Creative Writing Graduate Courses

ENGL 7011/7012 Graduate Fiction Workshop
This fiction-writing workshop will usually focus on short stories, occasionally on novels in progress, with the aim of producing publishable work. Student writing is supplemented by reading in contemporary or canonical literature. Students who have been admitted to the graduate program in fiction writing may take the course; others must receive permission from the instructor.

ENGL 7013 Graduate Novel Workshop
This workshop focuses on laying the groundwork for a completed novel manuscript. Students who are beginning a novel will workshop about sixty pages; others may workshop a full manuscript. Other assignments include readings of possible structural models and a written analysis of the techniques demonstrated in those models. Students who have been admitted to the graduate program in fiction writing may take the course; others must receive permission from the instructor.

ENGL 7015 The Literary Essay
This course will focus on the hybrid genre of the literary essay, via both the study of published work and the production and discussion of students' own work. Authors covered might include Rushdie, Chabon, Woolf, Auden, Baldwin, Mendelsohn, Doty, Carter, Wood, Ozick, Pinsky, Morrison, and other writers-whether poets, fiction or nonfiction writers, or critics-who have taken a readable yet rigorous approach to the study of literary forms, techniques, and ideas. Student work might include reader responses, presentations, book reviews, and shorter essays as well as one or two more sustained works.

ENGL 7016 Literary Translation
A course in the theory and practice of literary translation, including workshops on individual translation projects in poetry and prose, discussion of theories and techniques of translation, and comparison of English translations of foreign works. Students should have basic proficiency in a foreign language; no previous experience with translation is expected.

ENGL 7017/7018 Graduate Poetry Workshop
A poetry workshop, often supplemented by extensive reading in contemporary poetry, that emphasizes generating and revising poems, experimenting with poetic forms and techniques, and developing style. Students who have been admitted to the graduate program in poetry writing may take the course; others must receive permission from the instructor.

ENGL 7021 Graduate Nonfiction Workshop
In this class, students will study the form, function, history, and aesthetics of published nonfiction while simultaneously writing, critiquing, revising, and completing their own creative nonfiction, with an eye toward submitting their work to be considered for publication.

ENGC 7036 Methods of Teaching Creative Writing
This seminar studies the growing body of literature devoted to creative writing pedagogy and examines and experiments with various approaches to teaching creative writing at the undergraduate level. Participants study the history of creative writing instruction in the US, read and respond to works by a wide range of writer-teachers, develop and present writing exercises, and reflect on their own teaching practices.

ENGL 7076 Poetics
An introduction to the study of poetics from a variety of critical and theoretical viewpoints. Selections will be drawn from throughout history, ranging from Aristotle up to the most current theoretical discussions of what poetry is and does. Significant examples of poetry are used to illustrate and challenge the theories being studied.

ENGL 7077 Versification
This seminar offers a substantive foundation in methods to analyze and manipulate a variety of linguistic practices pertinent to the craft of poetry, with some introduction to the history of their development. These practices include meter, use of figuration, tropes, rhyme, and related effects, as well as sentence variation and the use of such forms as the sonnet, villanelle, sestina, and ghazal.

ENGL 7078 Narratology
An introduction to the study of narrative from a variety of critical and theoretical viewpoints, with selections drawn from throughout history, ranging from Aristotle on up to the most current narrative-theory discussions. Works of theory are read alongside landmark works in the history of fictional techniques.

ENGL 7084 Technique and Form in Literary Nonfiction
This course will be an intensive study of the use of structure and technique in the writing of literary nonfiction. Students will do extensive reading of both literary nonfiction and analysis of literary nonfiction, examining published work with an eye to understanding its construction. Writing assignments may include examinations and imitations of others' writing; analyses of one's own writing; and papers examining and responding to the work of critics.

ENGL 7085 Technique and Form in Poetry
This course will be an intensive study of the use of traditional and experimental forms in the writing of poetry. Students will do extensive reading of both poetry and poetic theory, examining published work with an eye to understanding its construction. Writing assignments may include exercises in various poetic forms, the examination of published works in those forms, and papers examining and responding to the work of critics and theorists.

ENGL 7086 Technique and Form in Fiction
This course will be an intensive study of the use of structure and technique in the writing of fiction. Students will do extensive reading of both fiction and analysis of fiction, examining published work with an eye to understanding its construction. Writing assignments may include examinations and imitations of others' writing; analyses of one's own writing; and papers examining and responding to the work of critics.

ENGL 7087 Innovative Forms
This course will be an intensive study of the use of structure and technique in the writing of innovative and hybrid forms of writing. Students will do extensive reading of innovative literature as well as analysis of innovative forms, examining published work with a focus on its formal and rhetorical structures. Writing assignments may include examinations and imitations of others' writing; analyses of one's own writing; and papers examining and responding to the work of critics.