English 502: Writers on
Writing
Professor Lewis Warsh
Mondays 6:20 - 8:30 pm
The course will offer readings
and discussions with prominent fiction writers and poets. The writers will meet
with us weekly during the course of the semester. 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 student's 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 2009.
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 Bernadette Mayer, Paul Beatty, Bill Berkson, Lynne Tillman,
Kristin Prevallet, Renee Gladman, Anselm Berrigan, Gloria Frym, Patricia Spears
Jones and Linh Dinh.
The schedule is
as follows:
Jan 26 no visitor
Feb 2 Bernadette Mayer, The State Poetry Forest
Feb 9 Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle
Feb 17 Bill Berkson, Our Friends Will Pass Among You Silently
Feb 23 no visitor
March 2 Lynne Tillman, American Genius
March 9 Kristin Prevallet; I, Afterlife: Essay In Mourning Time
March 16 Spring Break
March 23 Renee Gladman, Newcomer Can’t Swim
March 30 Anselm Berrigan, Zero Star Hotel
April 6 Gloria Frym, Solution Simulacra
April 13 no visitor
April 20 Patricia Spears Jones, Femme du Monde
April 27 Linh Dinh, American Tatts
May 4 no visitor
Bios of the Visiting
Writers
Bernadette Mayer is the author of numerous books of poetry
and prose, including Midwinter Day,Studying Hunger, Memory, A
Bernadette Mayer Reader, Proper Name, Scarlet Tanager and Another
Smashed Pinecone. A new book of poems, The Poetry State Forest,
is forthcoming from New Directions. She has co-edited the journals 0-9 and United
Artists. She was the director of The Poetry Project in New York from
1980-84.
Paul Beatty is the author of three novels, The
White Boy Shuffle, Tuff and Slumberland; and
two books of poems, Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker,
Joker, Deuce. In 1990 he was crowned the first ever Grand Poetry Slam
Champion of the Nuyorican Poets Café and has performed on MTV and PBS (in the
series The United States of Poetry). He is also the editor of Hokum:
An Anthology of African-American Humor.
Bill Berkson, poet and art critic, long associated with the
New York School of poets, is the author of sixteen books of poetry--including Serenade, Blue
is the Hero, Our Friends Will Pass Among You Silently, Fugue
State, and Hymns of St. Bridget (in collaboration with
Frank O'Hara)--and two volumes of art cricitism, The Sweet Singer of
Modernism and Sudden Addresses. He is a contributing
editor for Art and America and was Paul Mellon Fellow for 2006
at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has taught at the San
Francisco Art Institute since 1984. His Selected Poems is
forthcoming in 2009.
Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer and cultural
critic. She is the author of five novels--Haunted Houses, Motion
Sickness, Cast in Doubt, No Lease on Life, and American
Genius; a book of stories,Absence Makes the Heart; and a book of
essays, The Broad Picture. She was a 2006 recipient of a Guggenheim
Fellowship and is currently Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of
English at SUNY Albany.
Kristin Prevallet is a poet and essayist. Her books include Perturbation, My
Sister: A Study of Max Ernst's Hundred Headless Woman, Scratch Sides, Shadow
Evidence Intelligence, and I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning. She
is the editor of A Helen Adam Reader: Selected Poems and Collages
and Music, published by The National Poetry Foundation, and is founder and
former editor of the journal Apex of the M. She has taught at Bard
College, the New School, Naropa University, and currently at St. John's
University in Queens.
Renee Gladman, born in Atlanta, Ga. in 1971, is a poet,
fiction writer and the editor of Leroy Works, a book publishing
project devoted to innovative writing. Her own books include Arlem, Not
Right Now,Juice, The Activist, and most recently Newcomer
Can't Swim. She is Assistant Professor of Literary Arts at Brown
University.
Anselm Berrigan is a poet and teacher who was raised and
lives in New York City's East Village. His recent publications include Have
A Good One (Cy Press, 2008), Some Notes on My Programming(Edge,
2006) and Zero Star Hotel (Edge, 2002). To Hell with
Sleep, a twenty-page poem written just after the birth of his daughter in
late 2007 will be published in early 2009 by Letter Machine Editions. Berrigan
was Artistic Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church from 2003-2007
and co-edited, with Alice Notley and Edmund Berrigan, The Collected
Poems of Ted Berrigan (U. of California, 2005). He currently teaches
at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and at Bard College's summer MFA program.
