Curriculum & Courses

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Students are assigned reading and writing exercises, and discuss each other's writing in workshop or small critique sessions.

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Students are assigned reading and writing exercises, and discuss each other's writing in workshop or small critique sessions.

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Students are assigned reading and writing exercises, and discuss each other's writing in workshop or small critique sessions.

This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative writing as an art form in itself and as a vital element of interdisciplinary projects. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices as writing for the page, as well as for performance, sound, installation, and image-based pieces. Students are assigned reading and writing exercises, and discuss each other's writing in workshop or small critique sessions.

Student work is the primary focus of this workshop, along with analysis of short stories with a wide variety of themes and styles. Students learn and practice elements of the craft of writing short fiction, such as the development of form, story, character, dialogue, and style. In-class workshop sessions offer a means of acquiring skills for critical analysis of one?s own writing and that of others, as well as attendant strategies for the process of revision. Readings may include stories by Hawthorne, Poe, Crane, James, Woolf, Mansfield, Faulkner, Kafka, Hemingway, Singer, Borges, O?Connor, Barthelme, Paley, as well as contemporary practitioners.

This course considers the history of lyric poetry and its reawakened significance in the wake of A.I. How does the recent paradigmatic shift toward artificial intelligence place pressure on the contemporary poet¿s notion of authenticity and originality? Together we¿ll explore whether an ¿A.I. Poetics¿ is a possible (or even coherent) modality and work to define what such a poetics might look like in our respective aesthetic practices, beyond just writing alone. We¿ll actively use free and available A.I. interfaces like ChatGPT to generate, interrogate, and complicate what ¿authenticity¿ means in our own practice, and we¿ll experiment with forms and models like erasure, the cento, cleromancy, and other chance-based operations to activate an inquiry into what constitutes our own thought process as distinct from the sources that feed into it. Course work will vary but typically will include weekly reading assignments, short low-stakes writing assignments, a research-oriented group project, and a final creative project that engages with the course topic.

True re-vision is an active process of 'seeing again,' of discovering what each draft reveals to its author. As memoirist and poet Patricia Hampl notes, it?s a matter of paying attention to ?what it wants, not what I want?. With this in mind, students writing across the genres will have an opportunity to explore and integrate a variety of re-vision methods that encourage multiple permutations of at least two different workshop submissions. In addition to responding to each other?s work, students will be asked to present on their revision method as demonstrated in a piece completed for this class. To prepare a solid foundation, we will examine annotated drafts of a single work by selected published writers. Readings to come from Robert Olen Butler, Elizabeth Bishop, Pam Houston, Susan Neville, Pablo Medina, among others.

This writing workshop's point of departure is a creative response to Charles and Ray Eames' influential film Powers of Ten and George Perec's essay Species of Spaces. In Powers of Ten, the Eames' explore humankind's scale in a progression of images in powers of ten as seen from an individual cell to Earth's position in the galaxy. In a similar fashion, Perec examines increasingly greater scales of experience¿¿from a blank piece of paper to the world and outer space. Using these concepts of scales of magnification, we write fiction and poetry about an imaginary universe of our own devising¿¿from the outer limits of space to life on a microscopic scale. We examine contemporary micro-nations, science fiction, the natural world, and other sources as exemplar and inspiration.

In this generative seminar we examine the materials, forms and structures of books as they have developed historically and cross-culturally, and their influence on the fields of contemporary artists¿ books, small-press publishing, and related literary and studio practices. We explore and construct models of pamphlet, side stitch, accordion, codex and case bindings as means to develop both practical craft skills and conceptual acuity. Weekly exercises and tutorials attend to the application of these skills to individual or collective projects. Field trips to local archives, such as the Joan Flasch Artists' Books Collection, the Ryerson Library and the Newberry Library augment our study. Coursework includes completion of weekly exercises, an annotated bibliography of historic and contemporary artist book references, and a final project. This course requires commitment to an asynchronous studio practice that utilizes the Writing Program's BookLab outside of class time.

