Here are some courses still available that might be of interest to creative writers at IUSB this spring. They also count toward a Creative Writing Minor.
ENG-A 190 — Arts, Aesthetics, and Creativity (3 cr.)
4500 MW 1:00-2:15 P This section is open.
Topic: The Work of Literary Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
These days, if you write the Great American Novel (or think you have), all you have to do to get it published is go to a print-on-demand website, upload the file, and enter your credit card information. Voila!
In this class we will celebrate today’s technologies that make possible, in particular, the rise of personalized publishing, and independent literary presses (such as our own Wolfson Press). We will compose and print multiple copies of chapbooks and a class literary journal to share our writing with others, and we’ll publish work online to reach an even wider audience. But we will also celebrate what Walter Benjamin would call the “aura” of an original art object that cannot be reproduced. Benjamin says, “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art…. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.” Thus we will create literary art objects that have a unique existence: altered books, collages, post cards between imagined characters, and handmade (even handwritten!) mini-books filled with our stories, poems, and ponderings.
This is a project-based writing and art-making class that invites students without previous experience to explore artistic practices and concepts, including narrative collage, Pop Art, found texts, altered texts, erasure, and appropriation. We’ll read contemporary poetry and prose, and we’ll read from Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay that inspired the course’s title.
ENG-W 280 — Literary Editing & Publishing (3 cr.)
30771 T 5:30-6:45P David Dodd Lee Permission required
This class is designed to educate students by exposing them to contemporary writing as it goes through the process—from mailbox to published book—of being judged and selected for publication. During class time students will read and critique manuscripts submitted to Wolfson Press for possible publication. We will focus on the mechanics and ethics inherent in any editorial endeavor that includes selection as part of its process. (And this process of selection and debate will take place exclusively in the classroom–students will not be allowed to take unpublished manuscripts home, for instance.) Not only will students learn, through examples brought to light by the instructor, how to screen manuscripts based on aesthetic ideas, but they will also be instructed in the nuts and bolts of dealing with manuscripts in a professional and judicious manner. Additionally, students will learn some fundamentals of publishing including editing, marketing, correspondence with writers and other presses, and principles of layout and design. Interpersonal skills will be emphasized (as part of the process of disagreement and consensus) as we begin to focus on the aesthetic aspects of contemporary writing through the prism—a cross-section, so to speak—of styles of writing reflected in the submitted manuscripts. From more theory-driven, avant-garde works to more relatively mainstream works—post-confessional and simple narrative—students will examine the various stances and approaches available to the contemporary writer, as well as the hybridization of genres and styles that is currently part of the literary landscape.
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For graduate students, this is not a creative writing class, per se, but is highly recommended for anyone interested in language, representation, and creation.
LBST-D 501 – Humanities Seminar (3 cr.)
Class Number 25971 R 7:00 – 9:30 P Instructor: Anne Magnan-Park
[Note: while this course is primarily intended for students in the Master of Liberal Studies program, non-MLS students interested in the topic should consult with the instructor to see whether it might be a good choice for them, too.]
Topic: Translation as Metaphor: An Interdisciplinary Journey
The task of the literary translator is similar in nature to that of the interdisciplinary scholar in that it deals in the delicate business of border crossing. Indeed, the interdisciplinary scholar devises and crosses constructive bridges from one academic discipline to another while the literary translator strives to safely carry the unique voice of a particular author across cultural and linguistic boundaries. The journeys they both undertake require credentials and the mastery of a set of sharpened tools in more than one discipline/culture, as well as the development of a personal philosophy that allow them to make consistent and productive choices in the hope of proposing a credible solution to a complex issue. This course is designed to introduce you to the history, theory, and practice of literary translation and to use that knowledge to investigate the disciplines of literary and film studies. Some of the questions we may ask are: what are the disciplines in which one needs to engage to interpret a literary text or a film, and most specifically a text or film dealing with postcolonial issues? How do writers and filmmakers translate the clash of two specific cultures in their works? To what extent can one say that translators are creators, bridge builders who invent alternative ways of crossing cultural chasms? We will mostly focus on New Zealand culture, literature, and cinema, namely the works of Patricia Grace (“A Way of Talking,” “Parade,” “Butterflies,” among others), Margaret Mahy (“The Bridge Builder”), Alice Tawhai (Festival of Miracles), Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures), and Lee Tamahori (Once were Warriors). Other authors and filmmakers will also be considered, such as Indian American fiction writer Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies), Franco-Chinese poet Francois Cheng (poems), and Moroccan filmmaker Faouzi Bensaidi (La Falaise). The knowledge of a foreign language is not required but the desire to embrace a foreign culture is the secret decoder ring to success for this course!