Curriculum & Courses
Graduate Curriculum Overview
WRIT 5001 Writing Workshop | 12 |
WRIT 5500 Topics in Writing Seminar | 12 |
Graduate Projects 6009 (minimum of 12 credits with writing advisors) | 24 |
Electives Courses at the 3000-level or above. Art History courses must be at the 4000-level or above. | 12 |
Participation in four Graduate Critiques |
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Inclusion in the MFAW annual publication or participation in the MFAW Thesis Reading or equivalent MFA Exhibition or event |
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Completion of the thesis |
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Total Credit Hours | 60 |
Students may elect internships to satisfy up to 6 hours of elective credit.
Degree Requirements and Specifications
- Completion schedule: Students have a maximum of four years to complete the degree (this includes time off for leaves-of-absence).
- Transfer credits: A minimum of 45 credit hours must be completed at SAIC. Up to 15 transfer credits may be requested at the time of application for admission and are subject to approval at that time. No transfer credit will be permitted after a student is admitted.
- Thesis requirement: During their final semester, students are required to submit a thesis of appropriate length in any genre.
- Exhibition requirements: MFAW students planning to participate in the Graduate Thesis Exhibition or Time Arts events are required to complete at least 6 studio credits by the end of the third semester AND to advise with a studio faculty member in their final semester.
- Studio space: Individual studio space is not provided automatically to students in the MFA in Writing; however, Writing students with a visual arts practice in addition to their writing may apply for a space through the administrative director, Graduate Division, at gradstudio@saic.edu.
- Graduate Projects: MFA 6009 Graduate Projects enrollments must be in increments of 3 credit hours. No more than two advisors and a total of 6 credit hours may be scheduled for a given semester. The number of credits earned by the student has no correlation with length or frequency of the advising sessions or to faculty assessment of student work.
Students may elect internships to satisfy up to 6 hours of elective credit.
Courses
| Title | Catalog | Instructor | Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intro to Writing as Art | 1102 (001) | Jenny Magnus | Thurs
6:45 PM - 9:30 PM In Person |
Description
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. Readings include diverse examples of genre and form, as well as investigations of literary and thematic terminology. Students generate weekly responses to reading and writing exercises that focus on understanding the mechanics of writing, and are introduced to workshopping techniques and etiquette.
|
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Intro to Writing as Art | 1102 (002) | Kathie Bergquist | Wed
12:15 PM - 3:00 PM In Person |
Description
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. Readings include diverse examples of genre and form, as well as investigations of literary and thematic terminology. Students generate weekly responses to reading and writing exercises that focus on understanding the mechanics of writing, and are introduced to workshopping techniques and etiquette.
|
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Intro to Writing as Art | 1102 (003) | Mark Booth | Tues
8:30 AM - 11:15 AM In Person |
Description
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. Readings include diverse examples of genre and form, as well as investigations of literary and thematic terminology. Students generate weekly responses to reading and writing exercises that focus on understanding the mechanics of writing, and are introduced to workshopping techniques and etiquette.
|
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Wksp:Form and Formlessness | 2040 (001) | Nathan Hoks | Mon
12:15 PM - 3:00 PM In Person |
Description
Wallace Stevens suggests that 'The essential thing in form is to be free in whatever form is used.' We'll pursue this seeming paradox with exercises in meter and free verse, exploring both traditional forms, like sonnets, and experimental forms, like collage and serial poems. We read diverse contemporary and classic poets, write several poems, and workshop peer work weekly, culminating in a portfolio of new poems as a final project.
