Professor Henning was also recently interviewed by Deborah Diesen for the "Michigander Monday" series on the blog Jumping the Candlestick.
Barbara Henning: A New Website & An Interview
Our Condolences to the Family & Friends of Rosemary Mayer
We are saddened by the news that Rosemary Mayer, an adjunct professor in the English Department at Long Island University from 1988 to 2009, died on Saturday morning, October 18, after a long illness. In recent years, she was a lecturer in the Fine Arts Department at LaGuardia Community College.Rosemary was born in Ridgewood, Queens and lived in New York for most of her life. She studied classics at St. Joseph’s College and at the University of Iowa and art at the School of Visual Arts and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. She was most well-known for her sculptural work and installations in the 1970s and 1980s as well as her involvement in the feminist art movement. Her translation of the diary of the Italian Mannerist artist Jacopo da Pontormo, which included a catalogue of Mayer’s work, was published in 1979. Her most recent projects involved illustrating the epic stories of Beowulf and Gilgamesh and the history of the women of the Roman Empire. She received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Council on the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She had solo exhibitions at A.I.R Gallery, the Monique Knowlton Gallery, the Pam Adler Gallery, among many others.
She lived for forty years in a loft in Tribeca and most recently in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Please send letters of condolence to Lewis Warsh at lwarsh@mindspring.com.
UPDATE 10/23/2014: Link to New York Times obituary.
UPDATE 12/19/2014: Link to SOME reflections in ARTFORUM by Adrian Piper and Bernadette Mayer.
Amazing and accurate line from Adrian Piper: "She remained, as always, quiet, clipped, self-contained and shy, with a surpisingly mordant sense of humor."
Wonderful line from Bernadette Mayer (Rosemary's sister): "She lived for forty years in a loft on Leonard Street in Manhattan, where she had seven desks, each for a different purpose."
Article by Harriet Malinowitz
Short Stories by Diane Quin
News From Patricia Stephens
Daniel Soto on LatinoRebels.com
Performances from ACTORS WITH ACCENTS
Patrick E. Horrigan (Professor, English Department, LIU Brooklyn) and Eduardo Leanez invite you to
ACTORS WITH ACCENTS
Please join us to celebrate another year of ACTORS WITH ACCENTS! It's a party with performances by Chia-lun Chang (Creative Writing MFA, LIU Brooklyn), Lara Gagrica, Gregory Couba, Pia Haddad, Eduardo Leanez, Rina Mejia, Mirla Pereira, and Wilfred Serrano. There will be food, drink, and plenty of opportunity to meet and talk with other artists and performers.
Event details:
Saturday, December 13, 2014
7-10 PM (performance to start at 8 PM)
Teatro Circulo @ 64 East 4th St. between 2nd and 3rd Ave., 3rd floor; New York, NY 10003
Admission: FREE! (but donations are welcome)
Like us on Facebook: Actors with Accents.
Follow us on Twitter: @actorswaccents
For more information, or to find out how to participate in an upcoming ACTORS WITH ACCENTS, visit us on Facebook or email us at actorswithaccents@aol.com.
Workshop with Barbara Henning at Northeast Poetry Center College of Poetry
Barbara Henning (Professor Emerita, English, LIU Brooklyn) will offer the final workshop in the current College of Poetry series on Saturday, December 6, at 1:00 p.m. at the Seligmann Center for the Arts, 23 White Oak Drive, Sugar Loaf, New York (across from the SLPAC). The program is free and open to all. No preregistration is required.
viseral brooklyn -- Literary Magazine (Online) of the Creative Writing MFA Program
visceral brooklyn is intended as an online counterpart to our hand-bound magazine, Brooklyn Paramount, which will continue in its own quest to publish quality work from current students. Both ventures are unique and exciting, and will receive equal support from the program. We strongly encourage submissions to both journals. Each journal will accept simultaneous submissions for consideration.
MFA candidates Malik Crumpler, Harry Ewan, Jake Matkov, and Angus Mclinn are the founding student editors of visceral brooklyn and are seeking submissions for the first issue, which is scheduled for early 2015.
