This graduate course on the craft of the novel combines elements of a workshop and a seminar. Instructional emphasis is on the structure of the novel. Students develop projects that may already be under way at the beginning of the course and present their work for critique. Open to MCW students as an elective.
No Sections
MCW 411-0
( Core Course ) Studies in Writing Poetry
This workshop examines the poetics (aesthetics) and craft of writing poetry. Student improvement in the understanding and use of formal elements of composition is stressed. The goals are for students to demonstrate a grasp of poetics through discussion and textual critique and to complete a manuscript (100-200 lines) of publishable-quality poetry. Faculty members are published poets.
Fall 2009
EV
Tu
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
University Hall 218
9/22/09 - 11/24/09
Instructor:
Winter 2010
CH
Tu
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
1/5/10 - 3/9/10
Instructor:
MCW 413-0
( Core Course ) Studies in Fiction Writing
Using student work and published short stories, the class examines the craft of fiction writing. Students prepare their material for instructor and peer review and analyze published stories. Structure, point of view, style, and other elements of craft and technique are studied in detail. The goal is for students to complete two short stories in publishable form.
Creative nonfiction may mean essays, memoirs, cultural criticism, literary journalism, and related writings. Student work is the focus of discussion in this workshop, along with analysis of selected readings. Modes of creative nonfiction, authorial distance, structure, aspects of style, and other elements of craft are studied. The goal is for students to submit two works for review and revision.
Fall 2009
CH
M
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
Wieboldt Hall 516
9/28/09 - 11/30/09
Instructor:
Winter 2010
CH
W
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
1/6/10 - 3/10/10
Instructor:
Spring 2010
CH
W
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
3/31/10 - 6/2/10
Instructor:
MCW 479-0
( Core Course ) Poetry for Prose Writers
By conducting an intensive study of prosody, which teaches the reader/writer to observe, examine, and practice writing elements in isolation and in concert with one another, and to learn the effects of specific choices and how to control these effects, students learn to isolate and control these same elements in literary prose. In addition, students come to understand what strategies are shared across genres and what distinguishes one genre from another, when such distinctions can in fact be made. This course begins with an introduction to the six major elements of poetry (line, meter, trope, rhetoric, syntax, diction) and moves from there into a more intensive discussion and practice of accentual-syllabic poetry and its dominant poetic forms, techniques, and modes. Students then move across genres into examples of similar modes and impulses in literary prose (fiction and creative nonfiction), comparing and contrasting the use of elements, structural strategies, and techniques. Required core course for nonfiction and fiction track students. Attendance at the first class session is mandatory. Previously known as Writing across Genres; may only be taken once.
Spring 2010
EV
Th
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
4/1/10 - 6/3/10
Instructor:
MCW 480-0
( Core Course ) Prose for Poets
For poetry students, this course fulfills the cross-genre requirement, and it may be taken by fiction and nonfiction students as an elective. The class examines how prose strategies, resources, and devices complement the strategies,resources, and devices of poetry, and introduces students to important elements and models of prose structure and prose style. These include syntax and the sentence; detail and image; diction; the rhetoric of feeling; narration from the first-person point of view and the third. Readings will include both fiction and nonfiction. Attendance at the first class session is mandatory.
Winter 2010
EV
Th
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
1/7/10 - 3/11/10
Instructor:
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Brief Encounters
The micro-story, the prose poem, the mini-essay: it is in these elemental forms that the worlds of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction meet, overlap, and sometimes merge. Using the work of such diverse writers as Heinrich Böll, Jorge Luis Borges, Zbgniew Herbert, Jamaica Kincaid, William Kittredge, Denise Levertov and W.S. Merwin, this class will examine what one anthologist has described as "life histories reduced to paragraphs, essays the size of postcards, novels in nutshells, maps on postage stamps, mind-bending laundry lists, theologies scribbled on napkins." We will study how these narratives-in-miniature are structured and discuss what they might teach us about longer forms. The goal is for students to come away with a new sense of how to bring economy and compression to their work, no matter the genre or length. Students will produce at least three works of flash fiction, prose poetry or brief creative nonfiction, each 2,000 words or less, in additon to written critiques of student work.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Enriching Narrative with Character
This class will serve all writers who seek to build richer character and weave it into their particular narrative universe. Through readings, annotations, discussion, and exercises, the class will assist fiction writers, essayists, and poets with character development and refinements. Differences between primary and secondary characters, using setting for characterization, shaping of persona, and using language and detail to define the moral parameters will be explored. Character almost always drives action and conflict but also infiltrates environment and defines textual culture. Most importantly, character carries and expands reader empathy. This class can serve as a tune-up for writers finishing the program as well as an introduction for writers just beginning to shape their work.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Film and Writing
The premise of this course is that a narrative is a space and that organizing space in time is the essence of any narration, be it film or fiction. The course explores useful similarities between film and literary narration, finding ways for writing students to apply film methods (point of view, perspective, montage, mise-en-scene, etc.). Films and literary and theoretical texts are studied to examine mechanisms of constructing a narrative space and to strengthen "visual imagination." Required exercises seek to replicate models in students'writing. There are also short analytical papers (annotations) and a final writing project of 1,000 to 1,500 words. There is no in-class workshopping, though students are encouraged to workshop their final project online. Maximum class size: 20. Open to graduate students outside the MCW with instructor's permission.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Literary Journalism