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Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Wksp:The Personal Essay | 2040 (002) | Kathie Bergquist | Tues
12:15 PM - 3:00 PM In Person |
Description
This class aims to uncover some of the myriad rhetorical possibilities traveling under the name 'personal essay.' We will do so by reading essays both historical and contemporary, analyzing their prose style and teasing out the rhetorical stances that allow essayists to springboard from a personal obsession to something larger. Discussion to include the pleasures and pitfalls of writing about yourself as a character and the formal components (rhythm, syntax, diction, trope) that combine to make a personal voice. Students will draft and revise two essays within a collaborative workshop environment.
|
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Adv Writ: Invented World | 3140 (001) | Mark Booth | Wed
8:30 AM - 11:15 AM In Person |
Description
This writing workshop's point of departure is a creative response to Charles and Ray Eames' influential film Powers of Ten and George Perec's essay Species of Spaces. In Powers of Ten, the Eames' explore humankind's scale in a progression of images in powers of ten as seen from an individual cell to Earth's position in the galaxy. In a similar fashion, Perec examines increasingly greater scales of experience¿¿from a blank piece of paper to the world and outer space. Using these concepts of scales of magnification, we write fiction and poetry about an imaginary universe of our own devising¿¿from the outer limits of space to life on a microscopic scale. We examine contemporary micro-nations, science fiction, the natural world, and other sources as exemplar and inspiration.
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Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| AdvWrit:Revise, Rework, Reimagine | 3140 (002) | Mon
8:30 AM - 11:15 AM In Person |
|
Description
True revision is an active process of 'seeing again,' of discovering what each draft reveals to its author. As memoirist and poet Patricia Hampl notes, it¿s a matter of paying attention to what it wants, not what I want. With this in mind, students writing across the genres will have an opportunity to explore and integrate a variety of revision methods that encourage multiple permutations of at least two different workshop submissions. In addition to responding to each other¿s work, students will be asked to present on their revision method as demonstrated in a piece completed for this class. To prepare a solid foundation, we will examine annotated drafts of a single work by selected published writers. Readings may include Robert Olen Butler, Elizabeth Bishop, Pam Houston, Susan Neville, Pablo Medina, among others.
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Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Gen Sem: Storytelling: Film/TV/Genre | 4001 (001) | Michael P Moreci | Thurs
12:15 PM - 3:00 PM In Person |
Description
This generative seminar focuses on narrative across a variety of media, with an emphasis on Film/TV and genre storytelling. We'll explore what makes a story effective by stripping down examples of fantasy, gothic, sci-fi and non-fiction to their bare essentials. Course work includes identifying narrative structures, paired with exercises that focus on how these structures are used to write for various professional platforms, such as legacy characters and features. Students are required to submit a creative project (short story; screenplay; hybrid form) that demonstrates an understanding of the course material, and to participate in group discussions and peer feedback.Readings and screenings will vary but include work from Robert Rodriguez, Anne Lamott, Agatha Christie, among others.
PrerequisitesPrerequisite: WRIT 1102 or WRIT 2040 or permission of the instructor. |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| GS: Cont. Poems & Their Making | 4001 (002) | Elise Paschen | Tues
3:30 PM - 6:15 PM In Person |
Description
In this generative seminar you will produce a new poem a week based on writing prompts as well as discuss poems and their genesis by contemporary poets included in The Eloquent Poem: 128 Contemporary Poems and Their Making. This anthology is inspired by classes Paschen has taught at SAIC and includes the work of our most influential contemporary poets such as Joy Harjo, Cornelius Eady, Martin Espada, Billy Collins, Kimiko Hahn and Marilyn Nelson, as well as poems by debut writers, including former SAIC students. Your weekly writing prompts will include aubades & nocturnes, ars poeticas, litanies, ekphrasis, prose poems, mirror poems, concrete poems and collage poems. The class is open to students exploring any genre.
PrerequisitesPrerequisite: WRIT 1102 or WRIT 2040 or permission of the instructor. |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Wksp: Material Language | 5001 (001) | Sally Alatalo | Mon
12:15 PM - 3:00 PM In Person |
Description
This research- and practice-driven workshop centers writing across a range of physical materials and contexts, such as printed posters, embroidered textiles, sculptural installation, and architectural inscription. You¿ll be introduced to on-campus fabrication, printing and media resources as practical means to generate work. We¿ll practice visual grammars¿such as typography, color, ornament, composition, and form¿in relation to writing. We¿ll ask the question: How do materials and contexts amplify or diminish our texts? We¿ll engage with collections, archives, studios, and artists to enhance our collective knowledge of resources and practices. Coursework includes workshopping independent and/or collaborative projects that emphasize material fabrication and visual literacy; a short bibliography of practitioners who have influenced you; and a brief artist statement about the work you¿ve generated in class. Open to writers and artists in all media.