Please visit the visceral brooklyn website for submission guidelines, and get your writing out there!
MFA Reading Series Events for December 2014
Add the 12/5 event to your Google Calendar:
Add the 12/12 event to your Google Calendar:
Book It -- A Bookmaking Workshop with Sarah Wallen (MFA Alum), Hosted by the Creative Writing MFA Program
Add this event to your Google Calendar:
Faculty Update: Jessica Hagedorn
Professor Hagedorn has also been named one of three Kelly Writers House Fellows at UPenn for 2015. More info here.
In other news, Felix Starro, Hagedorn's musical adaptation of the acclaimed short story by Lysley Tenorio, will premiere in San Francisco in the fall of 2015. It will be part of the American Conservatory Theater’s Monstress Project. More info here.
Jessica Hagedorn's Playwriting Class Welcomes Michael Friedman to Campus
Add this event to your Google Calendar:
Update from Professor Jonathan Haynes
On October 16, he will be on another panel at Auckland University of Technology.
In other news, Professor Haynes has been elected to the Democratic Party Committee of the Town of Southampton.
Undergraduate Courses -- Spring 2015
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Don't wait! Register now for Spring 2015!
These course descriptions are provided by the professors teaching the courses.
For more information, write to them directly.
English Majors — Before you register, make an appointment to meet with Wayne Berninger to review your outstanding requirements. Then register as early as possible to keep courses from being canceled.
Non-Majors — The writing and analytical skills gained in English courses are useful in a variety of professions. Any student may take these courses as general electives. A minor in English (four courses 100 or above) will satisfy the Distribution Requirement for any major. For more information, make an appointment to meet with Wayne Berninger.
ENG 104 Creative Writing (Course ID# 5449)
Diaries, Letters Home, Poems
Professor John High
Mondays & Wednesdays 4:30-5:45
This course will satisfy a Creative Writing elective requirement in the Literature concentration or the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can count as one of the four required Creative Writing workshops in the Creative Writing concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor.
Writing letters home, turning diary entries into artistic expressions, opening up your journal and composing poems and stories again—as you once loved to do as a child (remember that world of imagination?)—this is the goal of the course. Who is it you need to reach, need to communicate with now that you are here? What’s at the core of personal feelings and what happens when you express the inner mappings of the roads you have travelled to arrive on this campus? What is the music, lyrics—the artists who carried/carry you through, spoke to you in deep ways? Here we will tap into the inner voice. It is worth saying, writing, expressing, as so many great artists, musicians, and writers have suggested and done for so many centuries of time. And why do expressions of our true nature have to be seen as superfluous when inside we know our own intimate need to express our experience is primary to our well being and thriving in the university and in life. Poems of laughter, poems of rage, stories of becoming. Diaries of dreams. Musings of the natural world. Contemplations of urban life in NYC. Haikus. Lyrics. Prayers. Epistles. Flights of imagination. Who said we have to give up these games of being and recognizing our relationship to the universe we live in? In this course we’ll play and explore the writing we once did, often still do, even secretly, in order to transform new words into literary paths, into a new language of realizing our own experience and secret lives, and of honoring that as the core of who we are and want, even need, to become. This course will include weekly readings and writings to music, contemplation, and workshops, and it will conclude with putting together a chapbook (a small book artistically and attentively constructed) of your own writings.
ENG 126 News Writing (Course ID# 4665)
Professor Donald Bird (Journalism Department)
Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:30-2:55
This course will satisfy a Writing & Rhetoric elective requirement in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can satisfy a general English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy the Writing & Rhetoric requirement in either the Literature concentration or the Creative Writing concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor. Please note that this course is cross-listed with JOU 119. Students who wish this course to count toward the English major (or minor) should be sure to register for ENG 126 — not JOU 119. Contact the Journalism Department for information about the content of this course.
ENG 129 Later British Literatures (Course ID# 4356)
The Artist Coming of Age: Creating the “Uncreated Conscience”
Professor Maria McGarrity
Mondays & Wednesdays 3-4:15
This course is required in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy a Literature requirement in either the Creative Writing concentration or the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor.