Like fiction writers, literary journalists try to illuminate the world through stories-but they stay within the borders of the factual. In this class, students will discuss works by masters of the craft, from Joseph Mitchell and John McPhee to Jennifer Gonnerman and David Simon. Books and shorter pieces will both be considered. Brief writing assignments will acquaint students with methods reporters use to gather their material, especially interviewing and observation.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Professional Writing in the Arts
As the contemporary arts arena becomes more entrepreneurial and fewer publishers offer marketing support, the need to craft a clear, compelling message - create a cultural footprint - has become essential. With more people competing for fewer resources, how do you stand out from the crowd? We'll take two approaches in this course. First, students will learn to research and write general operating and project grants for nonprofit arts organizations. We'll set up a mock foundation and have a peer review. We'll also look at social media and its most effective use through case studies. By the end of the term, each student will have a clear understanding of the grant reviewing process and a portfolio of samples to submit for freelance work. Second, we'll apply what we've learned in the broader context to the individual artist. What makes a compelling residency, fellowship or grant application? How do you get the word out about your work? To inform these conversations, we'll read from a selection of books on every foundation officers' desk, which will help define the current thinking on the role of nonprofit arts organizations and artists in contemporary society.
Summer 2010
CH
M
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
6/21/10 - 8/23/10
Instructor:
TBA
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Reading Poetry
This course is for students who wish to deepen their understanding of poetry and poetics. We will read very closely, from the perspective of writers, a number of poems, studying poetic thinking, poetic language, poetic strategies, the structure of poems, and poetic devices. We will give special attention to rhythm, diction, syntax, sound, and structure. Readings will range from Shakespeare through romantic poetry to the modernists and to contemporary poems. The idea is to learn how to extend one's capacity as a writer, in terms of both poetic technique and poetic ambition. Each student will also compile, by the end of the course, a personal anthology of poems that will help define the particular goals, formal and emotional, of his or her future writing -- poetry or fiction. This will be a seminar class based on discussion, with oral reports and with writing assignments that include critical prose, new poems focused on the elements of poetry that we are studying in our texts, and one poetic translation. Texts will include a major anthology and the following critical resources: Michael Hamburger, The Truth of Poetry; Reginald Gibbons, editor, The Poet's Work; Gregory Orr and Ellen B. Voigt, editors, Poets Teaching Poets; Sharon Bryan and William Olsen, editors, The Planet on the Table.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Reading Russians
Students will read a few great Russian works by Gogol, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Babel, and Nabokov. The course will focus on reading strategies that might be useful to fiction and poetry writers in that it will expose them to different sensibilities while exploring various modes of textual organization. There will be no workshopping in the class, though there will be some writing exercises. Open to Northwestern graduate students in other departments with instructor's permission.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Research for Fiction Writers and Poets
In this class, we will be considering what we need for our narratives in terms of information outside of our experience, and how to go about getting it. Classwork here is divided into four main areas: 1. Reading and critiquing readings. 2. Your own writing. 3. Presentation of peer work. 4. Three creative projects that involve information gathering outside of class: A. A story based on someone else's testimony. This will not be a transcript but a story with all its attendant elements, based on someone else's experience. It will require interviews (note plural) which will, in turn, require preparation. b. A story that takes place before 1954. This will require both personal and library information gathering. c. A story based upon learning a new skill, such as playing soccer, glass-blowing, working in a funeral home. You will be required to learn this skill during the course of the quarter. In other words, you will need to experience the world where this skill is manifest, and gather information from experience, interviews and library source materials.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: The Narrator in Fiction, Essay and Poetry
This course explores narrators and their influence on the literary forms of fiction, essay and poetry. Students will analyze the range of choices each genre has in creating a narrator (1st-3rd persons, omniscient, close, distant, reliable, unreliable, or implied), and the implications those choices have on form, style, intimacy and distance. Stories, essays, poems, plus critical texts will be studied and discussed so as to examine techniques of constructing a narrator and a narrative. Readings will excerpts from The Art of the Personal Essay, by Philip Lopate, and Writing Fiction, by Janet Burroway.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: The Short Story
The course will examine the ways in which short stories are constructed. We will particularly focus on the ways reality is represented and established in a short story. We will read Nabokov, Poe, Chekhov, Hemingway, O'Connor, Malamud, Jones, Munro, Kis, Moore etc. The writing requirements will consist of annotations, an analytical paper, an imitation exercise based on a particular writer's style. Active, intense participation in discussion will be required from all students.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Travel Literature
