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EngW 5130 Topics in Advanced Creative Writing
Long Stories, Short Novels and Graphic Works
Instructor: MJ Fitzgerald
Th 3:35-6:05 pm
We will read works by writers you are familiar with like Henry James, Garcia Marquez and Alice Munro, and by some you may not be so familiar with, like Muriel Spark, Gabriel Josipovici, Nicholson Baker, Margot Livesay and David Markson. The aim is to explore the intricacies and simplicities of the form, and look into a few of the more recent graphic works (Spiegelman, Sfar, Bechdel) to question whether this is a departure or a continuation of earlier forms. Although we will not do much workshop activity, you are free to submit creative as well as analytical responses to the readings. This course can fulfill one of the following requirements: Literature/Language(but not the EngL Related Field); out-of-genre workshop.
EngW 5205 Screenwriting
Instructor: John Olive
W 6:20-8:50 pm
Introduction to craft of screenwriting. Students can expect to write and revise at least half of a full-length screenplay. No prior experience necessary.
This course can fulfill the out-of-genre workshop requirement.
EngW 5310 Reading as Writers
Reading Poetry
Instructor: John Watkins
T 3:35-6:05 pm
5 seats reserved for MFAs under EngW/10 seats under EngL 5090 Readings
in Special Subjects This is a course on poetry with a primary emphasis on lyric verse written in England, Ireland, and America from the end of the Middle Ages to the present. Our primary emphasis will be on craftsmanship, prosody, and versification. I have designed this course with to meet the interests of students in both the Ph. D and the M. F. A. programs. This will provide an opportunity for literary scholars to hone skills of argument and exegesis answerable to an array of theoretical and historical perspectives, and it will offer writers a chance to think about the aesthetic consequences of a variety of formal choices. I am especially interested in bringing writers and scholars into a closer intellectual dialogue. We’ll begin with a unit on the poetic line in isolation before turning to questions of meter, scansion, enjambment and end-stopping, rhyme, and free verse. That will prepare us for a unit on English stanza forms: couplets, quatrains, tercets, rhyme royal, ottava rima, and the especially majestic Spenserian stanza. We will then take up problems of lyric genre with attention to sonnets, ballads, villanelles, songs, hymns, monologues, and elegies. With this heightened appreciation of formal poetic technique, we will be ready to think about larger architectonic questions: How do poems open, develop, and end? How do we respond to things like refrains, particular choices of diction, and modulations of tone? How do poets use these effects to create illusions of presence and voice? How do they create a place for poetry in diverse social environments? We will conclude with a unit on poetic self-consciousness: how do lyric poems comment on themselves, the craft of poetry, and the prior history of poetic invention? With that in mind, our final unit will take up three poets who have a particularly complex relationship to the poetic past: Yeats, Eliot, and Stevens. In general, you should be prepared for shocking juxtapositions: Wyatt read against Berryman; Donne against Plath. Requirements: a journal that will include several exercises in versification and a final exegetical paper (10-12 pages). This course will fulfill one of the following requirements: Literature /Language; EngL Related Field requirement (must be registered under theEngL 5090 designator.
This course will NOT fulfill a workshop requirement.
EngW 8110 Seminar in Fiction
Time Management: Linear and Nonlinear Narratives
Instructor: Charles Baxter
T 3:35-6:05 pm
This year I want to investigate “Time Management” in fiction, and I’ll be using Joan Silber’s The Art of Time in Fiction as a starting point. Silber’s categories of “fabulous time” and “switchback time” are particularly useful, and we’ll also be examining stretched time (in Paula Fox) and modular time (Evan Connell). We’ll also be looking at one or two Mobius-strip narratives, such as Silber’s The Size of the World, and infolded time double-plot narratives. Texts may include Connell’s Mrs. Bridge, Katherine Anne Porter’s stories, Paula Fox’s The Widow’s Children, Percival Everett’s Erasure, Deborah Eisenberg’s Twilight of the Superheroes, DeLillo’s The Body Artist. We may also read some fiction by Patrick White. The course also includes workshop writing. This course will fulfill one of the following requirements: the seminar component of the workshop block; out-of-genre workshop.
