Courses

CRWT B159 Introduction to Creative Writing

Fall 2024

This course is for students who wish to experiment with three genres of creative writing: short fiction, poetry and drama, and techniques specific to each of them. Priority will be given to interested first- and second-year students; additional spaces will be made available to upper-year students with little or no experience in creative writing. Students will write or revise work every week; roughly four weeks each will be devoted to short fiction, poetry, and drama. There will be individual conferences with the instructor to discuss their progress and interests. Half of class time will be spent discussing student work and half will be spent discussing syllabus readings.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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CRWT B165 The Writing Practice

Spring 2025

This course is designed for students who are either working towards or considering proposing an independent major in Creative Writing. Over the course of seven weeks, we will explore the many approaches to maintaining a writing practice and consider various elements of the writing process. We will learn about the back-end of submitting written work so that it may be published and will help match students with published works that might inform and enhance their individual projects. While focusing broadly on the writing life, we intend to build a community of writers on campus that may turn to each other to support and nurture their own practices.

Writing Intensive

Course does not meet an Approach

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CRWT B233 Writing for Radio and Podcast

Spring 2025

In this course students will learn the foundations of journalism, audio storytelling, and radio/podcast production. We will break free of academic writing to find our authentic voices, and write for the ear. The course centers on two main projects: A short reported piece and a longer produced podcast episode. While the writing in and of itself is creative, this course will focus on of nonfiction writing as an audio medium. For half of the course meetings esteemed professionals from the current radio/podcast landscape will visit to share their career stories, teach us writing and production skills, and give us audio to analyze. Students will learn the basics of audio editing and produce their own pieces in Audacity or the software of their choice and workshop with classmates.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Creative Writing

Counts Toward Praxis Program

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CRWT B260 Writing Short Fiction I

Fall 2024, Spring 2025

An introduction to fiction writing, focusing on the short story. Students will consider fundamental elements of fiction and the relationship of narrative structure, style, and content, exploring these elements in their own work and in the assigned readings in order to develop an understanding of the range of possibilities open to the fiction writer. Weekly readings and writing exercises are designed to encourage students to explore the material and styles that most interest them, and to push their fiction to a new level of craft, so that over the semester their writing becomes clearer, more controlled, and more absorbing.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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CRWT B261 Writing Poetry I

Fall 2024

In this course students will learn to "read like a writer," while grappling with the work of accomplished poets, and providing substantive commentary on peers' work. Through diverse readings, students will examine craft strategies at work in both formal and free verse poems, such as diction, metaphor, imagery, lineation, metrical patterns, irony, and syntax. The course will cover shaping forms (such as elegy and pastoral) as well as given forms, such as the sonnet, ghazal, villanelle, etc. Students will discuss strategies for conveying the literal meaning of a poem (e.g., through sensory description and clear, compelling language) and the concealed meaning of a text (e.g., through metaphor, imagery, meter, irony, and shifts in diction and syntax). By the end of the course, students will have generated new material, shaped and revised draft poems, and significantly grown as writers by experimenting with various aspects of craft.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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CRWT B265 Creative Nonfiction

Spring 2025

This course will explore the literary expressions of nonfiction writing by focusing on the skills, process and craft techniques necessary to the generation and revision of literary nonfiction. Using the information-gathering tools of a journalist, the analytical tools of an essayist and the technical tools of a fiction writer, students will produce pieces that will incorporate both factual information and first person experience. Readings will include a broad group of writers ranging from E.B. White to Anne Carson, George Orwell to David Foster Wallace, Joan Didion to James Baldwin, among many others.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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CRWT B266 Screenwriting

Not offered 2024-25

An introduction to screenwriting. Issues basic to the art of storytelling in film will be addressed and analyzed: character, dramatic structure, theme, setting, image, sound. The course focuses on the film adaptation; readings include novels, screenplays, and short stories. Films adapted from the readings will be screened. In the course of the semester, students will be expected to outline and complete the first act of an adapted screenplay of their own.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Film Studies

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CRWT B267 Sentence Workshop

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Prosody Workshop

Fall 2024

This is a topics course. Topic content varies.