In this survey course of travel literature, we take Mark Twain's observation on travel (how one travels determines what one sees) one step further and explore not the means but the motives. Looking primarily at modern works of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, we examine the conscious and in some cases unconscious motives for travel and how they influence the way a writer sees and depicts a land and the people that inhabit it. We will not only discuss the usual psychological, spiritual and political motives, but also look at the scientific, journalistic, sexual, recreational and therapeutic reasons behind journeys and travel as well. We will also pay particular attention to how gender, race, culture and class provide different perspectives and critiques on how cultures have been historically depicted as well as on the tradition of travel and travel writing itself. Here is a partial list of writers we will read: Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, Earnest Hemingway, Berl Markham, Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Graham Greene, D.W. Sebald, Octivo Paz, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jan Morris, Amitav Ghosh, Peter Matthiesen, Gretel Ehrlich, V.S.Naipaul, Joseph Brodsky, Jonathan Raban, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Baldwin.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: War, Violence, Suffering
This course will address the ways in which war, violence and suffering are represented in writing and the ethical and aesthetical questions related to that. We will read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry, Tim O'Brian's The Things They Carried, Primo Levi's Survival in Aushwitz, Edward P. Jones's The Known World, and others. Students should be aware that some the readings might be hard to stomach. The writing assignaments will include an analytical paper and an imitation narrative.
Fall 2009
EV
W
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
Kresge Hall 4345
9/23/09 - 12/2/09
Instructor:
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Writing and Photography
The course will focus on the ways in which photography could be useful to a writer, both as a way to expand the writer's creative field and as a means to organize a narrative. The readings will include Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Sebald's Austerlitz, Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. We will also be reading a selection of essays on photography (Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, John Berger etc.), as well as Walker Evans/James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, an example of a collaboration between a writer and a photographer. We will be looking at individual photos and photo books, examining the ways in which photography tells stories. Chris Marker's film La Jetée and (possibly) Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up will be shown as part of the course. Class assignments will include reaction papers, a short analytic paper about a photo and a short narrative based on or organized around a photo.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Writing Humor
This course will take a serious look at how humor works on the page. To develop their own comic styles, students will be asked to closely examine comedic works of various genres. Readings will include poetry by Billy Collins, David Kirby and others; fiction by writers such as Donald Barthelme and Lorrie Moore; essays by the likes of Barbara Ehrenreich and H.L. Mencken; short humor sketches from writers for The New Yorker and McSweeney's; satire from contributors to the Onion; and the screenplay "His Girl Friday" by Charles Lederer. By studying the work of these comic masters, students will examine what comedic dynamics and what elements of humor(irony, pun, parody, satire, hyperbole, bombast,malapropism, etc.) are at play. The goal is to give students new tools to make use of humor in their own writing. Students are required to write one of the following: a)a work of fiction or nonfiction of five to fifteen pages, b) two to four poems, or c) a play or screenplay of 10 to 25 pages. This work will be discussed by the class. Students are also required to give both written and verbal evaluations of work submitted by classmates and to submit at least five "craft commentaries" about assigned readings. At the end of the quarter, a portfolio of all work is submitted. Readings: course pack, available from Quartet Copies in Evanston.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Creative Writing: Writing Reviews
This graduate course on the art of writing reviews combines elements of a seminar and a workshop. Team-taught by Chicago's best reviewers of books,theater and music, the class will cover the basics of reviewing. The course examines the craft of reviewing and guides students in the practice. Students will discuss what reviews should accomplish,and through careful reading of exemplary ones, will discover what makes a stellar review. Faculty will also talk about publishing reviews and the ethics of reviewing.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics: Shosetsu in Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry
Yasunari Kawabata described The Master of Go as "a faithful chronicle-novel." His translator, Edward Seidensticker, writes in his introduction, "The word used, of course, is not novel' but shosetsu, a rather more flexible and generous and catholic term than novel.' Frequently what would seem to the Western reader a piece of autobiography or a set of memoirs, somewhat embroidered and colored but essentially nonfiction all the same, is placed by the Japanese reader in the realm of the shosetsu." This course will explore the tradition of the shosetsu and attempt to identify some of its counterparts in the West and in the past. Rather than trot out all the old arguments about James Frey's Million Little Pieces, we will look for new ways to understand the morality of "embroidering" (and we will look, with great rigor)-in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This will give us an opportunity to look at the nonfiction novel, the use of exaggeration and metaphors and editing in nonfiction and history, and the tradition of the "boast poem" in Middle Eastern and Old English poetry, as well as a look at its contemporary counterpart, what I would call "hudibrastic hip-hop". Students will explore these aspects, temptations, and strengths in their own writing, and the course welcomes work from all three genres: students will submit three creative writing projects in nonfiction, fiction, or poetry as part of the coursework. Readings include Selected Poetry and Prose, Fernando Pessoa; Satan Says, Sharon Olds; The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata; Positively Fifth Street, James McManus; The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative, Vivian Gornick; and Grand Things to Write a Poem on: A Verse Autobiography, Shmuel ha Nagid.