EngW 8120 Seminar in Poetry
The Politics of Poetic Forms: Lyricism, Fragmentation, Imagery and Approach
Instructor: Ray Gonzalez
Th 3:35-6:05 pm
This course focuses on the current state of contemporary American poetry and how its forms have changed. We will discuss the evolution from deep image lyricism to language-poetic fragmentation to fresh approaches toward line, image, and phrase. We will debate the notion that American poetry has evolved into a “hybrid” form that bridges old schools of poetic thought. Close reading of texts by key poets, along with craft talks centered on poems each student will submit, should lead toward a deeper immersion into the shifting terrain of the modern poem. Each student will create and submit one major project centered on American poetry and its vast changes. This project will be a combination of written paper, performance, and media presentation. Required Texts American Hybrid: An Anthology of New Poetry—Cole Swensen & David St. John; A Wave—John Ashbery; The Complete Poems—Elizabeth Bishop; Averno—Louise Gluck; Selected Poems—George Oppen; Hotel Insomnia—Charles Simic.
This course will fulfill one of the following requirements: the seminar component of the workshop block; out-of-genre workshop.
EngW 8130 Seminar in Nonfiction
Translating Time and Truth in Nonfiction
Instructor: David Treuer
W 3:35-6:05 pm
This course will examine how “truth and time” work in in nonfiction. That is, how to translate “real time” into the “fictional time” of narrative. We’ll be reading essays, cultural criticism, travel writing, memoir, and biography, including works by Greil Marcus, Phillip Roth, Vladmir Nabokov, Geoffrey Wolff, Mary Karr, Curtis White, Nicholson Baker and others. This course will fulfill one of the following requirements: the seminar component of the workshop block; out-of-genre workshop.
ENGW 5102 Advanced Fiction Writing
Instructor: MJ Fitzgerald
W, 3:35-6:05 pm
Advanced fiction workshop. Required for first-year fiction writers.
ENGW 5104 Advanced Poetry Writing
Instructor: Michael Dennis Browne
TH, 3:35-6:05 pm
Advanced poetry workshop. Required for first-year poets.
ENGW 5106 Advanced Literary Nonfiction Writing
Instructor: Julie Schumacher
TH, 3:35-6:05 pm
Advanced nonfiction workshop. Required for first-year nonfiction writers.
ENGW 5205 Screenwriting
Instructor: Affiliate
M, 6:20-8:50 pm
Prerequisite: junior or senior; one 3000-level creative writing course; graduate student. Inquiries to Kathleen Glasgow, kglasgow@umn.edu.
Beginning instruction in the art of screenwriting.
This course will fulfill an out-of-genre workshop requirement.
ENGW 5310 Reading as Writers: The Memoir
Instructor: Patricia Hampl
M, 4:40-7:10 pm
This course will fulfill a literature/language requirement (not the EngL Related Field). This course does not fulfill a workshop requirement.
ENGW 8101 Reading Across Genres
Instructor: Patricia Hampl
T, 3:35-6:05 pm
This course is required for all new MFA students.
EngW 8140 Thesis Seminar: Poetry
Instructor: Ray Gonzalez
T, 3:35-6:05 pm
Required manuscript preparation for second- and third-year poets.
EngW 8150 Thesis Seminar: Fiction
Instructor: David Treuer
T, 3:35-6:05 pm
Required manuscript preparation for second- and third-year fiction writers.
EngW 8160 Thesis Seminar: Nonfiction
Instructor: Madelon Sprengnether
T, 3:35-6:05 pm
Required manuscript preparation for second- and third-year nonfiction writers.
EngW 8990 Thesis Credits
For third-year students.
