ENGH 608: Craft Seminars

ENGH 608-003: Topographies:A Salon
(Spring 2015)

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM R

Section Information for Spring 2015

This writing salon presents a multi-genre platform for writers to come together, present a wide variety of outside texts to one another, write essays about how those texts might serve as the jumping off point for the creation of new writing, create writing prompts based on those texts, and produce and present new writings in a variety of genres.

Our subject for the selection of outside texts will be topographies, whether imagined, figurative, or real.  Given this subject, we will, no doubt, think about place and absence of place, setting and the absence of markers that designate setting, dreamscapes, nether-worlds, cityscapes, domestic spaces, landscapes.  We will likewise examine countours, shapes, and patterns effected through other aspects of literary form.  Depending on the interests of participants, we will examine our subject through a variety of media and genres, such as film, fiction, interview, television, poetry, and literary criticism.

The salon will be organized into two time-periods each week.  Half of each salon will be devoted to the discussion of a new text.  The remaining half of the salon will be devoted to the examination of new writing in progress by each participant, produced in response to a presentation or a writing prompt from the previous week.

The course will have seven two-week-long units.  I will present the first three units, to offer members a model and give them a chance to get their minds around the topic.  For some units, we will focus on a single text for the two weeks.  For other units, we will focus on two texts during the two weeks.  Each week's reading will take a maximum of an hour and a half to complete and will be excerpted when that is necessary.  During each of the first three units, I will present a reading essay written with an eye towards how the outside text(s) might serve as a model or a jumping off point for the production of new writing.

Beginning on the seventh week of the semester, committees of two to four participants (depending on enrollment) will begin to select readings for the salon, well in advance and with my supoprt, and present their own reading essays.  On a week when a committee's essays are due, the committee will be excused from presenting new writing in progress during the second part of the evening.

The first six weeks' texts, which I will present alongisde introductory essays: Unit 1) Agnes Varda's film Les glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000), Unit 2) excerpts from John Steinbeck's Log from the Sea of Cortez and Juliana Spahr's poem "things of each possible relation hashing against one another." Unit 3) Abe Smith's book-poem Hank and songs from Hank Williams.

Each committee will consult with me as it selects its text(s).  Here are some suggestions and examples of texts you may choose:
* Book 18 of Homer's Iliad, in which Achilles Shield is forged as a living landscape
* "Part II: Time Passes" from Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse
Chapters from Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space
* Chapters from W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn or excertps from Austerlitz
* Chapters from Walker and Agee's Let us Now Praise Famous Men
* An essay from Gary Snyder's collection of essays A Place in Space
Georges Perec's memoir in spaces Species of Species
Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay," possibly beside sections of Wuthering Heights (or not)
* John Ashbery's Girls on the Run beside the work of Henry Darger
* D.A. Powell's Useless Landscape
* Kate Greenstreet's The Last 4 Things
* Pound's "Pisan Cantos"
Rimbaud's proto-surrealist landscapes in The Illuminations
William Christianberry's photographic monograph Blackbelt
* The catalogue for visual artist Matthew Barney's The Cremaster Cycle
* A tour of the Rural Studio Project's work at Mason's Bend
* New York Times video interview/feature with the artist Maya Lin on her landwork "Wave Field"
* Akira Kurosawa's film Dreams
Excerpts of Alison Bechdel's graphic novels Fun House and Are You My Mother
An episode from the 70s television series Lost in Space, or from the contermporary series Lost

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Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

Non-MFA students seeking permission must submit manuscript of original written work in appropriate genre. Various sections offer work in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, each focusing in different ways on the practices and the craft development of writers. Numerous writing assignments mixed with reading followed by careful analytical and craft discussions. Notes: Assignments vary with genre and specific topic. May be taken concurrently with ENGH 564, 565, 566. May be repeated within the term for a maximum 15 credits.
Specialized Designation: Topic Varies
Recommended Prerequisite: Admission to MFA program or ENGH 494, ENGH 492, ENGH 486, or permission of instructor. Non-MFA students must submit manuscript for review prior to registration.
Registration Restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students with a class of Advanced to Candidacy, Graduate, Junior Plus, Non-Degree or Senior Plus.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate, Non-Degree or Undergraduate level students.

Students in a Non-Degree Undergraduate degree may not enroll.

Schedule Type: Lec/Sem #1, Lec/Sem #2, Lec/Sem #3, Lec/Sem #4, Lec/Sem #5, Lec/Sem #6, Lec/Sem #7, Lec/Sem #8, Lec/Sem #9, Sem/Lec #10, Sem/Lec #11, Sem/Lec #12, Sem/Lec #13, Sem/Lec #14, Sem/Lec #15, Sem/Lec #16, Sem/Lec #17, Sem/Lec #18, Seminar
Grading:
This course is graded on the Graduate Regular scale.

The University Catalog is the authoritative source for information on courses. The Schedule of Classes is the authoritative source for information on classes scheduled for this semester. See the Schedule for the most up-to-date information and see Patriot web to register for classes.