![]() ![]() ![]() Students will read published work and discuss one another’s work. Each semester will be divided into three units, each corresponding to a particular kind of essay. This first-year seminar will comprise workshops focusing on reading and writing personal essays. Students will have biweekly individual conferences with the instructor and biweekly group conferences devoted to workshopping, watching films, or attending lectures through the Writing Colloquium or the MFA program’s series of guest lectures. In what ways have American writers and artists rendered the felt experience of race and racial inequality? How might we understand race and racism not only as social forces but also as imaginative ones? And how might we productively grapple, contend, and engage with our own positions as artists and citizens within these historical and imaginative legacies? In other words, how might we fruitfully think about what Claudia Rankine and Beth Loffreda have recently called-in their anthology of the same name-“the racial imaginary”? Over the course of this yearlong creative writing workshop, students will be asked to explore the American racial imaginary by examining writing in a variety of genres and disciplines-from short stories to personal essays and poetry, as well as academic criticism and historical scholarship-in the interest of producing and workshopping their own original writings. Along the way, I’ll ask you to participate in readings at each term’s middle and end compile an anthology and a chapbook work with a partner and introduce his/her work and contribute to a collective zuihitsu, a Japanese form combining what's been called “poetry” and what‘s been called “prose.” (We’ll be reading two versions of Narrow Road to the Interior: Basho’s from the 17th century and Kimiko Hahn’s from 2006.) The only prerequisites are a passion for reading that equals your passion for writing, the courage to give up spectatorhood for active participation, and a willingness to undertake whatever might be necessary to read and write and think better on our last day of class than on our first. In weekly conferences, we’ll discuss college and look at your drafts-mostly of poems, along with some critical writing about our shared texts-particularly Edward Said’s Orientalism and Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return. This class will aim to provide a writer’s introduction to poetry, as seen through the cultural lenses of what’s been called the “East” and what’s been called the “West.” While keeping faith with the sacred jazz ethic of improvisation, we’re likely to spend our class time: (a) discussing questions like what is a poem, what is taste, what is the “East,” and what is the “West,” and how have those constructs influenced writers and readers (b) getting to know each other as readers and writers and working collaboratively and (c) doing writing exercises as practicum. The known universe has one complete lover, and that is the greatest poet. The city provides fertile ground for internships in which students can use their writing training in educational programs, schools, publishing houses, small presses, magazines, and nonprofit arts agencies. Sarah Lawrence College also takes full advantage of its proximity to the New York City literary scene, with its readings, literary agencies, publishing houses, and bookstores, as well as its wealth of arts and culture. We seek to foster a community of writers whose members draw inspiration from their artistic and intellectual differences as much as from their areas of agreement. We favor inquiry over censure, discussion over suppression, and understand both to be an important part of a student’s education in the art of writing. ![]() We believe that students are invigorated, not harmed, by contact with art and ideas that challenge and disturb. Accordingly, faculty members do not provide trigger or content warnings. Our writing classes are equitable forums for free and open expression that encourage experimentation, play, and risk-taking in students' writing and reading. ![]()
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