Current topic description: TBA

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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CRWT B268 Literary Editing

Fall 2024

This course will examine the tools that literary writers bring to factual reporting and how these tools enhance the stories they tell. Readings will include reportage, polemical writing and literary reviewing. The issues of point-of-view and subjectivity, the uses of irony, forms of persuasion, clarity of expression and logic of construction will be discussed. The importance of context-the role of the editor and the magazine, the expectations of the audience, censorship and self-censorship-will be considered.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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CRWT B360 Writing Short Fiction II

Fall 2024

An exploration of approaches to writing short fiction designed to strengthen skills of experienced student writers as practitioners and critics. Requires writing at least five pages each week, workshopping student pieces, and reading texts ranging from realist stories to metafictional experiments and one-page stories to the short novella, to explore how writers can work within tight confines. Suggested Preparation: ARTW B260 or work demonstrating equivalent expertise in writing short fiction. Students without the ARTW B260, must submit a writing sample of 10-15 pages in length (prose fiction) to the Creative Writing Program during the preregistration period to be considered for this course.

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CRWT B361 Writing Poetry II

Spring 2025

This course assumes that reading and writing are inextricably linked, and that the only way to write intelligent and interesting poetry is to read as much of it as possible. Writing assignments will be closely connected to syllabus reading, including an anthology prepared by the instructor, and may include working in forms such as ekphrastic poems (i.e. poems about works of visual art or sculpture), dramatic monologues, prose poems, translations, imitations and parodies. Suggested Preparation: ARTW B261 or work demonstrating equivalent familiarity with the basic forms of poetry in English. For students without ARTW B261, a writing sample of 5-7 poems must be submitted to the instructor to be considered for this course.

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CRWT B362 Playwriting II

Not offered 2024-25

This course challenges students of playwriting to further develop their unique voices and improve their technical skills in writing for the stage. We will examine how great playwrights captivate a live audience through their mastery of character, story and structure. Through a combination of weekly reading assignments, playwriting exercises, theater explorations, artist-driven feedback, and discussions of craft, this class will facilitate each student's completion of an original, full-length play. Prerequisite: ARTW 262; or suitable experience in directing, acting or playwriting; or submission of a work sample of 10 pages of dialogue. All students must complete the Creative Writing preregistration questionnaire during preregistration to be considered for the course.

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CRWT B364 Longer Fictional Forms

Spring 2025

An advanced workshop for students with a strong background in fiction writing who want to write longer works: the long short story, novella and novel. Students will write intensively, and complete a long story, novel or novella (or combination thereof) totaling up to 20,000 words. Students will examine the craft of their work and of published prose. Suggested Preparation: ARTW B260 or proof of interest and ability. For students without ARTW B260, students must submit a writing sample of 10-15 pages in length (prose fiction) to the Creative Writing Program during the preregistration period to be considered for this course.

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CRWT B365 Creative Nonfiction II

Not offered 2024-25

An exploration of approaches to writing personal essays and lyric essays designed to strengthen skills of experienced student essayists as practitioners and critics. Requires writing at least five pages each week, workshopping student essays, and reading texts ranging from long personal essays to book-length essays, to explore how writers can work within the broader parameters of the long essay. Suggested Preparation: ARTW B265 or work demonstrating equivalent expertise in writing personal and lyric essays. Students without the ARTW B265, must submit a writing sample of 10-15 pages in length (nonfiction prose) to the Creative Writing Program during the preregistration period to be considered for this course.

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CRWT B367 Visual Poetics

Not offered 2024-25

Visual Poetics is an advanced poetry workshop in which we will discuss and write poetry that privileges the visual field as an essential element. The class will examine the development of experimental literary forms from visual to multimedia poetics. We will utilize avant-garde techniques and consider the different representations of the visual poetic from Russian futurism to cinéma verité to digital poetry practices. Observation and practice of the various visual mediums will allow critical thinking around topics of hybridity, collaboration, form and innovation in poetic craft.

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CRWT B400 Senior Thesis

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CRWT B403 Supervised Work

The Department may offer special topics based on faculty and student interests. Special Topic for Spring 2018: Students with approved portfolios, who have taken Poetry 1 and 2, will work with a member of the Creative Writing Program faculty on a semester-long chapbook project. As needed in the Spring semester students who have had a Creative Writing Major approved through the Independent Major Program will work with a member of the Creative Writing Program faculty on a semester-long 403 (Independent Study) as a final project their senior year. Highly qualified Creative Writing minors and concentrators may petition the program to complete an independent study, subject to the availability of faculty to supervise such projects.

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