CRAFT & THEORY COURSES

Course title:

Campus: 

Instructor:

Day & Time:

Course Code: 

Craft & Theory of Poetry

CSU

Dumanis

W 3:00-5:50 pm

Craft & Theory of Fiction: Style, Consciousness, Revelation, Energy, Effect

KSU

O’Connor

T 5:30-8:15 pm

66895-001

While certainly not discounting considerations of story and structure, the course will focus on issues of presentation in fiction: on the palette of ways a story may be told. We’ll examine the connection between macro and micro issues in fiction writing; how concepts are realized on the page down to the sentence level. Participants must commit to intensive reading each week. Additionally, they are expected to complete several written “imitation” exercises and a final project involving a presentation to the class. Reading will include short stories and novels by modern and contemporary masters working primarily in the realist mode. A few theoretical texts will supplement the fiction reading.

Craft & Theory of Nonfiction

YSU

Brady

T 5:10-7:50 pm

Question: Is Creative Non-Fiction the opposite of Non-Creative Fiction or the opposite of Non-Fiction Lacking Creativity? Answer: Creative Non-Fiction is the opposite of Non-Non Fiction. Question: Is it the Non in Creative or the Creative in Fiction? Answer: Neither. But it may be construed as the Creative in Fiction that is Non. Question: How can a genre be defined by what it isn’t? Answer: A fish. This course will corkscrew the term Creative Non-Fiction. We will sample other approaches, following the example of the late historian Barbara Tuchman, who asserts that she writes of ‘reality’ and is therefore a ’Realtor.’ Century 21, beware. This course will work from the assumption that ‘realty,’ like all genres, represents not a canon or a set of techniques but the manifestation of a human impulse. Realty, the course contends, is like William Matthew’s wave: “Not water exactly, but a force which water welcomes and displays.” The course will welcome and display works that bookstores and university curricula shelve in Non-Non-Creative Fiction categories, such as poetry, history, essay, criticism and even fiction. We will examine our own posture toward reality, and delve into the impulses from which reality is generated, and, dare I say, developed. Students will read deeply, converse lightly, blog compulsively , and write as best they can.

WORKSHOPS

Course title:

Campus: 

Instructor:

Day & Time:

Course Code: 

Workshop:  Writing Short Fiction

CSU

Rahman

W 6:30-9:20 pm

We will focus on craft and structure in the short story. Student work is the primary text, but there will also be some outside reading. We will focus on story logic and scene and pacing and escalation and the beginning/middle/ending dynamic as it relates to shorter (10 pgs or less), mid-range (10-25 pgs) and longer (25 pgs plus) short stories. The idea here is to expand your range as a writer, by having you think about both compression and expansion, etc. We will take a look at 2-3 recent short story collections by emerging writers and also examine how a short story collection (of disconnected or connected stories that should also stand on their own) might be put together. Students will be expected to write, and have workshopped, 2-3 new stories by the end of the class. If you are working on a novel project you are strongly encouraged to take Professor Wasserman's Novel Writing workshop.

Workshop:  Playwriting

CSU

Geither

Th 3:00-5:30 pm

The course will begin with several assignments that explore different ways of writing for the stage. As these assignments progress we will also read and discuss plays and performance art from several of our country’s best emerging artists. Student playwrights can expect to complete a full-length play. Students from other genres can expect to complete either a full-length play or a one-act play and several shorter assignments. Of course, the primary focus will be on workshopping plays written for class and we will partner with local actors and directors throughout the semester in order to maximize our learning. This course is open to MFA students exclusively.

Graduate Writing Seminar: Poetry

LH 306

Biddinger

M 5:20-7:50 pm

3300:689-806

This is a poetry workshop limited to students in the NEOMFA program. The course will focus almost exclusively on student poems, with a significant amount of time dedicated to workshopping. Students will submit new poems every week and receive extensive feedback from peers and professor. A final portfolio of revised poems is required. Students should expect to have 7-8 poems workshopped over the course of the semester, in addition to poems written in response to prompts and mimetic exercises. Students in the poetry track will be required to have a conference with the professor, and all students will be encouraged to schedule one. While the primary text of the course is the body of work produced by the class members, we will also be considering several single-author books by poets from the Modernist and New York School movements.

Book list:

The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest, Hadley Guest, ed; Peter Gizzi, intro.