Gloria Frym is a poet and fiction writer. Her most
recent books of poetry are The Lost Sappho Poems(Effing Press,
2007) and Solution Simulacra (United Artists Books, 2006). A
previous collection of poems,Homeless at Home (Creative Arts Book
Company), won an American Book Award in 2002. She is also the author of two
critically acclaimed collections of short stories--Distance No Object (City
Lights Books), and How I Learned (Coffee House Press)--as well
as several other volumes of poetry, including By Ear(Sun & Moon
Press); Back to Forth (The Figures); Impossible Affection (Christopher's Books); and a book of interviews, Second
Stories: Conversations with Women Artists (Chronicle Books). She is a
recipient of two Fund for Poetry Awards, the Walter & Elise Haas Creative
Work Fund Grant, the San Francisco State University Poetry Center Book Award,
and several California Arts Council grants to teach poetry writing to jail
inmates. From 1987 to 2002, she was core faculty in the Poetics Program at New
College of California in San Francisco. She is Associate Professor in the MFA
and BA Writing & Literature Programs at California College of the Arts in
the San Francisco Bay Area.
Patricia Spears Jones is a poet, playwright, cultural
commentator. She is author of two poetry collections,Femme du Monde and The
Weather That Kills; and two chapbooks, Repuestas! and Mythologizing
Always. She edited the literary magazine, W.B., co-edited Ordinary
Women: New York City Women Poets, and serves as contributing editor to Bomb and Heliotrope.
Mabou Mines commissioned "The Brooklyn Song" for Song for New
York: What Women Do When Men Sit Knitting, and the play Mother,which
premiered at La Mama ETC. She has taught at the Parsons School of Design and
Sarah Lawrence. She served on poetry and literary panels at the 9th National
Black Writers Conference, Medgar Evers College, and the 16th Gwendolyn Brooks
Conference at Chicago State University.
Linh Dinh was born in Vietnam in 1963 and came to
the US in 1975. He is the author of two collections of stories, Fake
House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004); four books of
poems, All Around What Empties Out (2003), American
Tatts (2005), Borderless Bodies (2006) and Jam
Alerts (2007); with a novel,Love Like Hate, scheduled to be
released in 2009 by Seven Stories Press. . Linh Dinh is also the editor of the
anthologies Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996)
and Three Vietnamese Poets(2001); and translator of Night,
Fish and Charlie Parker: The Poetry of Phan Nhien Hao (2006). His
poems and stories have been translated into Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch,
German, Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic, Icelandic and Finnish, and he has been
invited to read his works all over the US, London, Cambridge, Paris, Berlin and
Reykjavik. He has also published widely in Vietnamese.
English 520: Creative Non-Fiction Writing Workshop
The Art of the Real
Visiting Professor: Jaime Manrique
Thursdays, 4:10 -6:00 pm
Nonfiction differs from
fiction in that the overriding aim of the nonfiction writer is to unearth the
truth, using observation and deduction as two of his main tools. The nonfiction
writer seeks to create a piece of writing that can be as compelling, as poetic,
and as beautifully shaped as the best fiction--in other words, to create a work
of art. Nonfiction goes beyond journalism (although it can use many of its
techniques) in that it is at its best when it is most personal, when the reader
senses the writer standing behind every sentence she writes.
Students will write
memoirs, profiles, and literary or political personal essays. We will also
devote part of each workshop to the discussion of a classic essay. Particular
emphasis will be placed on revision. Required text: The Art of the
Personal Essay, edited and with an introduction by Phillip Lopate.
Enrollment limited to 12 students.
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.
English 523: Fiction
Writing Workshop
Writing Through the Eyes of Another
Professor Lewis Warsh
Wednesdays, 4:10 -6:00 pm
How can we imagine
characters who are the opposite genders as ourselves? Although Gustav Flaubert
often exclaimed "Je suis Madame Bovary," how close did he really come
to getting into the head and heart of a woman? The workshop will focus on how
we write about what we don't know--not only from the point of view of gender,
but class and ethnic backgrounds as well. Every week I will pose questions and
assign writing exercises and readings that explode (and explore) the
limitations of the self as subject matter. We will look at texts by Marguerite
Duras, Roberto Bolaño, W.G. Sebald, Lydia Davis, Clarice Lispector and Jack
Kerouac among others. The assignments will point towards the possible
variousness of characters and the multiple points of view that can appear in a
work of fiction. Much of the class time will be spent reading our work as well
as discussing our ongoing projects as fiction writers.