|
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Wksp:Narrative Design | 5001 (002) | Todd S. Hasak-Lowy | Tues
12:15 PM - 3:00 PM In Person |
Description
NARRATIVE DESIGN. What makes a story? How does form reveal meaning? How do narrative structures orient a reader to what is important in a text? This is a workshop in fiction writing with a built-in, inescapable, in-your-face focus on narrative design. Concepts to include arc, plot, scene, rate of revelation, modular, linear and lyric structures. The readings focus on concepts that the workshops will integrate as we roll along. Craft essays by various practitioners; stories by Gish Jen, Clarice Lispector, Jamaica Kincaid, Sherman Alexie, Lydia Davis, Lucy Wood, Paule Marshall, and others. Workshops will goad you into shaping what is often a vague, impressionistic response to a story into a coherent analysis of the story¿s narrative design. How has the story been executed, what does the story mean, and how are those two things related? Each student will workshop two distinct stories and provide highly focused feedback to others. The final project is a glossary of narrative terms.
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Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentArea of StudyLocation |
| Workshop: Intertext | 5001 (003) | Nathan Hoks | Wed
8:30 AM - 11:15 AM In Person |
Description
Might there be a kind of poem that acts like a parasite latched on to a host body? A poem whose very life is the fusion of various sources, voices, discourses? This poetry workshop invites students to read and write poetry that, either overtly or subtly, engages with other texts or weaves together various discourses. We'll examine ways that poems create intertextual relationships (e.g. quoting, voicing, alluding, echoing, stealing, sampling, imitating, translating...) and test out these methods in our own writing. While the focus of the readings and exercises will mainly be on poetry, students writing prose, fiction, or hybrid genres are invited to join and work in their own genres. Afterall, the theoretical concept of intertextuality comes from Bakhtin's critical texts on Rablais and Dostoyevsky! Readings will likely sample older intertextual models (such as ballads), as well as modern and contemporary explorations, such as work by Ted Berrigan, Terrance Hayes, Rosmarie Waldrop, Jack Spicer, Maggie Nelson, and others.
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Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Playwriting Workshop | 5001 (004) | Richard O'Reilly | Wed
6:45 PM - 9:30 PM In Person |
Description
Working from a premise that dialogue is the pulse of a play and story its skin, we will generate new work for the stage. From first scenes to a completed rough draft, students will write a one-act or full-length play over the course of the semester. We will begin with a series of generative exercises, using dialogue and experiment to focus on elements of character and story in the beginning of a play. We will then choose one of your new scenes to continue forward, moving into the center or crisis section of the play. In the final weeks of class, we will bring the new piece to a conclusion. Over the course of a semester, we will work on editing, rewriting, and reimagining the play into a full rough draft form. Previous playwriting experience is not required. Assigned texts will vary according to students' needs and interests, but will typically include readings of contemporary and modern plays. Some of the artists we may study in this course include playwrights Caryl Churchill, Suzan-Lori Parks, August Wilson, Wallace Shawn, Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee, as well as SAIC writing program alumni Kristiana Colón, Idris Goodwin and Jenny Magnus. The class will end with a staged reading of a section of each student¿s play.
