Course Catalog

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Course Catalog

EMILY DICKINSON: LIFE AND AFTERLIFE (CW5011)

The course is based on gaining a deeper understanding of Emily Dickinson and her life, particularly in relation to American literature, history, and the visual arts. In doing so, students will use several different modes of expression and articulation to present their thoughts on Emily Dickinson. There will be written responses to specific aspects of her work, creative exercises based on her life as well as principles at work in her work-the latter will be particularly helpful in understanding her work. Students will have the opportunity to explore video and visual arts as modes of thinking critically and creatively. Each week, one student will be responsible for presenting a curation of poems on a particular theme.

INDIA LITERARY PRACTICUM (CW5012)

The India Literary Practicum offers students a truly multilingual and international approach to creative writing, translation, and publishing. In
this three-week iteration of the Fieldwork Module, students will travel to India for a deep immersion in two different literary and artistic communities. Convening first in France, students will travel to India for two weeks and two days. They will spend time in Odisha and Bangalore, where they will gather inspiration for creative work and get to know more about the field of publishing in both international and regional context. Creative writing exercises will be interspersed with talks and meetings with editors, translators, and agents. Students will read contemporary Indian poetry and prose and interact with communities working in different languages and cities. They will maintain a creative journal of their work, participate in discussions, and write a hybrid, self-reflective essay at the end of the semester.
Offered during the summer and possible during the winter break as well, this course welcomes students from other AMICAL and ECOLAS institutions.

MFA MODULE (CW5020)

Topics for these intensive, practical modules change every semester. May be taken twice for credit.

GOTHIC FICTION: THE LITERATURE OF EXCESS (CW5054)

Monsters, vampires, hauntings, demons; persecution, murder, rape, incarceration, torture – it is to the dark side of the imagination that this course is devoted. It seeks to open students to something of the history and genealogy of our fascination with excess, with the supernatural, with terror and horror, by tracing the development of what becomes a discernible genre from its inception through to its late bloom in the Victorian era.

ULYSSES, MODERNISM, POSTMODERNISM, AND NOW (CW5073)

James Joyce’s _Ulysses_, cataloguing life in Dublin in 1904, is one of the great modernist novels, aligning artistic creativity with the opening of new political and social possibilities. Through slow attentive reading of Joyce’s novel, and extensive creative experiment taking Ulysses as a model, students will explore ways in which variations in literary style intensify relations to local spaces and global forces, and encode responses to the difficulties and opportunities of late capitalism.

POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES AND THEORY (CW5081)

Any text that speaks truth to power and gives voice to the voiceless has affinities with postcolonial studies, if not a claim to being postcolonial. This course will address key concepts in postcolonial studies to interrogate representations of race, gender, colonial capitalism and the environment. Straddling languages, genres, cultures and continents, our texts create a space for hybrid identities. No prerequisites.

TOPICS IN CREATIVE WRITING (CW5091)

Topics vary by semester

THESIS (CW5095)

This course marks the culmination of a student's graduate studies in creative writing. Offered in the last semester of the final year of their studies, this course will guide students as they put together their book-length MFA thesis under the supervision of their mentor. The course will conclude with a final presentation that is open to the public.

INTERNSHIP (CW5098)

This four-credit internship option offers MFA students the chance to work in creative fields, whether literary programming for cultural institutions, curation, work with agents, editorships, or magazine work.