This course involves advanced study and practice of writing and is intended for students who wish to develop their writing and who seek to explore and utilize writing as an important aspect of inquiry.
Typically, the course will involve the study and practice of one mode or genre of writing—although the number of genres or modes that students may practice in a single course will be at the instructor’s discretion—and the study and practice of interpretive or reflexive prose that analyzes, synthesizes, and reflectively engages with the mode or genre under consideration. Genres may include:
- the screenplay
- the poem
- the personal essay
- literary journalism
- the scholarly essay
- short fiction
- the book or movie review, etc.
The class will incorporate the study of global traditions (that is, across several large geographic regions) in which the particular mode or genre is practiced and studied. All classes will involve the student in some form of collaboration such as group presentations, team-teaching a text, interviewing same subject, co-authoring, etc., and will also include some treatment of how writing in the mode under consideration and its analysis is transferable to other kinds of writing practices.