Senior Projects: Writing Unbound

Course Description

Summary

This Senior Projects course in Literature is two-pronged. Firstly, the course offers space and time to develop your thesis in any formal genre including literary fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and scholarly essay, or any approved project in a hybrid or other genre. (Note that all translation theses will be directed to Translation Atelier, where your projects will be better served.) Secondly, class energy will be devoted to learning how to productively read across genres, equipping you to write across genres as your interests and career develop.

Why is this advanced-work workshop multigenre?

For one, as writers we can only hope to be read widely. Poets read essays and novelists read scholarship. Lawyers read novels and bus drivers read memoirs. (Etc. etc.) Learning how to reach an audience beyond your small cohort of other writers in your particular genre is a necessary—read: indispensable—skill. Your writing must be legible and compelling to people who do not write like you, or write at all.

Second, clarifying your critique of someone else’s work often either clarifies your critique of your own—that is, teaches you how to revise your own work—or opens doors you might never have come to otherwise. The more diverse that work is—whether in content, style, ideology or form—the more creative your own work becomes.

Students should join this class prepared to teach each other. We will spend early weeks developing a shared vocabulary for understanding each genre; i.e., poets will teach us how to talk about poetry, etc. You will also be expected to place your work within a wider literature, sharing related reading with the class in preparation for your workshop.