Suzanne Scanlon

This FYS I class explores the art of writing about feelings. Readings will include work by Jenny Odell, Jenny Zhang, Zadie Smith, and others. FYS I develops college-level writing skills and prepares one for FYS II and upper-level Liberal Arts courses. In our FYS I class, we will develop our critical reading, writing, and thinking skills by focusing on writing as a process. Students can expect to compose and revise 15-20 pages in multidraft formal writing assignments in addition to homework and in-class writing. Peer review and one-on-one writing conferences with the teacher should also be expected.

FYS II will build upon the foundational writing skills students began learning in FYS I, with the introduction of more rigorous argumentation and research. Eventually, writing will be more self-directed in this FYS II class, which investigates the phenomenon of life writing, such as in work by Maxine Hong Kingston, Maggie Nelson, and others. In their research and writing students can expect to explore a topic related to life writing that matters most to them and/or that inspires their curiosity. Students should expect to write 20 to 25 pages of formal, revisable writing as well as homework exercises and in-class writing. Much in-class writing will be included, as emphasis is on development of the intellectual skills of reading and responding critically, which forms the basis of each student's career at SAIC. Furthermore, peer review and individual meetings to discuss each student's writing should be expected.

Fernando Pessoa in Lisbon, Virginia Woolf in London, Frank O¿Hara in New York City; writers, philosophers and artists of all kinds have long created, expanded, and contracted themselves through walking the city. We will spend this semester walking and reading and writing fiction structured around the movement of the self in the city. We will consider the walk as form and content. We¿ll read short-and long-form works to examine how writers work¿contracting and expanding time, organizing structure, shifting among points of view, creating spaces, and controlling tensions¿so that you can develop skills and craft your own fictions. Students will write three new works of fiction over the course of the semester, to be developed into a final portfolio.