Beth Nugent

This is a class for students to work on a single, extended writing (or writing-related) project of any sort, involving any media- this can include traditional literary forms (linked short prose works, poem sequences)- as well as cross-disciplinary forms (e.g. graphic novel, performance, music or sound piece) and non- traditional formats and venues- (public space writing project, zines, comics). Your project can be made up of many disparate parts, but those parts should be part of a single whole. Your project does not have to focus primarily on writing, but writing should be an integral part of the project's conception. This is not a traditional workshop that focuses on presentation and group critique of work, but rather a forum for articulating and discussing ideas and process as you work through a project-so while the class will include presentation and discussion of your work, we will approach it from a process- oriented perspective that focuses on open-ended questioning and exploring rather than intervention and critique. You can be at any stage in your project (beginning, middle, end), but if you haven't begun it, you should have articulated a clear enough sense of it both to begin work by the first class and remain committed to it through the last. Graduate students from all disciplines, working in all media, are welcome.

Open to anyone working in long fictional narrative form (novel, novella, epic poem, etc). While the primary reading is work written by members of the class, the course will also attend to questions of process--that of writing a novel (novella, etc), but also the act of reading one as it's being written, keeping in mind the issues that sometimes arise in beginning and sustaining work on a long narrative in an environment of regular critique. In some ways the class is meant to intervene in the usual modes of (institutional) critique-- not to dismiss them outright, but rather to foreground an awareness of them. How, for example, does writing a novel/long narrative in an academic institution differ from writing one outside it? What are some of the implicit assumptions about writing- and reading- a novel in this context? Given that, in this setting, writing a novel is at least a partially public process, how can a writer make the best use of that process?
We will read three or four short novels, in addition to student work, including: GEOMETRIC REGIONAL NOVEL by Gert Jonke, THE PASSION ACCORDING TO GH by Clarice Lispector and THE PASSPORT by Herta Muller.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.