This class invites students to explore various relationships between science and poetry, two domains that, perhaps counterintuitively, often draw from each other to revitalize themselves. As poets and creative writers, we¿ll use, misuse, and borrow from science in our poems. We¿ll approach poems like science experiments and aim to enter an ¿experimental attitude.¿ From a practical point of view, we¿ll try to write poems that incorporate the language of science to freshen their own language or to expand the realm of poetic diction. Furthermore, we¿ll work with tropes and procedural experiments that may result in revelation, discovery, and surprise. Readings may include work by Aimé Césaire, Kimiko Hahn, Ed Roberson, Dean Young, Joyelle Mcsweeney, and Will Alexander. Students can expect to work on a semester-long 'experiment,' to write several poems, give a class presentation on their work, and complete a final portfolio.

Course topics vary by term and instructor. See topic description for more information.

Gen Sem: Electronic Writing
Writing in the twenty-first century is computational, writes literary critic N. Katherine Hayles. She explains that while this is true of any work that uses digital software as its production environment before being output to print, it is particularly evident in works of electronic literature that are designed to be encountered on the
computer screen. The practitioner of electronic writing is an author who combines human language and computer code to create new kinds of literary experience. Works of electronic literature can exceed the
possibilities of print in their scale, dynamic variability, visual and temporal qualities, and attentiveness to the reader. The environment of the network (internet) also provides new opportunities for collaboration and sampling of found material. In this writing studio, we will survey varied forms of electronic literature including
interactive hypertext/hypermedia, multi-user environments, codeworks, e-poetry, writing for virtual reality, and text-driven digital performance. Students engage the potential of computational literature by creating original works using a variety of web-based programming languages taught in the weekly sessions. No previous programming experience is required.

This course is about learning from land and nature and creating work in response to such ¿readings.¿ We¿ll read texts as well, including work by adrienne maree brown, Kobo Abe, and Amy Leach. The course includes two field trips, one to a prairie and one to Chicago¿s southeast side, crisscrossed with wetlands, towns, landfills, agriculture, a bike park, an auto plant, and the world¿s second largest intermodal hub. Students will write a series of short assignments in the first third of the class, refine a piece during the second third, and present final projects in the final third. We¿ll be reading texts, listening to audio stories, and going into the world to create work related to the city¿s built environment, green lands, and blue waters.

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.

What is the poetics of the city and the metropole? In what ways has the architectural emergence of the modernist city (not merely as a constructed place or lived experience, but as an archetypal signifer) informed and 'inscaped' the aesthetic practices of poets and artists in their time? In this course, we will examine three historical case studies -- New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles -- and read broadly across various critical theory texts (e.g., Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Michel de Certeau, Mike Davis, etc.). and literature and art sourced from and magnetized by the figure and frenzy of the metropole. We will read broadly and transhistorically, starting with the Epic of Gilgamesh and ending with Ed Roberson¿s City Eclogue, but we¿ll also engage with artists who have worked in different mediums (primarily literary, but also in music, sculpture, painting, architecture, photography, and film). In thinking through the city and its many representations, we¿ll work to incorporate the in-situ energy of Chicago itself to inform and hybridize our own art practice and medium, with a view toward cultivating writing practices that engender new ways of seeing and exploring. Course work will vary but typically will include weekly reading assignments, short low-stakes writing assignments, a research-oriented group project, and a final creative project that engages with the course topic.

In this workshop, we pair canonized or classical works with those that are marginalized or experimental, such as: Jean Racine's Phaedra (1677) / Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love (1996); Richard Strauss' Elektra (1903) / Frank Miller's Elektra Natchios (from Daredevil #168, 1981); Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party (1964) / Belarus Free Theater's Being Harold Pinter (2009); Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959) / James Scruggs' Disposable Men (2005); Moliere's High Brow Ladies (1659) / 5 Lesbian Brothers' Secretaries (1994); Maria Irene Fornes' Fefu and Her Friends (1977) / Caridad Svich's Twelve Ophelias (2008). We work with both classical conventions and experimental techniques, including adaptation, devising, abject space, tragedy/comedy/romance, and structure vs. plot to generate our responses. All genres and interdisciplinary practices welcome.

This course is about writing at the crossroads of cultural criticism, creative nonfiction, memoir, fiction and poetry. It is designed for visual scholars looking to expand their mode of critique and for creative writers interested in cultural criticism. The seminar is conducted largely as a writing critique workshop, and much of the time in class is spent discussing student work in progress. At different points throughout the semester we also discuss the writing strategies of diverse contemporary authors.

