Todd S. Hasak-Lowy

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Students are assigned reading and writing exercises, and discuss each other's writing in workshop or small critique sessions.

Student work is the primary focus of this workshop, along with analysis of short stories with a wide variety of themes and styles. Students learn and practice elements of the craft of writing short fiction, such as the development of form, story, character, dialogue, and style. In-class workshop sessions offer a means of acquiring skills for critical analysis of one?s own writing and that of others, as well as attendant strategies for the process of revision. Readings may include stories by Hawthorne, Poe, Crane, James, Woolf, Mansfield, Faulkner, Kafka, Hemingway, Singer, Borges, O?Connor, Barthelme, Paley, as well as contemporary practitioners.

In “The Critic as Artist” (1888), Oscar Wilde argued that the creative and the critical faculties are equally important, acutely breaking with the Romantic notion that poetic license issues from an innate gift on the part of the individual, whose unconscious emotions and ideas provide the source of an artwork. Wilde claimed that “No poet sings because he must … [but] because he chooses to sing …There is no fine art without self-consciousness, and self-consciousness and the critical spirit are one.” This course surveys some ways the next century would prove his point, especially but not solely, among queer and American countercultural, avant garde poets. We will read poetry, fiction, and plays, as well as literary and cultural criticism by Gertrude Stein, Aimé Césaire, Jack Spicer, Audre Lorde, Pamela Lu, and others. We will also survey the generative clash between the New Narrative and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movements, swirling with sexual, political, and theoretical frisson.

This course will serve as a rigorous, systematic introduction to the concept of narrative. By analyzing a variety of narrative forms (especially short fiction, film, and comics) students will learn what virtually all narratives have in common. Students will gain an understanding of narrative as a particular mode for both creating and conveying meaning. Our primary texts will include short stories by Jumpha Lahiri and David Means, the film The Third Man, and Alison Bechdel's autobiographical comic Fun Home. In addition to our primary sources, students will read key works on narrative theory.

This course will serve as a rigorous, systematic introduction to the concept of narrative. By analyzing a variety of narrative forms (especially short fiction, film, and comics) students will learn what virtually all narratives have in common. Students will gain an understanding of narrative as a particular mode for both creating and conveying meaning. Our primary texts will include short stories by Jumpha Lahiri and David Means, the film The Third Man, and Alison Bechdel's autobiographical comic Fun Home. In addition to our primary sources, students will read key works on narrative theory.

From an early age we learn that conflict is a necessary ingredient in any compelling story. But what exactly is conflict? This course will investigate this question at length, primarily through close readings of short stories. Among the questions we will explore: What must a writer do with a conflict once it has been introduced? Does a conventional short story have only one conflict, or are multiple (perhaps interwoven) conflicts common? What exactly does it mean to satisfactorily resolve a conflict? And must a conflict, or must all conflicts, be resolved for a narrative to satisfy? Most of our stories will be written by contemporary writers, such as Charles Yu, Etgar Keret, Edward Jones, David Means, Alice Munro, and Lydia Davis, along with earlier writers, such as Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, and John Cheever. This course will balance readings with writing exercises and student workshops, and will be run primarily through class discussions.