story
fulfills its initial promise. We'll discuss how to maintain a clear perspective
on the work while revising it, as well as ways to be helpful critiquing a work
revisited by readers a number of times.
We will also discuss new drafts in the large workshop format.
Workshop in Non-Fiction. 3 credit hours. Chandler. Th
5:10-7:50 pm. [See under YSU below. This course will be taught
on the YSU Campus.]
MFA
Literature: American Poetry since 2000. 3 credit hours. Dumanis. T
5:15-7:45 pm.
This course will focus
on discussing and critically considering some of the currents and
undercurrents in contemporary American poetry through reading collections by
the following poets: Olena Kalytiak Davis, Terrance Hayes, Cathy Park Hong,
Jay Hopler, Cate Marvin, D.A. Powell, Claudia Rankine, Zachary Schomburg,
Frederick Seidel, Juliana Spahr, and Dean Young. We will examine these
poets' texts as fellow writers, paying particular attention to the
structural and craft considerations in each book and to the often-elliptical
and disjunctive way in which many of these poets approach the construction
of identity and voice. This course is both for aspiring poets and those
writing in other genres who are interested in acquiring an appreciation for
contemporary poetry. Each student will be responsible for one substantial
critical essay discussing the work of at least three poets, a shorter essay
on a single poem, a presentation, and several mimetic exercises.
Critical Approaches
to Literature. 3 credit hours. Jeffers.
“Critical Approaches to Literature” is a
methodology course which equips you with various strategies to read and
interpret texts. The goal of this course is to make you better critical
readers and writers which will enable you to analyze texts with great
sophistication and rigor. This course will introduce you to the major
theoretical schools and strategies in contemporary literary and
cultural criticism. Readings include: Derrida, Foucault, Butler, Said,
Greenblatt, Freud, Lacan, and Deleuze.
Seminar: The
Twentieth Century Irish Novel. 3 credit hours. Jeffers.
This seminar on Twentieth Century Irish Novel
begins with Patrick MacGill’s Children of the Dead End and ends at
the beginning of the Twenty-First Century with Joseph O’Connor’s The Star
of the Sea (or perhaps Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer). The course
provides background concerning Ireland’s impoverished, bloody, and often
mournful past, its relationship with its colonial Other, and more recently,
financial prosperity in the Republic and the ongoing quarrel in Northern
Ireland for rights and representation. The formal development of the novel
in the hands of Irish writers will be exciting for anyone aspiring to be a
creative writer (Joyce, O’Brien, Beckett, and McCabe, to name a few
innovative stylists). Key issues that frame this course: nationality in a
pre- and post-colonial context, nationality and (history of) the British
Empire, formation of identity in Catholic Ireland and Protestant Ireland.
Seminar papers; no exams.
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Kent State University:
All classes are in Satterfield Hall (SFH)
Writing Fiction. 3 credits. Varley
O’Connor. M 5:30-8:15. 6/74071 This is a graduate-level fiction workshop with
an emphasis on student work. Participants are required to submit two
to three short stories or novel chapters (across the semester) for class
discussion and critique. The smaller portion of each class will be devoted
to analysis of published fiction and brief essays on craft. Our goal is to
increase understanding of the many varieties and forms short fiction may
take and how revision, editing, and an appreciation of craft hones
competency and furthers vision. If there are novelists in our midst, we will
analyze two first chapters of published novels, attending to such concerns
as the “initiating incident” and novelistic extension. We will also address
the importance of contemporary international fiction and save one workshop
segment for tips on reading in translation.
Evaluation is based on workshop participation and submitted manuscripts. One
major
revision of work presented during the semester is due at the end of the
term.
Textbooks and Secondary readings:
The Eloquent Short Story: Varieties of Narration, an Anthology
Edited by Lucy Rosenthal (Persea)
Writers Workshop in a Book
Edited by Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez (Chronicle Books)
Several additional handouts provided by the instructor
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The University of Akron:
Workshop: Graduate Writing Seminar in Poetry. 3 credit hours. Biddinger. W 5:20-7:50 pm.
3300: 689-803. This course will focus almost exclusively on student work, with a significant amount of time
dedicated to work-shopping. Additional topics will include publishing, assembling poetry manuscripts, and
public reading. Class members will create an anthology of student work with peers composing introductory
statements. For MFA Students only.
Craft and Theory: of the Short Story. 3 credit hours.
Wasserman. S 9-11:30 am.
3300: 689-804.
Craft &
Theory of the Short story will look at the range and workings of the short story
through the following writers:
THE
THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O’Brien
THE
PAT HOBBY STORIES by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE
COLLECTED TALES OF NIKOLAI GOGAL (students MUST get the Pevear and
Volokhonsky translation and ONLY this translation)
ISLAND: THE COMPLETE STORIES by Alistair MacLeod
JESUS’ SON by Denis Johnson
LIKE
NEVER BEFORE by Ehud Havazelet
SELF-HELP by Lorrie Moore
AT
THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER by Jamaica Kincaid
WHERE I’M CALLING FROM by Raymond Carver
MONKEYS by Susan Minot
There will also be lots of individual stories
by individual authors passed out to students.