No Sections
MCW 490-0
( Elective ) Special Topics: The Video Essay: Writing with Images and Sound
This course focuses on applying literary techniques to the composition of short multimedia essays. It is appropriate for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry students, and in many ways is ideal for poets, as the video essay form embraces compression in language and the imagistic density of poetry. Like its print counterpart, the video essay is an attempt to see what one thinks about something. The video essay may engage with fact, but tends to be less self-assured than documentary. Rather, the video essay, writes Phillip Lopate, wears confusion proudly as it gropes toward truth. Agnes Varda, the poetic French filmmaker who coined the term cinécriture, or film-writing, best described the promise of the form when noting that, for her, writing meant more than simply wording a script. Choosing images, designing sound - these, too, were part of that process. This course explores the many ways in which writing in the video essay form-writing for viewers and listeners rather than readers-differs from print. We seek to understand how sound and image make a direct appeal to the senses, as well as learn how the writer's voice collaborates with audio and visual elements. Readings and screenings include George Orwell, Joan Didion, Don Delillo, Eric Schlosser, Ross McElwee, Agnes Varda, Chris Marker.
This seminar incorporates a theory-to-practice approach to teaching creative writing. Students examine different philosophies and modes of teaching--exercises, critical papers, workshopping creative work, and reading for writing. Topics include the workshop, how to teach revision, critical analysis and journaling, issues of craft, the job market, and how to apply for a teaching job. Each student must deliver a seminar on a relevant topic, such as an author, a craft issue in a genre, or a theoretical position.
Fall 2009
CH
Th
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
Wieboldt Hall 516
9/24/09 - 12/3/09
Instructor:
MCW 575-0
( Elective ) Seminar on Journal Publishing
This course is required for MA and MFA students seeking editorial or operations positions with the creative writing program's online literary journal, and counts toward students' elective totals. In this course, students will work on the MA/MFA online journal, which will publish writers from the U.S. and abroad in multiple genres. Working with the faculty director, students will select work to be published, copy-edit, correspond with writers, manage content such as book and event reviews, and learn the ongoing operations of a web journal. Students will also complete a writing assignment. (Volunteers do not need to take the course, but their role on the journal may be limited.) Registration is by department permission. Counts as an elective.
Winter 2010
CH
Tu
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
1/5/10 - 3/9/10
Instructor:
Spring 2010
CH
M
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
3/29/10 - 6/7/10
Instructor:
MCW 579-0
( Elective ) Practicum in Teaching Creative Writing
Student-teaching experience as an assistant teacher at Northwestern or another institution approved by SCS (high-school level or higher); worth one unit of credit. The MA/MFA teaching internship director supervises the student's academic work, which consists of lesson plans, reports, and other assignments as appropriate. The supervisor at the place of internship submits an evaluation to the teaching internship director. Grades are assigned on the basis of the student's interaction with the host institution and submission of academic work. May not be repeated for credit. Registration instructions are in the course documents section of the MCW Program Blackboard site at https://courses.northwestern.edu/webapps/login/
No Sections
MCW 580-0
( Elective ) Practicum in Publishing
Students develop research projects based on experience gained in an internship at a literary publication. Main projects are normally a substantial (20 pages or more) research paper on a well-defined scholarly topic, but other types of projects are possible, based on department approval. The MA/MFA publishing internship director supervises the student's academic work. The supervisor at the place of internship submits an evaluation to the publishing internship director. Grades are assigned on the basis of the student's interaction with the host institution and submission of academic work. May not be repeated for credit. Registration instructions are in the course documents section of the MCW Program Blackboard site at https://courses.northwestern.edu/webapps/login/