This course will examine the development of artistic consciousness in the British tradition. We will examine the role of the artist in society, his or her alienation from society, the unique perspectives of the artist and his or her role as critic, both literary and social. We will begin with the youthful artistic idealism of Keats, move onto a discussion of Wordsworth’s vision of the poet, Byron’s art in action, and expand our vision of the artist to include the feminine with Christina Rosetti and Virginia Woolf. We will transition into the Modern period with Wilde’s conception of criticism as art. Finally we will examine modernity and the aftermath of Joyce’s achievement through the twentieth century. We will challenge the idea that any writer can, as Joyce claimed to through his character Stephen Dedalus, “create the uncreated conscience of [his] race.”
Required Texts
- Greenblatt, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Volume B. 9th Edition.
- Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man. Norton Critical Edition.
ENG 159 Literature of the United States Since 1865 (Course ID# 4083)
Professor Patrick Horrigan
Wednesdays 6-8:30
This course is required in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy a Literature requirement in either the Creative Writing concentration or the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor.
What is American literature? In one sense, the answer would have to be any creative writing by an author who was born, lived, or currently resides in the United States. But what kind of creative writing do we count as literature worthy of study? We will consider the content and form of creative writing that seems to qualify, encountering a variety of texts from authors of different races, genders, sexualities, classes, politics, and other social characteristics because this diversity reflects the range of individuals and cultures that make up American society. Our reading will include various genres (fiction, poetry, drama, and cross-genre work), and you will be encouraged to think about the unique features of each genre and how each creates meanings that are open to critical interpretation.
Wednesdays 6-8:30
This course is required in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy a Literature requirement in either the Creative Writing concentration or the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor.
What is American literature? In one sense, the answer would have to be any creative writing by an author who was born, lived, or currently resides in the United States. But what kind of creative writing do we count as literature worthy of study? We will consider the content and form of creative writing that seems to qualify, encountering a variety of texts from authors of different races, genders, sexualities, classes, politics, and other social characteristics because this diversity reflects the range of individuals and cultures that make up American society. Our reading will include various genres (fiction, poetry, drama, and cross-genre work), and you will be encouraged to think about the unique features of each genre and how each creates meanings that are open to critical interpretation.
For the first few centuries of the history of American literature, traditional forms were predominant. Poetry was written, for the most part, in meter, using rhyme and/or rhythm and/or received forms. Fiction and drama utilized classical plot structures and observed, as much as possible, the unities of place, time, character, and action. But with the arrival of the twentieth century, something different happens: meter is abandoned, narratives fracture, unities break down. These evolutions in form and technique are related to socio-historical transformations—the impact of urbanization, industrialism and post-industrialism; the rise of mass consumer culture; the spread of new media technologies, such as film, television, the internet, hypertext; developments in other art forms, including music (jazz and rock), art (impressionism, expressionism, abstract expressionism), and architecture (with its own modern and postmodern styles); "advances" in globalization and permanent warfare. By and large, modernists bemoan this cultural fragmentation while postmodernists celebrate, or at least accept, it. Where does this leave the contemporary American writer? With at least these options: attempt to revivify the traditional forms that evolved from the neo-classical era to the age of realism; join the modernists in lamenting, or postmodernists in making the most of, what has been lost; or try to form an avant-garde that is somehow post-postmodern. Together we will look at the literature that has shaped these choices and see how these forms are transposed in poetry, fiction, drama, and cross-genre works written in the United States.
ENG 166 Fiction Workshop (Course ID# 4136)
Professor Lewis Warsh
Tuesdays & Thursdays 4:30-5:45
This course will satisfy a Creative Writing elective requirement in the Creative Writing concentration. It can satisfy a general English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy the Creative Writing requirement in either the Literature concentration or the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor. English majors concentrating in Creative Writing may take this course a second time for credit.
