Undergraduate Overview
The BFAW at SAIC emphasizes a process-based approach to writing, in which students experience writing across genre and in interdisciplinary, hybrid, and hypertextual modes.
Our rich, creative curriculum encourages students to explore the many intersections between visual art and language, such as comics, artists’ books, sound art, film and performance.
Core curriculum includes:
- Contemporary Practice (First Year) sequence
- Introduction to Writing as Art
- Two-semester Literature Survey
- Beginning and Advanced Writing Workshops that explore process, genre and theme, such as Literary Modes; Walking: A Poetics; and Caberet.
- Generative Seminars that connect to interdisciplinary fields, such as Engineering Comics; Artists’ Books; and Aloud.
- Undergraduate Thesis Seminar
BFAW students participate in the BFAW Thesis Reading in their final spring semester; those students who demonstrate a visual art practice may also apply to exhibit in the fall semester BFA Thesis Exhibition. BFAW students collaboratively conceptualize, edit and produce an annual publication in the Writing Program’s own BookLab, in addition to producing many other independent print, web and performance-based projects.
