Fall 2009
English 503--Theory of Writing
Remembering the Present
Class ID# 4175
Professor Lewis Warsh
Tuesdays 6:30-8:50 pm
Writing theory is an all encompassing endeavor. It must take
into account both the past and the present while pointing
instructively towards the future. Many great 20th-Century
theorists were fiction writers and poets themselves--their
theoretical work derived from their practice as creative writers.
One goal of this course is to develop and articulate our own
sense of what we want to do as writers and what we expect
as readers. We will use the ideas expressed in these essays
to inspire and inform our own work.
Another goal is to create a dialogue between ourselves and
these authors. Ezra Pound's notable quote (I'm paraphrasing)
: "Don't take advice from anyone who hasn't written a
great work" is something to keep in mind. What gives
anyone the right to theorize? One of the ongoing threads in
this class will be an attempt to understand the place of theory
in our work as writers, beginning with the inescapable question:
"Is it necessary?"
Among the authors we will read are Henry James, E.M. Forster,
Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Laura Riding, Gertrude Stein,
Roland Barthes, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Walter Benjamin, M.M.
Bakhtin, Tzvetan Todorov, Maurice Blanchot, James Baldwin,
Charles Olson, Frank O'Hara, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka,
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg,
Lyn Hejinian.
English 520--Advanced Writing Workshop
Non-Fiction Writing
Class ID# 6030
Professor Harriet Malinowitz
Mondays 4:10-6:00 pm
THIS CLASS WAS CANCELLED DUE TO
UNDER-ENROLLMENT.
This is an intensive writing workshop with a focus on the
personal essay. The first few weeks will be devoted to reading
personal essays by published authors and analyzing their form,
their style, the rhetorical strategies they employ, and their
use of language. We will then move to a workshop format in
which students read and critique each other's essays in detail.
The goal of the workshop is to help the writer move toward
effective revision; each student will be expected to produce
either one long (20-30 pages) or two shorter (10-15 pages)
revised piece(s) of creative nonfiction by the end of the
term. We will use as a common text Philip Lopate's The
Art of the Personal Essay, as well as selected handouts.
The writers we will read may include George Orwell, Virginia
Woolf, James Baldwin, Natalia Ginzburg, Atul Gawande, Richard
Rodriguez, Patricia Williams, Cherie Moraga, Vivian Gornick,
Adrienne Rich, and Gayle Pemberton.
English 523--Fiction Writing Workshop
Short-Shorts, Meta-Fictions & Cross-Genre Writing
Class ID# 1389
Professor John High
Wednesdays 4:00-6:20 pm
What critics generally refer to as the 'experimental' story
has actually existed since the beginning of storytelling across
the world and throughout different cultures, continents, and
mythologies. In this course we'll examine the phenomenon of
metafictions, short-short stories & cross-genre writing
as an innovative form in contemporary writing that builds
on such traditions. These 1-2-3 page stories often combine
elements of poetry, parable, and performance writing within
the basic framework of narrative. Their sudden impact results
from both their brevity as well as their quick and potentially
explosive pacing. This is an intensive writing workshop in
which we will focus on our own stories and process of writing.
We'll study the essential framework of fiction (character,
setting, plot, pov, etc.…), while exploring the still
undefined territory of the experimental narrative in forms
ranging from postcard stories to flash fictions. How can we
craft our narratives to move with urgency, immediacy, and
surprise? Short, episodic writing requires a vitality of voice,
the sudden and unexpected in plotting and conflict, and the
mind's careful meditation on the subtle nuances and meaning
of events. Particular attention must be paid to the sentence--how
do we sculpt the line to get to the core essence? What is
left unsaid? Where are the silences? How do we find the poetry
of the prose?
We'll look at ancient parables and mythic writings as well
as at what's being published now as a way to examine how other
writers are experimenting with ways to tell a story. We'll
read texts ranging from those of the ancient Sufi, Navajo,
Eskimo, and Egyptian parables to stories by Yasunari Kawabata,
Jayne Anne Phillips, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, Diane
Williams, Lydia Davis, John Berger, Jamaica Kincaid, Jorge
Luis Borges, Roberto Bolanño, Fanny Howe, Sam Shepard,
John Edgar Wideman, and Michael Ondaatje. The course will
include writing exercises that draw from childhood memories,
personal experience, and the landscape of dreams. So we'll
explore the possibilities of episodic writing in our work
without restrictions of genre jurisdiction or hierarchy. The
goal of the course includes completion of a chapbook of revised
works of short fiction, a public reading and class party.