This workshop will focus on the way autobiography overlaps with fiction and how the past is fictionalized as a way of keeping it alive. We'll consider the possibility of writing about ourselves with total detachment, as objectively as if we were writing about someone else. Our writing project will include working with secrets, memories, observations, opinions, overheard conversations--fragments of everything. Class time will be spent critiquing each other's writing and discussing traditional and experimental forms and approaches. Writers under discussion include Marguerite Duras, Paul Bowles, Anna Kavan, Clarice Lispector, Roberto Bolaño, Jack Kerouac, Zora Neale Hurston and Franz Kafka.
ENG 172 Introduction to Contemporary Rhetorical Theory (Course ID# 5777)
Professor Patricia Stephens
Tuesdays 6-8:30
This course is required in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can satisfy a general English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy the Writing & Rhetoric requirement in either the Literature concentration or the Creative Writing concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor.
In the first half of the semester, we will immerse ourselves in reading works by key contemporary rhetoricians (from the 19th Century to the present). We will focus primarily on western rhetorical traditions, though we will occasionally look at other traditions for the purposes of comparison. We will begin by studying influential teachers of Rhetoric and Writing, noting how rhetorical theories informed teaching practices at various universities, including (but not limited to) Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wiley College (an historically Black college in Marshall, TX), and others. In addition, we will study the rhetorics of public figures and activists such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Kenneth Burke, Henry Louis Gates, W.E.B DuBois and Gloria Anzaldua. Throughout, we will focus on mastery of key rhetorical concepts and ever-changing trends as we apply forms of rhetorical analysis to a variety of contemporary texts.
ENG 180 Genre Studies / Fascination Satan: The Devil Across the Ages in Religion & Art (Course ID# 6182)
Professor Bernard Schweizer
Tuesdays & Thursdays 3-4:15
This course was cancelled due to under-enrollment.
This course was cancelled due to under-enrollment.
This course will explore the meaning of Satan (aka Lucifer, aka Samael) in different religious traditions, literary texts, art, and pop culture productions. The principal artists to be studied include John Milton, Mark Twain, Mikhail Bulgakov, Charles Baudelaire, Elie Wiesel, James Morrow, and others. We will consistently approach our subject from four complementary perspectives:
- Artistic adaptations of Satan (all of the assigned primary texts).
- Scholarly analyses of these artistic adaptations.
- Historical inquiries into the development of the figure of Lucifer/Satan in Jewish, Christian, as well as “heretical” belief systems (Pagels, Russell, Matthews).
- Pop-cultural uses of Satan, including manifestations of organized Satanism.
This interdisciplinary course weaves together strands of inquiry ranging from religious history, to theology, to philosophy, to literary history and criticism, to art history, to the history of ideas. Among the topics to be explored are: Satanism; Satan and comedy; theodicy (or the Problem of Evil); Satan as muse & culture hero; Satan and liberation; Satan and witch-craft; Gnosticism and the demiurge; Satan and misotheism; Satan in Jewish and Christian scriptures.
The religious background of Satan is anything but straight-forward: in the Old Testament, Satan functions as God’s messenger, as a member of God’s inner council and as a correctional obstruction acting in man’s best interest. The identification of Satan as the purely evil opponent of God only came into focus around the time of Jesus’ life. The early Christians also took pains to depict non-Christian deities (such as the Greek fertility God Pan) as demons. Since then, the image of Satan has remained in flux. While he is the embodiment of evil and sin in traditional Christian lore, in some Western literary traditions, notably in Romanticism, Satan comes off as a political liberator and a culture hero. And don’t forget that rock and roll was originally called the “Devil’s music.” The reception of Satan includes these as well as many other aspects across the ages.
In addition to the following readings, we will go to the MET to study pictorial representations of Satan. The MET will organize a docent-led tour of the relevant sections of the museum with rich offerings in the subject.