The Novel. 3 credit hours. Stevenson. Th
5:20-7:50. 3300: 689-802
This course encompasses
diverse types of fiction written by women and men from various cultures,
representing Russian, African, and Latin American traditions, as well as British
and American fiction. We’ll consider the texts in light of narrative theories,
including histories of the novel and studies of its types or subgenres (i.e.,
science fiction, magic realism, and so on). One goal of the course is to enable
participants to develop their own ideas about the art of the novel and its
changing forms in different times and places.
Frankenstein (Norton Critical Editions), 1818 edition [be sure to get 1818]
by
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,
Paul J. Hunter (Editor)
ISBN-10:
0393964582 ISBN-13: 978-0393964585
Crime
and Punishment (Norton Critical Editions), Coulson translation
by
Fyodor Dostoevsky,
George Gibian (Editor)
ISBN-10:
0393956237 ISBN-13: 978-0393956238
The
Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
by
Carson McCullers, 1st Mariner Books Ed edition (2004)
ISBN-10:
0618526412 ISBN-13: 978-0618526413
Things
Fall Apart: A Novel
by
Chinua Achebe, 1st Anchor Books Ed edition (1994)
ISBN-10:
0385474547 ISBN-13: 978-0385474542
One
Hundred Years of Solitude
by
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Harper Perennial Modern Classics (2006)
ISBN-10:
0060883286 ISBN-13: 978-0060883287
Beloved
by
Toni Morrison,
Vintage (2004)
ISBN-10: 1400033411
ISBN-13: 978-1400033416
The Thirteenth Tale: A
Novel
by
Diane Setterfield,
Washington Square Press; Reprint edition (2007)
ISBN-10:
0743298039 ISBN-13: 978-0743298032
Alternative editions
(**You
will still need the Norton Critical edition for some of the required
reading, but you might get the Norton through OhioLink or on reserve):
The
Everyman edition of Frankenstein (ISBN 0 460 87528 0), with an introduction
by Paddy Lyons, presents the 1818 edition, so it’s an acceptable text for
the novel (though you’ll have to do the other required reading in the
Norton). This seems to be the least expensive text that has the 1818
edition.
Crime
and Punishment [this is the same translation as in Norton Critical
edition]
by
Fedor M. Dostoevsky, Oxford University Press, New Ed edition (1981)
ISBN-10:
0192815490 ISBN-13: 978-0192815491
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Youngstown State University:
Workshop in Non-Fiction. 3 credit hours. Chandler. Th
5:10-7:50 pm. In this course we will work to bring the craft and
techniques of good fiction writing to bear in the various sub-genres of creative
nonfiction. Our goal is to tell true stories, to tell them accurately, yet with
the energy and vividness of great storytelling. We will read some of the strong
and successful personal non-fiction writing available in print, and we will
analyze the methods and techniques that make it effective. Students will produce
writing—based on experience, research, and reflection—and submit it to the class
for response and feedback. There will be both structured and open assignments.
The principal means of student evaluation will be a portfolio of student work,
put together in phases with a due date for each component and then turned in
complete at the end of the course. The portfolio will contain all of the
student’s production, plus drafts, revisions, and final versions of each
assignment.
Craft and Theory: By Heart:
The Oral Tradition. 3
credit hours. Brady. M 5:10-7:50. English 6968 .
This course
will consider poetry as an oral art. Our aim is to strengthen your poetic ear,
and to hone your skills in the art of presenting poetry to audiences, and
hearing and understanding spoken poetry. We will make and critique oral
presentations in class, attend readings, and view films of readings. We will
learn and present poems by heart. We will delve into the political, cultural,
aesthetic, and psychological aspects of taking poems off the page. We will also
explore the sources of literary poetry as orature in prime cultures, and we will
trace ways in which the oral tradition survives today in children’s verse,
anecdote, joke, and ritual speech. We will consider how the oral tradition
shaped and continues to shape poetic forms. We will attempt to stimulate and
nurture our aural imagination. Drawing on studies in ethnopoetics, we will
explore the tension and interplay between literary and oral art, considering the
impact of education, technology, and modernity on the place of poetry in our
lives.
Requirements: Students will be graded on
oral presentations as well as written critiques and a written essay on some
aspect of the oral traditions. Readings will come Technicians of the Sacred
by Jerome Rothenberg, and from a course packet prepared specially for this
course, including essays by some of the leading figures in the ethnopoetic
movement.
While preference is given to NEOMFA students,
enrollment is open to YSU MA students with permission of the instructor.
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December 2006.
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