Readings for the course vary, but have included texts by authors such as Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, T Fleischmann, Kate Zambreno, Kathleen Stewart, Carol Mavor, Saidiya Hartman, and Wayne Koestenbaum.

Students in the class will present work in progress in a writing workshop twice, help to lead the discussion of an assigned reading once, give formal commentary on student work twice, and complete a polished piece of writing for the end of the semester.

We are accustomed to thinking of fiction as emanating, first, as ¿voice,¿ i.e. as a formalization of oral language, almost instinctive, and easily available. In truth, for the writer to rely primarily on first impulse is also to discover how exceptionally limited ¿instinct¿ is to the construction of a longer work: the novel. While narrative voice is critical, the novel must often rely on multiple techniques of structure, point of view and pacing to sustain the reader¿s (and writer's) curiosity, challenging their interest. In fact, the novel's architecture, like a rite of courtship, coyly unfolds and withholds plot, illuminates then complicates character, and radically subverts time and space. For anyone considering writing a novel, this course explores diverse techniques of narrative structure employed by contemporary English language novelists. Writers we're likely to read are: Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of The Day), Uzodinma Iweala (Beasts of No Nation), James Welch (Winter in the Blood), Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge), Alison Bechdel (Fun House: a Tragicomic) Julian Barnes (Flaubert¿s Parrot) & Charles Johnson (Middle Passage). Accompanying mimetic writing exercises will focus on options for structuring short or long fictions. These will inform your completion of a novel chapter, presented in two alternating structures.

This seminar is designed for writers/artists interested in concentrating on place as an active participant or suggestive backdrop in fiction, essay, poetry or hybrid forms. Through generative exercises and group-led discussions on selected readings, students will explore the many dimensions of creating a real or imagined place. Some questions we'll use as a stepping off point include the following: What defines place? What are the elements that construct or suggest a world? How do references to climate, architecture, street names, objects, and landscape reach toward a larger significance? How does the physical environment have the potential to disclose the emotional atmosphere? How is setting achieved through language?

Some readings will come from Dorothy Allison, James Baldwin, Georges Perec, Jamaica Kincaid, Chitra Banaerjee Divakaruni, Lucille Clifton, Lorca, Flannery O'Connor, Amy Hempel, Charles Simic, among others.

In addition to a varied reading list, we will supplement our study with occasional field trips. Other expectations include a collaborative presentation on a required reading and a final creative project.

It is a kind of game in which we write variations of Brothers Grimm tales. We show these variations to each other and take delight. The main reading of the course is the totality of the Household Tales (GRIMM). By operating playfully within the constraints of these tales, we come closer to an understanding of the nature of story; this enables a more natural and effortless technique in general.

This graduate seminar is for all types of writers (creative writers, critics, and scholars) who want to analyze the dimensions of literary, paraliterary, and scholarly forms of description, interpretation, and explanation, and their interdisciplinary intersections and boundaries. Poetry, short stories, personal essays, passages from novels, and art-history articles will form the ground for weekly encounters with works of art in the Art Institute of Chicago, as we compare what we read to what we encounter in person.
Each class meeting has a tripartite structure, as we compare a literary or paraliterary engagement with a work of art, evaluate a scholarly argument about the same piece or its creator, and personally engage the same or similar work in the Art Institute of Chicago. We will respond to the works of art currently on display, and, as warranted, pair the appropriate scholarship with creative works by writers such as Ada Limón, Victoria Chang, Hilton Als, Ben Lerner, Diane Seuss, Mark Doty, Hanif Abdurraqib, Wayne Koestenbaum, Vivek Shraya, Cris Kraus, Teju Cole, Eileen Myles, Gwendolyn Brooks, Paisley Rekdal, Rachel Cohen, Jeffrey Yang, and John Ashbery, among others.
Students will write concise analyses of every reading assignment plus a weekly follow-up reflection as preparation for a final hybrid research paper that situates their personal moment of encounter with a work of art in the Art Institute of Chicago within art-historical scholarship. The goal is for students to probe their personal experiences with art for wider cultural implications.