Assigned Primary Texts:
from Paradise Lost by John Milton
From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
The Temptation of Christ (Matt. 4:1-11)
The Book of Job
Baudelaire, “The Litany of Satan”
Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
Anatole France, Revolt of the Angels*
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita*
Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God*
James Morrow, Blameless in Abaddon*
Assigned Secondary Texts:
Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern Age by Jeffrey B. Russell *
Excerpts from Satan: The Early Christian Tradition by Jeffrey Burton Russell
Excerpts from Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages by Jeffrey Burton Russell
“The Social History of Satan”; excerpt from Elaine Pagels, The Origins of Satan
“Character Profile;” from Harold Bloom’s Major Literary Characters: Satan
“Satan” by C.S. Lewis
Excerpts from Chris Mathews, Modern Satanism: Anatomy of a Radical Subculture
“Protest or Process: Theodicy Responses to Elie Wiesel’s The Trial of God by Dustin Faulstick
ENG 190 Senior Seminar in Literature (Course ID# 3986)
Staff TBA
Mondays 6-8:30
This course is required in the Literature concentration. If you register for this course, and it cancels due to low enrollment, consult the Undergraduate Advisor (Wayne Berninger). If you need it for May graduation, we can arrange for you to take it as a Tutorial. Otherwise, we may ask you to wait until the next time it’s offered.
ENG 191 Senior Seminar in Creative Writing (Course ID# 4289)
Professor John High
Tuesdays & Thursdays 4:30-5:45
This course is required in the Creative Writing concentration. If you register for this course, and it cancels due to low enrollment, consult the Undergraduate Advisor (Wayne Berninger). If you need it for May graduation, we can arrange for you to take it as a Tutorial. Otherwise, we may ask you to wait until the next time it’s offered.
Mondays 6-8:30
This course is required in the Literature concentration. If you register for this course, and it cancels due to low enrollment, consult the Undergraduate Advisor (Wayne Berninger). If you need it for May graduation, we can arrange for you to take it as a Tutorial. Otherwise, we may ask you to wait until the next time it’s offered.
ENG 191 Senior Seminar in Creative Writing (Course ID# 4289)
Professor John High
Tuesdays & Thursdays 4:30-5:45
This course is required in the Creative Writing concentration. If you register for this course, and it cancels due to low enrollment, consult the Undergraduate Advisor (Wayne Berninger). If you need it for May graduation, we can arrange for you to take it as a Tutorial. Otherwise, we may ask you to wait until the next time it’s offered.
ENG 192 Senior Seminar in Writing & Rhetoric (Course ID# 4087)
Staff TBA
Thursdays 6-8:30
Staff TBA
Thursdays 6-8:30
This course is required in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. If you register for this course, and it cancels due to low enrollment, consult the Undergraduate Advisor (Wayne Berninger). If you need it for May graduation, we can arrange for you to take it as a Tutorial. Otherwise, we may ask you to wait until the next time it’s offered.
Honors Courses Taught by English-Department Faculty
When taught by English Department faculty, Honors courses numbered 100 and above may be applied toward the English major or the English minor. Please discuss your plan with Wayne Berninger in the English Department before you register in order to confirm which requirement the course may satisfy. The following are eligible courses being offered in Spring 2015.
HHE 111 Studies in Material Culture (Class ID# 5844)
Professor Leah Dilworth / Mondays 3-5:30
HHE 112 Classics in Performance (Class ID# 5845)
Professor Sealy Gilles / Wednesdays 6-8:30
HHE 114 Post Apartheid in South Africa (Class ID# 5847)Professor Patricia Stephens / M 10-12:30
Graduate Courses -- Spring 2015
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It's time to register
for Spring 2015!
These descriptions are
provided by the instructors teaching the courses.
For more information,
write to them directly.
ENG 502 Writers on Writing (Course ID# 4664)
Professor Lewis Warsh
Tuesdays 6:30-9
This course is open ONLY to students in the Creative Writing MFA Program.
The course will offer readings and discussions with prominent fiction writers and poets. The purpose of the course is to give students a chance to interact with and question a diverse range of visiting guest writers about their processes and techniques in an effort to expand and further develop the students' own writing. As with all of our process courses, the goal is to learn--in this case, first-hand--from other writers and their writings in order to better inform our sense of what it means to be a poet or fiction writer in 2015.
