Instructor: Neel Mukherjee
Wednesday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: Barker 018
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
Course Site
The course will consist of two halves. In the first hour of each class, we will be doing close readings of an assigned text, with the aim of isolating some concept or aspect of the genre under discussion in order to take bearings for your own. We will be reading authors such as Ursula Le Guin, Stanislav Lem, Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, Kij Johnson, among others. We will be looking at questions of genre, and at the reasons for the quotation marks bracketing the word genre in the heading. We will also look at the convergences and divergences in the various kinds and modes mentioned in the title of the course. We will be thinking of generic topoi, conceptual underpinnings, imagination, style, world-building, storytelling, character, and resolution, among other things. Some of the best writing in these genres is by women on issues of gender and intersectionality, so there will also be a strong feminist component to the course. These genres have also been used, with extraordinary creativity and to great effect, by writers of colour to meditate on issues of race, inequality, oppression, freedom, so the syllabus also features an introduction to that domain.
In the second half of the class, divided into two equal segments of 55 minutes each, we will be workshopping the writing of two students. To this end, every week two students will hand in something they have written, to the tune of 2,500-5,000 words, to me and to everyone in the group, ideally one week before their turn. At our first meeting, I will circulate a rota for you to put down your names and walk you through the syllabus, the aims and objectives of the course, workshop rules, expectations, requirements etc. Our goal is for each of you to have two turns, and approximately 5-10,000 words of your work critiqued, by the time semester ends. Copies of these writing samples will be returned to you at the end of each workshop with comments from me and from everyone in class.
This is a workshop intended for intermediate to advanced students. Previous experience of Creative Writing workshops is helpful but not necessary. You will have to read a short story -- sometimes, quite long -- every week, and three novels over the course of the semester.
Apply via Submittable (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26)
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit 3-5 pages of creative writing in prose (fiction is preferable, but non-fiction is also fine) along with a letter of introduction in which you write about why you’re interested in this course; what experience you’ve had writing; some of your favourite writers; what some of your favourite works of fiction are and why.