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Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Sem:Shaping the Novel | 5500 (001) | Anne Calcagno | Thurs
12:15 PM - 3:00 PM In Person |
Description
We are accustomed to thinking of fiction as emanating, first, as ¿voice,¿ i.e. as a formalization of oral language, almost instinctive, and easily available. In truth, for the writer to rely primarily on first impulse is also to discover how exceptionally limited ¿instinct¿ is to the construction of a longer work: the novel. While narrative voice is critical, the novel must often rely on multiple techniques of structure, point of view and pacing to sustain the reader¿s (and writer's) curiosity, challenging their interest. In fact, the novel's architecture, like a rite of courtship, coyly unfolds and withholds plot, illuminates then complicates character, and radically subverts time and space. For anyone considering writing a novel, this course explores diverse techniques of narrative structure employed by contemporary English language novelists. Writers we're likely to read are: Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of The Day), Uzodinma Iweala (Beasts of No Nation), James Welch (Winter in the Blood), Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge), Alison Bechdel (Fun House: a Tragicomic) Julian Barnes (Flaubert¿s Parrot) & Charles Johnson (Middle Passage). Accompanying mimetic writing exercises will focus on options for structuring short or long fictions. These will inform your completion of a novel chapter, presented in two alternating structures.
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Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Sem: Translation and Alterity | 5500 (003) | Jose Moctezuma | Wed
12:15 PM - 3:00 PM In Person |
Description
In this course, we will think across the different disciplinary modes of translation: between languages, between aesthetic mediums, and between forms of thought. It is not required nor essential that students be multilingual, but we will play with the act of translation as a form of re-creation, whether as a 'sacralization' or 'desecration' of aesthetic and textual signification. In thinking through translation, we will also approach and think through alterity ('otherness') as a contrapuntal force that allows for creative rhythms to occur and resonate between difference and repetition. We will read broadly (from John Dryden to Anne Carson) and experiment with the different approaches and theories that have defined translation over the years, especially in writing and literature, and we'll work on translating other works into the language of our own medium. Course work will vary but typically will include weekly reading assignments, short low-stakes writing assignments, a research-oriented group project, and a final creative project that engages with the course topic.
|
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Sem: Lit Art | 5500 (004) | David Raskin | Thurs
3:30 PM - 6:15 PM In Person |
Description
This graduate seminar is for all types of writers (creative writers, critics, and scholars) who want to analyze the dimensions of literary, paraliterary, and scholarly forms of description, interpretation, and explanation, and their interdisciplinary intersections and boundaries. Poetry, short stories, personal essays, passages from novels, and art-history articles will form the ground for weekly encounters with works of art in the Art Institute of Chicago, as we compare what we read to what we encounter in person.
Each class meeting has a tripartite structure, as we compare a literary or paraliterary engagement with a work of art, evaluate a scholarly argument about the same piece or its creator, and personally engage the same or similar work in the Art Institute of Chicago. We will respond to the works of art currently on display, and, as warranted, pair the appropriate scholarship with creative works by writers such as Ada Limón, Victoria Chang, Hilton Als, Ben Lerner, Diane Seuss, Mark Doty, Hanif Abdurraqib, Wayne Koestenbaum, Vivek Shraya, Cris Kraus, Teju Cole, Eileen Myles, Gwendolyn Brooks, Paisley Rekdal, Rachel Cohen, Jeffrey Yang, and John Ashbery, among others. Students will write concise analyses of every reading assignment plus a weekly follow-up reflection as preparation for a final hybrid research paper that situates their personal moment of encounter with a work of art in the Art Institute of Chicago within art-historical scholarship. The goal is for students to probe their personal experiences with art for wider cultural implications. |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (001) | Sally Alatalo |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (002) | Mark Booth |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (003) | Matthew Goulish |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (004) | Richard O'Reilly |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (005) | Jill Riddell |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (007) | Jose Moctezuma |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (008) | Anne Calcagno |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects: Comics | 6009 (010) | Beth Kathleen Hetland |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (011) | Michael P Moreci |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (012) | Suzanne Scanlon |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (013) | Elise Paschen |
TBD - TBD In Person |
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
| Grad Projects:Writing | 6009 (014) |
TBD - TBD In Person |
|
Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
PrerequisitesOpen to MFA, MFAW and MAVCS students only |
Class Number |
Credits |
DepartmentLocation |
Take the Next Step
Visit the graduate admissions website or contact the graduate admissions office at 312.629.6100, 800.232.7242 or gradmiss@saic.edu.