In addition to reading
at least one book by each visiting writer, the students are required to submit
a reading journal at the end of the semester and to complete all the writing
assignments. These assignments will evolve from the ideas and techniques of the
visiting writers and from our class discussions. On days when there are no
visitors we will read and discuss our own work.
The visiting writers
for this semester are Renee Gladman, Eugene Lin, Anne Waldman, Ben Lerner,
Tyrone Williams, Wang Ping, Bill Berkson and Barbara Henning.
RENEE GLADMAN is the
author of six works of prose, most recently a trilogy of short novels, Event
Factory, The Ravickians and Ana Patova Crosses A Bridge. (Dorothy,
2010, 2011, 2013).) Her work occupies the interstices of fiction and poetry,
and pushes toward cities, architecture, and the confusion of the everyday.
Since 2005, she has edited and published Leon Works, a press for experimental
prose and other thought projects. A new novel, Morelia, and a
collection of essay-fictions, Calamities, are forthcoming in 2015.
A 2014-15 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, she
lives in Providence, RI.
EUGENE LIM is the author
of the novels Fog & Car (2008, Ellipsis Press) and The
Strangers (2013, Black Square Editions). His writing has appeared in Fence,
The Denver Quarterly, Jacket2, EXPLORINGfictions, The Brooklyn Rail and
elsewhere. He is founder and editor of Ellipsis Press.
ANNE WALDMAN is a
poet, performer, professor, editor, curator and co-founder with Allen Ginsberg
of the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University where she has worked
for 37 years. Author of more than 40 publications of poetry, her most
recent books include Manatee/Humanity (Penguin Poets 2009), The Iovis
Trilogy (Coffee House Press 2011), Soldatesque/Soldiering (Blaze [Vox]
2012) and the forthcoming Gossamurmur (Penguin
Poets 2013). She has worked extensively with musician Ambrose Bye and their
most recent CD is The Milk of Universal Kindness
(Fast Speaking Music 2011). She is a recipient of the Shelley Memorial
Award for Poetry and currently a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
BEN LERNER is the author of three books of poetry: The
Lichtenberg Figures (2004), Angle of Yaw (2006),
and Mean Free Path (2010), all published by Copper Canyon
Press. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry,
a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, a Howard Foundation Fellow,
and a Guggenheim Fellow. In 2011 he became the first American to win
the Preis der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie. His first
novel, Leaving the Atocha Station (Coffee House, 2011)
won The Believer Book Award and was named a best
book of the year by The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston
Globe, The Guardian, and The New Statesman, among other
publications. His second novel, 10:04, will be published
by Faber/FSG this fall. He lives and teaches in Brooklyn.
TYRONE WILLIAMS
teaches literature and theory at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is
the author of five books of poetry, c.c. (Krupskaya Books,
2002), On Spec (Omnidawn Publishing, 2008), The Hero
Project of the Century (The Backwaters Press, 2009), Adventures
of Pi (Dos Madres Press, 2011) and Howell (Atelos
Books, 2011). He is also the author of several chapbooks, including a prose
eulogy, Pink Tie (Hooke Press, 2011). His website is at http://home.earthlink.net/~suspend/
WANG PING was born in
China and came to the USA in 1985. Her publications include American
Visa (short stories, 1994), Foreign Devil (novel,
1996), Of Flesh and Spirit (poetry, 1998), The Magic
Whip (poetry, 2003), The Last Communist Virgin (stories,
2007), All Roads to Joy: Memories along the Yangtze (forthcoming
2012), all from Coffee House. New Generation: Poetry from China Today (1999),
an anthology she edited and co-translated, was published by Hanging Loose. Flash
Cards: Poems by Yu Jian, co-translation with Ron Padgett, was
published in 2010 from Zephyr. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China (2000,
University of Minnesota Press) won the Eugene Kayden Award for the Best Book in
the Humanities. A paperback edition was published by Random House in 2002. The
Last Communist Virgin won the 2008 Minnesota Book Award and Asian
American Studies Award. She is the recipient of awards from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York
State Council of the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Lannan
Foundation, and the McKnight Artist Fellowship. She is the founder and director
of the Kinship of Rivers project, a five-year project that builds a sense of
kinship among the people who live along the Mississippi and Yangtze rivers
through exchanging gifts of art, poetry, stories, music, dance and food.
