Spring 2007 Courses
ENGL 120-01: Intro to Creative Writing (Wang)
M/W/F 2:20-3:20pm, Old Main 011
This writing workshop explores the artistic modes of expression in poetry, fiction and non-fiction, using environmental issues as themes and topics. We'll examine Subhankar Banerjee's photographic journey on the arctic national wildlife refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, a book where form and content, art and politics, vision and determination meet seamlessly. We will look into the core of environmental issues--the interaction between culture and nature, and how humans has been affected by the natural environment in the past and also how we have affected that environment and with what results.
Using Banerjee's project as a model, we'll choose our own research topics and fieldwork in the twin cities and the surrounding areas on nature and industry, land, water and forest resources, human population growth, agriculture, urban/suburb expansion, tour industry, biodiversity, energy use, climate change, and environmental health.
We'll also learn how writers and poets across cultures create their imagery, figurative language, sound, rhythmic structures, voice, plot, character, point of view, etc., and how they use these techniques as carriers to reach their artistic goals. In other words, techniques, no matter how basic and important, are not their own ends in writing, but should be cultivated and used as tools to find our voices, and to reach as many people as possible with our ideas.
All writing assignments (poetry, stories, and essays) will be somewhat related to and/or based on the environmental topics you have chosen and researched. And all the assignments will be read and workshopped in class as part of the writing/editing process. Such practice is crucial to train your ear for the sound, rhythm and the flow of a poem and prose. It also trains both the reader and listeners the art of criticism and editing.
6-9 hours of research, fieldwork, reading and writing assignments outside of class per week are expected. And you are expected to enter this course with well-developed skills in research, field-work, some basic knowledge in photography and photoshop, and close reading of literature and theory, and most important, with a passion and devotion for environmental issues as well as reading and writing.
Texts
- 1. Seasons of Life and Land: a photographic journey by Subhankar Banerjee, The Mountaineers’ Books
- 2. Post Modern American Poetry, ed. Paul Hoover, Norton Anthology
- 3. Sudden Fiction, International, ed. Robert Shapard and James Thomas, Norton
- 4. Handouts of essays and personal essays
Spring 2007 Course Listings
|