Meditations in an Emergency, Frank O’Hara

Ariel, Sylvia Plath

Harmonium, Wallace Stevens

Graduate Writing Seminar: Fiction

This Class is Now Full

UA Olin 362

Wasserman

Saturdays 9:00-11:30 am

3300:689-805

Workshop: Writing the Novel or Novel in Stories: This workshop is specifically designed for students already writing or wanting to begin writing novels or interconnected stories that will comprise a novel. Special attention will be given to the planning, execution, and foresight necessary in the novel writing process. Various outlining strategies will also be covered. There is no assigned reading for the course other than the creative work produced by students. Each student should expect to produce several consecutive chapters of his or her novel-in-progress by the end of the semester, leading to the embrace of acquired revision strategies. Those who wish to write short stories are not permitted in this class and are encouraged to take Professor Rahman's Writing Short Fiction workshop.

LITERATURE COURSES

Course title:

Campus:

Instructor:

Day & Time:

Course Code: 

MFA Literature: Irish Literature

CSU

Archer

Th 6-8:50 pm

ENG 616/51

Critical Approaches to Literature

CSU

MC 319

Jeffers

MW 6-7:50 pm

ENG 511

American Modernism

CSU

MC 223

Karem

TTH 6-7:50 pm

ENG 695

Expatriate Writers, 1920-1939

KSU

SFH

Trogdon

MW 11:00 am-12:15pm

US Lit 66401

See course description here.

Seminar: Haiku & Modernist Poetics 

KSU

SFH

Hakutani

TTh 3:45-5:00 pm

Ethnic Lit 66991

See course description here.

Austen & Burney

UA

Olin 362

Forster

T 5:20-7:50 pm

3300:689-802

We'll examine in detail the work of these two women novelists, considering their similarities and differences and aiming to see them in the context of the development of fiction that preceded and followed them and to try to determine the reasons for their relative popularity at different times, including the ever-increasing interest in both writers by feminist critics.

Mark Twain

UA

Olin 362

Pope

W 5:20-7:50 pm

3300:689-803

The seminar will study the work of Mark Twain, including essays, stories and novels.

Novel  This Class is Now Full!

UA

Olin 117a

Wasserman

Th 5:20-7:50 pm

3300:689-804

A close look at the novel as its own unique form of storytelling in literary tradition and history. Students will read both classic and contemporary texts and will be exposed to a plethora of different writers utilizing various techniques and approaches to the novel’s construction. Focus on the novel as a form of both personal expression and collective national and cultural identity. For this semester a special emphasis will be placed on the “pushes and pulls” of challenging fiction that makes readers rethink what a novel can be. Writers such as Salman Rushdie, Mikhail Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikos Kazantzakis, Philip Roth, and others will be taken into consideration.

Melville
 

UA

Olin 123a

Chura

M 5:20-7:50 pm

3300:689-807

A study of Melville’s greatest prose and poetry, with special attention to sources and historical contexts. In addition to the sea-adventure tales Typee and Redburn and the short masterpieces Benito Cereno, “Bartleby” and Billy Budd, we will analyze Melville’s Civil War poetry, his psychological novel Pierre, or The Ambiguities, and of course Moby-Dick. Secondary readings include Andrew Delbanco’s recent critical biography Melville, His World and Work (2005) and excerpts from Nathaniel Philbrick’s bestselling maritime history, In the Heart of the Sea: Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (2001).

20th Century Literature: The Holocaust

UA

room tbd

Schuldiner

Th 5:20-7:50 pm

3300:689-808

More than sixty years after World War II and the atrocities of the Nazis, poetry, short stories, novels, memoirs and films continue to be produced about that experience. We will examine significant literature that focuses on the Holocaust and those who endured it, perpetrated it, and stood by and watched it happen.

Working Class Literature

YSU

Fedor 13

TBD

W 5:10-7:50 pm

ENGL 6923-01

Survey of Literature for Young People

YSU 

DeBartolo 345

TBD

W 5:10-7:50 pm

ENGL 6927-01

Studies in Romanticism

YSU DeBartolo 356

TBD

W 5:10-7:50 pm

ENGL 6935-01

Perspective in Multicultural Studies

YSU DeBartolo 252

TBD

Th 5:10-7:50 pm

ENGL 6963-01

Studies in Literary Form

YSU DeBartolo 260

TBD

T 5:10-7:50 pm

ENGL 6968-01

MFA INTERNSHIP

KSU

SFH 106

Miltner

Saturdays 1-4pm

1/23, 2/27, 3/27, 5/1

MFA 66895

The MFA Internship seminar centers on finding an internship relevant to each students area of interest and on preparing students for positions in their chosen field after graduation. Workshops cover writing appropriate CV for different jobs, crafting dynamic and convincing cover letters for different jobs, securing letters of recommendations, building a professional portfolio that will include accomplishments from your internship, preparing for realistic mock job interviews, and writing a self-evaluation essay. Monthly workshops and regular student-instructor contact required.