BILL BERKSON was born and grew up in New York and has lived in
Northern California since the early 1970s. He is Professor Emeritus at the San
Francisco Art Institute, where he taught art history and literature from 1984
to 2008. His most recent books include: Portrait and Dream: New &
Selected Poems; BILL, a words-and-images collaboration with
Colter Jacobsen; Lady Air; Snippets; Not an Exit, with
drawings by Léonie Guyer; and Repeat After Me, with
watercolors by John Zurier; a new collection of his art writings, For
the Ordinary Artist; and Parties du corps, a selection of
his poetry in French translation. He is working on a set of memoirs entitled Since
When. A new book of poems, Expect Delays, was published by
Coffee House Press in 2014.
BARBARA HENNING is the author of three novels and nine books
of poetry, her most recent collections of poetry and prose, A Swift
Passage (Quale Press 2013) and Cities and Memory (Chax
Press 2010). Born in Detroit, she has lived in New York City since 1983,As a
long-time yoga practitioner, she brings this knowledge and discipline to her
writing and her teaching at Naropa University, writers.com and
Long Island University in Brooklyn, where she is professor emerita.
ENG 523 Fiction Writing
Workshop (Course ID# 4771)
The Narrative Voice
Professor Jessica
Hagedorn
Wednesdays 4-6:30
This course is open ONLY
to students in the Creative Writing MFA Program.
What do we mean by a
distinct narrative voice? How do we create characters that are memorable,
complex, and not necessarily likeable? How do we develop an ear for the music
and poetry of ordinary speech? In this workshop, we will examine the
artistry, narrative strategies and craft elements of a wide range of writers
working in different genres. Participants will compose their own stories, which
will be discussed in class and revised over the semester.
Required Texts:
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Days Of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
White Girls by Hilton Als
Blasted by Sarah Kane
Hawthorn & Child by Keith Ridgway
The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolaño
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
ENG 524 Poetry Writing Workshop (Course ID# 4395)
Crossgenre to
Transgressive
Professor John High
Wednesdays 6:30-9
This course is open ONLY
to students in the Creative Writing MFA Program.
The ability of writers to imagine
what is not the self, to
familiarize
the strange and mystify
the familiar,
is the test of their power. —Toni Morrison
is the test of their power. —Toni Morrison
In Crossgenre to
Transgressive we’ll explore violations of conventional forms in order
to more intimately reveal & manifest the writing & art we most need to
express. Context as text, form as emptiness. Is a poem that requires visuals
less a poem (Blake / Apollinaire), a story or novel that requires poetry less a
story (Howe / Phillips / Davis)? Is there such a thing as a poetic
autobiography (Cha / lê
/ Kingston)? Can a narrative be
told in epistolary exchange (Dostoevsky / Stoker)? Can letters be poems (Rilke
/ Mayer / Novey)? Can multimedia, hypertext, or comic book devices express a
book (Spiegelman / Jackson / Lau)? Are parables, koans and fables viable as
technique in the work of 21st century writers (Borges / Marquez
/ Matthiessen?)? Can past myths and fairy tales be retold (Carson / Coover)?
Are works that transgress the border between prose and prose poetry acceptable
(Toomer / Paz / Maso)? Are poems written as fictional news in the university
recognizable as verse (Bolaño / Creeley)? Rupture is there to expose the cracks in
imagination. On a weekly basis we’ll experiment with letters, postcard stories,
pocket prose poems, mobile text flash fictions, short films written for paper,
contemplative prayers, epistolary verse, episodes & fragments, re-imagined
instruction manuals, fictional autobiographies, poetic & spiritual memoirs,
& any other ‘form’ that transgresses & helps expand & realize the
book you are writing. The goal will be to create a chapbook of new writings and
a critical “artistic statement” that will be applicable to your thesis in
whatever shape that eventually requests of each writer.
