Sherry Antonini

In this course students improve their writing skills and push their creative limits through journaling, free writing, writing through music, digging through memories and dreams, and other methods of responding to the world in written form. Students learn how to edit and revise a work, as well as respond critically to the writing of others; learn how to craft short stories, monologues, poetry and personal essays; push the limits of original and personal expressions and prepare for the college writing process. With faculty guidance and peer support, students share their literary efforts in class and are assigned reading and writing exercises to clarify, expand, and challenge written expressions.

Designed for writers who want to investigate the craft of writing through experimentation with style, format, and media, students explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and hybrid practices as they investigate the many intersections between visual art and language, such as comics, artists’ books, film, and performance. This one-week course offers a sampling immersion into interdisciplinary writing practices as experienced in studio writing courses at SAIC. Students will generate new writing and learn how to work through revision toward building future finished projects. Through traditional and unconventional forms of writing, students develop their own voice and vision, express ideas in new ways, and give their writing a new creative edge. With faculty guidance and peer support, students share their literary efforts in class and are assigned reading and writing exercises to clarify, expand, and challenge written expressions. *Note: Some previous writing experience is beneficial. Students are required to bring their own laptop or tablet with word processing software, such as Word, Pages, TextEdit, etc.

In this course, we?ll read about witches across diverse forms of literature including folk and fairy tales, poetry, plays, and short stories. We?ll read writing by The Brothers Grimm, Octavia Butler, Arthur Miller, Joy Harjo, Rebecca Tamas, Jane Yolan, and Yumiko Kurahashi to trace the footsteps and flight patterns of witches as they appear in various roles such as mother, monster, healer, and teacher. In support of our investigations, we?ll also read selected critique essays from Donald Haase?s Fairy Tales and Feminism and from Emma Donoghue?s Kissing the Witch, a collection of deconstructed and reassembled fairy tales. As a FYSI course, the core emphasis of this class will be developing writing skills in preparation for FYSII courses and other writing assignments across SAIC?s curriculum. Students will engage in comprehensive discussion of these readings, conduct related research, and write response and analytical essays, with a final project that incorporates a creative component

This course will focus on texts by ancient and medieval women dating from the earliest years of recorded writings and spanning time up to the Renaissance. Who were the women writing during those mysterious periods? To whom were they speaking and what did they dare to say? For some of them, relatively few of their works have survived for us to read, so our investigation will include consideration of a combination of factors that are relevant to each such as historical perspectives, specific life circumstances, and, of course, the content of their writing. Writers we will study will include Sappho, Sei Shonagon, Hildegard of Bingen, Christine de Pizan, and Akka Mahadevi, among others. As a First Year Seminar I course, the essay writing focus of this class will be to develop and build skills in writing response and analytical essays related to assigned readings, research, and class discussion. The final project will be a research-based presentation, with a creative component.

This class is an investigation of texts by well-known women writers and poets as seen through the lens of personal, social, and historical factors motivating and inspiring each. What forces sit at the root of their strongest poetry? What historical events and personal experiences moved them to write such striking stories? We’ll read pieces by a wide range of women writers across the timeline of literature. Among others, writers considered in our study will include Sappho, Anais Nin, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Julia Alvarez, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tracy K. Smith, Jenny Zhang, and Roxane Gay. Students will discuss and write about short pieces and excerpts written by these women as informed by research-bound information on the personal and external factors that impacted their lives and their writing. As a FYSII course, this writing-intensive class has as a core focus the continued development of intermediate/advanced writing skills and methods. Our classes will consist of discussion of particular written pieces, engaging in related research, and writing response and analytical essays, with a final project that incorporates collaboration and a creative component.

In this beginning workshop, we will engage in generative sessions that facilitate writerly observation and curiosity to spark new writing. Ongoing journaling exercises, observational walks, deep listening activities, and ekphrastic writing at museum and campus galleries will prompt writing ideas that spring from paying attention and seeing the familiar as refreshed and redefined. In tandem with these sessions, we’ll read and discuss excerpts from Alexandra Horowitz’s book, On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation. We’ll also investigate and analyze examples of poetry and prose rooted in similar aspects of noticing by a wide range of writers such as Sei Shonagon, David Sedaris, Mary Oliver, Stuart Dybek, Julia Alvarez, and Aminatta Forna. Students will create early drafts based on their individual experiences and free writing responses to our generative sessions and discussions. Then, with a focus on both building strong drafts through revision and cultivating a keener sense of individual voice as it surfaces and continues to develop, we’ll workshop student writing across the semester. Students should expect to write daily in a journal, participate in frequent class walks outside, and create several drafts of fresh writing toward finished pieces as a final project portfolio.

This blended academic/studio course offers Scholars Program students an opportunity to explore and analyze art forms that incorporate text within interdisciplinary projects. Our academic investigations will serve as a base of information and inspiration to facilitate students’ processes of writing and making in creating text-inclusive interdisciplinary work. We’ll engage in viewing, listening, reading, writing responses, and discussing pieces created by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Robert Ashley, Patti Smith, Kurt Schwitters, Idris Goodwin, Claudia Rankine, and Emil Ferris. We’ll then consider what we’ve seen, learned, and discussed as we work in the studio, moving across generative exercises, writing workshop sessions, and individual making time focused on developing and fine-tuning both words and structures for new projects. Students will experiment with their writing in combinations involving 2d and 3d image, sound, and performance ideas, with critiques as follow-up feedback. Students should expect to work loosely, but passionately, to create distinct trial projects reflecting assigned investigations, as well as meet related reading and written response deadlines along the timeline of the semester. Final projects will present further steps of revision toward a chosen finished piece.

This blended academic/studio course offers Scholars Program students an opportunity to explore and analyze art forms that incorporate text within interdisciplinary projects. Our academic investigations will serve as a base of information and inspiration to facilitate students’ processes of writing and making in creating text-inclusive interdisciplinary work. We’ll engage in viewing, listening, reading, writing responses, and discussing pieces created by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Robert Ashley, Patti Smith, Kurt Schwitters, Idris Goodwin, Claudia Rankine, and Emil Ferris. We’ll then consider what we’ve seen, learned, and discussed as we work in the studio, moving across generative exercises, writing workshop sessions, and individual making time focused on developing and fine-tuning both words and structures for new projects. Students will experiment with their writing in combinations involving 2d and 3d image, sound, and performance ideas, with critiques as follow-up feedback. Students should expect to work loosely, but passionately, to create distinct trial projects reflecting assigned investigations, as well as meet related reading and written response deadlines along the timeline of the semester. Final projects will present further steps of revision toward a chosen finished piece.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.