English 524--Poetry Writing Workshop
The City Below
Class ID# 1005
Visiting Poet Brenda Coultas
Thursdays 6:30-8:50 pm
In this workshop we will take our cue from the streets by
writing about what is under our feet and surrounding us. We
will root through the detritus, material and non-material,
to discover lost histories of the city. Students will create
a long work or series of related poems on this theme of the
lost/hidden or perhaps even the imaginary city. This work
could include investigations into extinct industries, disappeared
populations or personalities, or buried ecologies. Students
will go deep rather than wide in their excavation of an aspect
of the city now lost or obscured by time or neglect. Expect
in-class writing and sharing. We will borrow from the techniques
of investigative poetics and poetics of place, and consider
how our own voice or history may be influenced by the neglected
city.
Our models include Charles Baudelaire, Walt Whitman, Italo
Calvino, W.C.Williams, Lorine Niedecker, and onward into 21st
century with Eleni Sikelianos, Anselm Berrigan, Renee Gladman,
Marcella Durand and others.
Brenda Coultas is the author
of The Marvelous Bones of Time (2008) and A Handmade
Museum (2003) from Coffee House Press. A Handmade Museum
won the Norma Farber Award from The Poetry Society of America,
and a Greenwall Fund publishing grant from the Academy of
American Poets. Since coming to New York City in 1994, she
has served as program assistant and series curator at the
Poetry Project in NYC, and along with Eleni Sikelianos, she
edited the Poetry Project Newsletter. Coultas has taught
at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado and at the Study
Abroad on The Bowery poetry program at Bowery Arts and Science,
and the Poetry Project in New York City. Her writing can be
found in many publications including: Conjunctions,
Brooklyn Rail, Trickhouse, and the Denver
Review. Other books include Early Films (Rodent
Press) and A Summer Newsreel (Second Story Press).
She received a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellowship
in 2005 and is currently a LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural
Council) artist-in-residence.
back to course description
English 528--Seminar: Beautiful Bold
Brutal Bolaño
[Note: Even though this course is taught by MFA faculty,
this is a LITERATURE course!]
Class ID# 6032
Professor Jessica Hagedorn and
Visiting Writer Jaime Manrique
Wednesdays 6:30-8:50 pm
We investigate the works of the late, great Chilean author
Roberto Bolaño, who died in 2003 at the young and tender
age of fifty. Readings will include the gritty, sexy and sublime
poems of The Romantic Dogs, as well as selections from
Bolaño's prodigious and astonishing fiction: Last
Evenings On Earth, Distant Star and the epic and
terrifying 2666. We may even throw in an excerpt from
the equally epic The Savage Detectives and screen a
film which provides historical context for Roberto Bolaño's
life and times. We will explore cultural myth-making, "magical
realism" and other movements in Latin American literature
(which Bolaño and his gang of agents provocateurs were
rebelling against), and what it means to read literature in
translation.
Jaime Manrique was born in Colombia.
His first book of poems, Los adoradores de la luna,
received his country's National Book Award. In Spanish, he
also wrote a volume of stories, and a collection of film reviews.
He has written four novels in English: Our Lives Are the
Rivers, Twilight at the Equator, Latin Moon
in Manhattan, and Colombian Gold-- translated to
many languages. Manrique is the author of the volumes of poems
My Night with Federico García Lorca; Tarzan,
My Body, Christopher Columbus; Sor Juana's Love Poems,
co-translated with Joan Larkin; and the memoir Eminent
Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me. His reviews have
appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Salon,
Washington Post Book World, BOMB, and many other
publications. Among his honors are grants from the Foundation
for Contemporary Performance Arts, and a John Simon Guggenheim
Fellowship. He has worked as an associate professor in the
M.F.A. program in writing at Columbia University from 2002
to the present. He's a member of the Board of Trustees of
PEN American Center, and he chairs the Open Book Committee.
back to course description
English 620: Theories of Writing & Rhetoric
Class ID# 13244
Professor Patricia Stephens
Thursdays 4:10-6:00 pm
In this course, we will examine rhetorical theories that
help us understand and teach persuasive and analytic writing
in the 21st century. We will start by reading some of the
ancient rhetorics of Aristotle and the Sophists and then move
into more contemporary (19th & 20th century) works by
Gertrude Buck, Kenneth Burke, Michel Foucault, Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., Geneva Smitherman, Paulo Freire, Stephen Toulmin,
James Berlin, Keith Gilyard, and others. As we read these
texts, we will also look at the ways in which these rhetorical
theories have influenced how writing has been taught in American
universities.
