Combining seminar and workshop formats, the course introduces students to the interstices of imagination and narrative theory. Students read examples of literary fiction and write several short stories of their own. Students also take one or more stories through deep revision. May be used to satisfy an elective unit for the Creative Writing Focus.
This course immerses students in the craft of journalism to develop the skills and critical discernment required for writing as a journalist. The course is designed to equip students with an understanding of what news is, help students develop the two key journalism skills of reporting and writing of the news, and engage students in critically examining journalists' responsibilities in reporting and shaping public understanding and opinion. The course will introduce the fundamentals of journalistic writing, interviewing, and editing, as well as journalism ethics.
This course is designed for students who intend to pursue a major or minor in English, and should be taken in the first or second year, or as soon as an English major is declared. The course provides a foundation for the study of literature through reading, analyzing, and writing about a variety of literary and non-literary texts.
Discoveries about Covid-19, climate change, CRISPR, and the Webb Space Telescope all demand thoughtful translators between the science that has produced the research and the public that is curious about them. This is the task of the reporter and writer who covers the science beat, inclusive of science, health, the environment, and technology. Science Journalism develops skills of translation and interpretation: how to identify, report, and write stories about science, health, the environment, and technology for the public.
This course for non-majors focuses on the genre of biography, autobiography, and memoir, and on the writer as subject. Students will examine this genre critically and creatively, considering how the self both creates and is created by the text. Students will explore connections and differences among autobiography, biography, and memoir, as well as the problem of objectivity.
This course provides an introduction for non-majors to the craft of literature, engaging both critical and creative faculties. Studying and practicing methods of aesthetic and formal analysis of literary texts, students will consider the artistic choices writers make to create an imaginative experience. Students will also have the opportunity to participate in the creative process.
In this course students begin by learning the fundamentals of creative writing craft. Students answer the central questions of how a story works, what makes a poem moving, and how one creates beauty, complexity, and a powerful voice. Once this foundation is established, students move toward "anti-story." Some texts reject the formula most texts follow. Instead, these word-things turn to games, to humor, to acrobatics of both mind and body (even sometimes math) to create texts that amaze and surprise with their creativity and depth.
This course for non-majors examines the work of women writers anywhere from the Medieval Period to the present, with attention to the historical and cultural context of texts. It asks such questions as the following: what are the canonical issues that arise from a study of women's literature? Is women's literature different from literature by men in some essential way? What forces have worked against women writers and what strategies have they often employed to make their voices heard? How have those strategies shaped the literature that women have produced?
This course for non-majors takes as its starting point the question: "What is the American Dream?" Who has achieved it and who hasn't? Is it a singular dream or a tapestry of dreams made of many threads? By reading texts from a variety of genres and cultural perspectives, the course examines the themes of identity, betrayal, and redemption. The course will examine the ways these most central of human experiences can be viewed as distinctly American. Authors studied may include Franklin, Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, as well as Morrison, Silko, and Otsuka.
Participation in Crosscurrents, the student literary and visual arts magazine, requires reading manuscripts, discussing submitted work, and collaboratively selecting the literature and visual art work that will appear in each semester's issue. Required weekly meetings also involve active promotion and publicizing of Crosscurrents and managing the Crosscurrents organization as a whole.