Sherry Antonini

In this course, students will explore their creativity and develop a unique voice through engaging exercises such as journaling, freewriting, writing inspired by music, and exploring memories and dreams. Participants will experience the exhilarating process of editing, revising, and workshopping their writing alongside their peers, fostering a supportive and collaborative environment. They will learn to provide constructive feedback on others' work and craft captivating short stories, monologues, poetry, and personal essays. Students will push the boundaries of original and individual expression throughout the course while preparing for college-level writing. With guidance from faculty and peer support, students will share their literary creations in class and complete assigned reading and writing exercises designed to clarify, expand, and challenge their written expressions.

Students will work to improve their writing skills while pushing their creative limits in this dynamic writing course. Designed for those who want to investigate writing through experimentation with style, format, and media, students explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and hybrid practices as they investigate the many intersections between visual art and language, such as comics, artists¿ books, film, and performance.
Through traditional and unconventional forms of writing, students develop their own voice and vision, express ideas in new ways, and give their writing a new creative edge. With faculty guidance and peer support, students share their literary efforts in class and are assigned reading and writing exercises to clarify, expand, and challenge written expressions.

*NOTE* Some previous writing experience is beneficial.

This course will focus on texts by ancient and medieval women dating from the earliest years of recorded writings and spanning time up to the Renaissance. Who were the women writing during those mysterious periods? To whom were they speaking and what did they dare to say? For some of them, relatively few of their works have survived for us to read, so our investigation will include consideration of a combination of factors that are relevant to each such as historical perspectives, specific life circumstances, and, of course, the content of their writing. Writers we will study will include Sappho, Sei Shonagon, Hildegard of Bingen, Christine de Pizan, and Akka Mahadevi, among others. As a First Year Seminar I course, the essay writing focus of this class will be to develop and build skills in writing response and analytical essays related to assigned readings, research, and class discussion. The final project will be a research-based presentation, with a creative component.

Musicality and an exquisite choice of words, sensory detail, and form¿the elements of masterful crafting in poetry offer a flight into worlds both familiar and unfamiliar and language for experiences which are often otherwise wordless. In this course students will consider a range of poems across the timeline of literature to learn how to read poetry deeply and thoroughly, both for content and to recognize craft as it supports meaning. Some poets likely to be considered are Sappho, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Julia Alvarez, Jericho Brown, Ocean Vuong, Jo Harjo, and Amanda Gorman, among others. The work of this course will involve assigned readings, related research, and presentations. Students will be expected to write essays based on course content that are developed from early draft through final revision stages to total 15-20 pages of writing, as well as engage in writing exercises and discussions.

In this beginning workshop, we will engage in generative sessions that facilitate writerly observation and curiosity to spark new writing. Ongoing journaling exercises, observational walks, deep listening activities, and ekphrastic writing at museum and campus galleries will prompt writing ideas that spring from paying attention and seeing the familiar as refreshed and redefined. In tandem with these sessions, we¿ll read and discuss excerpts from Alexandra Horowitz¿s book, On Looking: A Walker¿s Guide to the Art of Observation. We¿ll also investigate and analyze examples of poetry and prose rooted in similar aspects of noticing by a wide range of writers such as Sei Shonagon, David Sedaris, Mary Oliver, Stuart Dybek, Julia Alvarez, and Aminatta Forna. Students will create early drafts based on their individual experiences and free writing responses to our generative sessions and discussions. Then, with a focus on both building strong drafts through revision and cultivating a keener sense of individual voice as it surfaces and continues to develop, we¿ll workshop student writing across the semester. Students should expect to write daily in a journal, participate in frequent class walks outside, and create several drafts of fresh writing toward finished pieces as a final project portfolio.

This blended academic/studio course offers Scholars Program students an opportunity to explore and analyze art forms that incorporate text within interdisciplinary projects. Our academic investigations will serve as a base of information and inspiration to facilitate students¿ processes of writing and making in creating text-inclusive interdisciplinary work. We¿ll engage in viewing, listening, reading, writing responses, and discussing pieces created by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Robert Ashley, Patti Smith, Kurt Schwitters, Idris Goodwin, Claudia Rankine, and Emil Ferris. We¿ll then consider what we¿ve seen, learned, and discussed as we work in the studio, moving across generative exercises, writing workshop sessions, and individual making time focused on developing and fine-tuning both words and structures for new projects. Students will experiment with their writing in combinations involving 2d and 3d image, sound, and performance ideas, with critiques as follow-up feedback. Students should expect to work loosely, but passionately, to create distinct trial projects reflecting assigned investigations, as well as meet related reading and written response deadlines along the timeline of the semester. Final projects will present further steps of revision toward a chosen finished piece.

This blended academic/studio course offers Scholars Program students an opportunity to explore and analyze art forms that incorporate text within interdisciplinary projects. Our academic investigations will serve as a base of information and inspiration to facilitate students¿ processes of writing and making in creating text-inclusive interdisciplinary work. We¿ll engage in viewing, listening, reading, writing responses, and discussing pieces created by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Robert Ashley, Patti Smith, Kurt Schwitters, Idris Goodwin, Claudia Rankine, and Emil Ferris. We¿ll then consider what we¿ve seen, learned, and discussed as we work in the studio, moving across generative exercises, writing workshop sessions, and individual making time focused on developing and fine-tuning both words and structures for new projects. Students will experiment with their writing in combinations involving 2d and 3d image, sound, and performance ideas, with critiques as follow-up feedback. Students should expect to work loosely, but passionately, to create distinct trial projects reflecting assigned investigations, as well as meet related reading and written response deadlines along the timeline of the semester. Final projects will present further steps of revision toward a chosen finished piece.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision.

Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.