The following courses are open to students registered in the MFA Program. Some space may be available to English MA students by permission of Lauren Grodstein.
Craft: Poetic Forms
56:200:511:01 T 3:00-5:40
Pardlo
Think of form as a kind of attire: we can tell a lot about a poem by the way it is dressed. Some poems are decked out in uniform and regalia, while others might sport a patchwork of thrift store-chic and bespoke designs. What can we read in poetic form relative to content, and how can we use form deliberately so that our poems don’t look like we’re forcing them into musty hand-me-downs? MA students may register with permission of the MFA Director.
Fiction Workshop
56:200:518:01 Th 3:00-5:40
Grodstein
Students will submit stories or novel excerpts for critique by their classmates and the professor. The workshop will be complemented by analysis of published fiction.
Creative Nonfiction
Life Writing
56:200:529:01 M 6:00-8:40
Barbarese
In some very obvious sense, all writing is creative, and with few exceptions very little (if any?) creative writing is not autobiographical. A workshop whose principal focus is student work, the course will examine the boundaries separating fiction and autobiography and how those boundaries are measured, blurred, or ignored. It includes an introduction to stylistics, a brief overflight of the history and meaning of CNF and its emergence from parent models, and readings in the genre. Weekly discussions of student work and a final project.
Craft: Point of View
56:200:568:01 M 3:00-5:40
Zeidner
This craft class will look at the surprisingly complex questions about how fiction uses narrative point of view. We’ll discuss the differences between omniscient and third person limited viewpoints, first person, the notion of reliability in narration, and many other issues, including the voices of children and talking chimps.
Special Topics in Craft: Writing Music
56:200:573:01 T 6:00-8:40
Rosal
This course will take a broad approach to the intersection between music and writing. We will look at many writers who write about music for sure and and the variations of music writing from one literary genre and form to another. We’ll also think about music itself as a cousin to literary composition and we’ll ask what we can learn about our own aesthetics —both conceptually and practically — from the history and craft of composers and musicians. Our study will likely include work from Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), James Baldwin, Ishmael Reed, John Cage, and others. Open to MA students. Counts toward the MA Writing Studies Track.
Final Creative Thesis
56:200:651:01 BA Barbarese
56:200:651:02 BA Black
56:200:651:03 BA Funderburg
56:200:651:05 BA Pardlo
56:200:651:06 BA Rosal
56:200:651:07 BA Zeidner
Thesis: Before registering for the thesis class, the MFA student must seek out and request an MFA professor to advise his or her thesis. The student must then register for the thesis class under the name of his or her adviser.