ENG 527 Topics in Professional Writing: Writing and Style (Course ID# 5450)
Professor Michael Bokor
Mondays 4-6:30
This course was cancelled due to under-enrollment.
This course was cancelled due to under-enrollment.
You may be familiar with
the rhetorical concept of “style” and even have your own “style” of writing. A
writer cannot choose between using “style” and leaving it out of the discursive
event. But what exactly is “style” and where does it come from? What is valued
as “style”?
Focusing on the role of
the English language in discursive practices, this course explores the
cultural, theoretical, and practical perspectives of “style” to help you
understand fully the relationship between language, culture, and personality
and how these forces converge to define and shape the writer’s projection of
individuality (commonly perceived as “style.”
Some of the pertinent
questions to consider include:
Is style “innocent” or
is it the reflection of the personality, taste, and experience of the writer of
the text or the culture of the writer’s society? Is it true that style is the
writer in disguise?
Does style exist on its
own, independent of the writer? Before the work, in the work, or outside it?
What shapes style? Is it
the writer’s purpose and attitude to the audience?
Through various assignments, you will interrogate the functions of style and learn the numerous ways in which writers adapt their expressions (texts) to their purposes. By the end of the semester, you should:
- Develop a high degree of clarity, fluency, and
appropriateness in your writing;
- Learn how to appreciate style within the context of
genre-specific discourses; and
- Use knowledge on style to improve your own writing.
This course is
particularly good for students seeking opportunities to improve their
rhetorical skills for effective academic, creative, and professional writing.
ENG 620 Theories of Rhetoric & Teaching Writing (Class ID# 5905)
Professor Patricia Stephens
Thursdays 4-6:30
We will begin the
semester by focusing on a few key questions: How (and by whom) has
rhetoric been defined over time? How and why have these definitions
changed and evolved? How do we, in this class, define
rhetoric? What role does rhetoric play in the teaching of reading
and writing? In what ways is rhetoric useful, both as a tool and as
a discipline of study? Our readings in the beginning of the course –
from the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, and Quintillian to the feminist, medieval
works of Christine de Pizan -- will lay the foundation for our examination of
rhetorical trends from the 19th Century to the present. Readings
will include but not be limited to 19th Century rhetoricians
like Blair, Campbell, Grimké, and Douglass as well as texts by contemporary and
postmodern rhetoricians such as Burke, Toulmin, Foucault, Cixous, Gates,
Anzaldua, and others. Throughout, we will study influential
teachers of Rhetoric and Writing, noting how rhetorical theories informed
teaching practices at various universities, including (but not limited to)
Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wiley College (an historically Black college in
Marshall, TX), and others.
ENG 636 Seminar in Literary Periods & Movements
Topic: Harlem
Renaissance Fiction (Course ID# 5904)
Professor Louis
Parascandola
Mondays 6:30-9
This course will examine the novels and short fiction of the leading as well as lesser writers of the Harlem Renaissance, arguably the greatest period in African American literature. We will read the novels Quicksand by Nella Larsen, Home to Harlem by Claude McKay, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Short stories by such authors as Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Eric Walrond, Rudolph Fisher, Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, Dorothy West, and Richard Bruce Nugent will also be discussed. We will contextualize the works by discussing essays by, among others, W.E.B. Dubois, Alain Locke, Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. Assignments will include one presentation in class, a couple of shorter essays, and one longer research paper. It is possible to substitute a lesson plan on one or two of the works or a creative piece influenced by the writings in the course.
ENG 700 Practicum: Teaching Composition (Course ID# 4203)
Professor Donald McCrary
Tuesdays 4-6:30
The course will prepare students to teach in the LIU/Brooklyn Writing Program. The course readings, discussions, exercises, and projects will serve to illuminate the theories and practices of teaching writing. The course will examine important teaching of writing issues such as constructing course syllabi, creating integrated reading and writing assignments, promoting process writing, responding to student papers, using technology, managing student behavior, and contemplating the linguistic needs and abilities of a multicultural student population.
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