Along the way, our explorations will be guided by many questions:
What is rhetoric? Why is it important to learn about rhetorical
strategies, particularly for those of us who teach reading
and writing? What sorts of persuasive techniques have rhetoricians
proposed? How have rhetorical theories influenced the teaching
of writing in the United States? Should rhetorical strategies
be taught in the writing class? If so, how? How do we distinguish
between persuasion and propaganda? What is "truth,"
and how do we present "truthful" claims in academic
and public writing? What is meant by terms such as "objectivity"
and "bias"? What is the role of social context in
individuals' acts of construing and constructing knowledge?
Each student will be responsible for 1) making a presentation
to the class on one of the theories we read, suggesting questions
for investigation and potential pedagogical applications;
2) transforming the oral presentation into a short written
essay; 3) a 10-page paper which will address a theoretical
question of the student's choosing.
English 624--Seminar in American Literature
African-American Narrative
Class ID# 6033
Professor Carol Allen
Tuesdays 4:10-6:00 pm
This course looks at fictional and nonfictional narrative
accounts by African American writers from the Slave Narrative
to Barack Obama's recent autobiography. We examine closely
four slave narratives from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
written respectively by Equiano, Douglass, Jacobs, and Wilson
(hers is technically billed as a novel). Then we move on to
the Harlem Renaissance and study texts by DuBois, Booker T.
Washington, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Weldon Johnson.
Our final unit highlights contemporary texts that may include
narratives by John Edgar Wideman (perhaps Fanon), Shange and
Kennedy (to explore why African American women resist narrative),
and Obama. We will foreground such questions as why do African
Americans write autobiography and/or fictional accounts that
use first person narration, what are the gender differences,
and what are the politics of writing for an audience that
may be unfamiliar with the cultural currency in the text.
Several papers and presentations will be required.
English 646--Individual and Small Group Writing Instruction
Class ID# 4173
Professor Harriet Malinowitz
Wednesdays 6:10-8:00 pm
This course is designed to introduce tutors and teachers
to the theories and practices of tutoring writing (one-on-one,
small groups, and online), with an emphasis on the specific
needs of writers who use the LIU/Brooklyn Writing Center.
Practical concerns about tutoring will be addressed: structuring
sessions and setting goals; assessing, diagnosing and responding
to student writing; developing strategies to teach planning,
drafting, organizing, revising, proofreading and editing;
working on specific grammatical issues; helping students with
reading comprehension; responding to ESL concerns; noticing
interpersonal dynamics and maintaining boundaries; and building
awareness of cultural and ethnic differences. Participants
will also become familiar with the curriculum and pedagogy
of the LIU/Brooklyn Writing Program and interdisciplinary
writing concerns (through WAC) on campus. Classes will be
conducted as seminars/workshops so that all students have
the opportunity to participate in class presentations, mock
tutorials, etc. All students are required to tutor for one
hour per week during the semester and attend staff development
meetings at the Writing Center. Each participant will write
an observation report of a session conducted by another tutor
and audio/video tape one session with a student (for use in
a self-study).
English 650--Seminar in Medieval Literature
Arthurian Traditions
Class ID# 6034
Professor Sealy Gilles
Mondays 6:10-8:00 pm
Tales of the legendary Celtic king Arthur Pendragon and
his court have captured political, historical, and artistic
imaginations since the first mention of Arthur in the ninth
century by the Welsh chronicler, Nennius. The most complete,
and fantastic, records of Arthur and his court are literary,
and it is this tradition that forms the core of the seminar.
The narratives have enormous appeal; they are exotic, fast-paced,
and full of emotion. They also raise difficult questions concerning
gender, class, and the exercise of power. There are no easy
answers in Arthur's court, where adultery strains deep personal
loyalties, and heroism has many shades. Issues of personal
integrity and authority combine with the fundamental otherness
of the Middle Ages to create a challenging and intriguing
body of literature. The last third of the course will explore
19th and 20th century incarnations of Arthurian legends, from
Tennyson's Idylls of the King to Monty Python and Kennedy's
Camelot. The seminar culminates in a research project and
presentation. Possible topics include: studies of archaeological
evidence; incarnations of Arthur's court in the visual arts,
opera, or politics; theoretical approaches such as gender
studies or new historicism; prophecy and magic; and creative
projects such as an original short story, narrative poem,
or set of lyrics accompanied by a metatext.
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