English 524: Poetry
Writing Workshop
Professor John High
Thursdays, 6:10 -8:30 pm
Coming Back To The Line
As Place in Poetry
Poetry has always served
as a place for expression that cannot be uttered in prose, in stories or
essays, and in the 20th Century it became refuge for the mapping of language
outside of film and other visual mediums as well. The unsayable as home to
poetry: the line, that essential music of the poem, is often (as with its
cousin in prose, the sentence) neglected in the larger discussions of the
meaning and underlying technique or structure of poetry. Yet from Homer,
Sappho, and Li Po through Shakespeare and Yeats up to contemporary masters of
poetic expression, the line itself exposes the poem's inner mechanics and
elusive mystery. Its sculpting allows the inclusiveness of vastly differing
voices, traditions, lineages, and movements. In mapping the geography and music
of the line, we will road trip together and make linguistic discoveries of
time, meaning, and emotion. Without a heightened awareness of the line, our own
poems suffer the delusion of endless repetitions and received language.
The focus of our
workshop will be on the line then, which is not to say that our discussions
will not include every aspect of craft. Rather, we will begin by looking
closely at each line in every stanza and study how the line is or isn't
facilitating the poem's entry into the larger context we are striving to reveal
in our work. We'll look at other poets ranging from the ancient to the
contemporary: Homer, Sappho, Shakespeare, Arthur Rimbaud, George Oppen, Louis
Zukofsky, Emily Dickinson, Paul Celan, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Osip Mandelstam,
Aimé Césaire, Edmond Jabes, C.D. Wright, Roberto Bolaño, Alice Notley, Akilah
Oliver, Nina Iskrenko, Norma Cole, Renee Gladman, Ivan Zhdanov, Cole Swensen,
Simon Pettet, Norma Cole, Will Alexander, Forest Gander, and Fanny Howe, among
others.
In the book you are
writing, what underlies the voice, time, being and place of the work? We'll
begin here and discuss the act of writing poetry as one of risk-taking and
investigation, of reinventing poetic language in our own discoveries as we let
our poems become truly our own and something new in this act.
A final chapbook,
consisting of all your new, edited poems, is due at the end of the semester. We
will also schedule a party and reading of our work at The Bowery Poetry Club.
English 525: Playwriting
Workshop II
Professor Jessica Hagedorn
Wednesdays, 6:10 -8:30 pm
In this workshop, we
will continue to explore what it means to compose and revise scenes for the
theatre, how to create characters who engage and surprise us, how to develop an
ear for the poetry of ordinary speech and develop an appreciation for the power
of silence. Expect in-class writing and visualization exercises, close readings
and discussions of plays, monologues and excerpted scenes by major contemporary
playwrights; expect to write a five-to-ten minute piece to be performed, using
your fellow students as actors. Field trip to one Off-Broadway play, TBA.
Registration limited.
English 527:
Professional Writing Workshop
Professor Michael Bokor
Thursdays, 6:10 - 8:30 pm
This course is
recommended to students looking for opportunities to improve their own styles
to be able to function more effectively in academic, creative, and professional
writing.
You may be familiar with
the rhetorical concept of "style", and you may have your own
"style" of writing. Such texts as a student's one-paragraph essay, a
business letter, and a laboratory report have "style" just as does a
novel by Dickens, a play by Shakespeare, or a poem by Milton. The 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 in both the Western and non-Western
world, this course explores the cultural, theoretical, and practical
perspectives of style. It examines this concept and seeks to help students
explore possibilities for understanding fully the relationship between
language, culture, and personality and how these forces converge to define and
shape the writer's style. The course is designed to help students examine the
factors that determine an author's choice of style (manner--or the how) and how
that choice affects the substance (matter--or the what), the audience, and the
entire communicative event.
Some of the pertinent
questions that will drive teaching and learning in this course include:
1) Is style
"innocent" or is it the reflection of the personality, taste, and
experience of the author of the text? Or is it the reflection of the culture of
the writer's society? Is it true that style is the author or the author's
society in disguise?
2) Does style exist on its own, independent of the author? Before the work, in
the work, or outside it?
3) What shapes style? Is
it the author's purpose and attitude to the audience?
Students will
interrogate the functions of style and learn the numerous ways in which authors
adapt their expressions (texts) to their purposes. They will also learn how to
appreciate style within the context of genre-specific discourses and how to use
that knowledge to improve their own style(s).
English 624: West Indian
Immigrants in the Harlem Renaissance
Professor Louis Parascandola
Mondays, 4:10 -6:00 pm
Anglophone (English-speaking)
Caribbean immigrants played a vital, if often neglected, role during the Harlem
Renaissance, an important literary and cultural movement between 1917-1935.
There were, in fact, over 36,000 foreign born Blacks, mostly West Indians, in
Harlem in 1920. These immigrants, despite often facing severe discrimination,
had a significant effect on American culture and history. We will discuss
Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, particularly
examining essays (and poems) defining his role as a facilitator of the Harlem
Renaissance/New Negro movements. We will also study fiction and poetry by
Claude McKay, one of the seminal figures of the Harlem Renaissance, fiction by
Nella Larsen (of West Indian ancestry), short stories by Eric Walrond,
fiction/essays by J.A. Rogers and Amy Jacques Garvey (Marcus' second wife), and
drama by Eulalie Spence, the only Harlem Renaissance woman playwright to set
her work primarily in Harlem. Finally, we will discuss the views of leading
African Americans--including W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Rudolph
Fisher--on these pioneering immigrants. Readings will include McKay's novel Home
to Harlem, Larsen's novel Quicksand, Rogers' mixed genre From
"Superman" to Man, and selections from the anthology "Look
for Me all Around You": Anglophone Caribbean Immigrants in the Harlem
Renaissance. Assignments include several short papers (2-3 pages), an oral
presentation, and a longer (12-15 pages) term project.
English 643: Shakespeare
Professor Jonathan Haynes
Tuesdays, 6:10 -8:00 pm
This course will provide
an overview of Shakespeare's dramatic career, looking for the coherence of his
artistic vision as it unfolds through the forms of comedy, history play,
tragedy, and romance, and setting him in his historical context. Themes of
particular interest will include the figure of the stranger or outsider, the
representation of politics, the gendered character of heroism, and the role of
women. We will read The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer
Night's Dream, Henry IV Part I, Henry V, The
Merchant of Venice,Othello, King Lear, Antony
and Cleopatra, and The Tempest.
English 700: Practicum in the Teaching of Writing
Professor Donald McCrary
Thursdays, 4:10 -6:00 pm
This course prepares
graduate English students to teach in the LIU/Brooklyn Writing Program by
examining the theories and practices that guide the program, including social
constructionism, process writing, portfolio assessment, and thematic
course-design; and applying those theories and practices to the creation of a
viable English 16 syllabus. In addition, the course will explore managing the
classroom, creating/integrating reading and writing assignments, responding to
student texts, teaching grammar, organizing/facilitating teacher-student
conferences, and addressing the linguistic issues of a multicultural student
population.
Possible texts for the
course might include Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts by
Anthony Petrosky and David Batholomae, The St. Martin's Guide to
Teaching Writing by Cheryl Glenn et al., and Portfolio
Assessment in the Reading and Writing Classroom by Robert J. Tierney,
Mark A. Carter, and Laura E. Desai.
English 707: Methods and
Criticism
Professor Maria McGarrity
Tuesdays, 4:10 -6:00 pm
This Methods of Research
and Criticism course, subtitled informally as "The Global Caribbean,"
will focus its keen critical eye on Derek Walcott's pan-Caribbean epic verse
novel, Omeros. During the term, students will analyze the
structure, rhyme, and organization of the work at the same time that students
investigate the global cultural matrix that creates this work. Students will be
individually assigned sections of the novel for close reading, to compile
footnotes as appropriate, and obtain related cultural artifacts, but will also
write a more comprehensive critical essay on the entire work of approximately
20 pages, using the theoretical lens of their choice. In a group, students will
integrate their individual work for a presentation to the seminar of a critical
edition for Walcott's masterpiece. We will pay special attention to theories of
Gender/Sexuality, Postcolonialism, and New Historicism during the term. Please
note, students will be evaluated individually but will be asked to work in a
spirit of good citizenship as a member of a larger group.
Requirements:
Individual Presentation
15%
Individual Paper/Research materials 45%
Group Critical Edition/Presentation 30%
Participation 10%
