CRWR 10200. Beginning Fiction Workshop. 100 Units.

This beginning-level fiction writing class uses a wide range of exercises and activities to help students discover their oral and written voices. Point of view, seeing-in-the-mind, gesture, audience, and other aspects of story are emphasized so that students can attempt to incorporate basic storytelling principles, forms, and techniques into their own writing. The major goals of the class are to guide students to discover and use the power of their individual voices, heighten their imaginative seeing and sense of imaginative options, and develop their overall sense for story structure and movement. Students select at least one of the assignments undertaken, rewrite it extensively, and attempt a complete story movement (short story or novel excerpt) of publishable quality.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. If course is full, sign up for wait list at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/waiting-list.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 30200

CRWR 10201. Beginning Fiction Writing: Why We Tell Stories. 100 Units.

In this beginning workshop, we will explore why we tell stories: why they are important to us and why we use them to organize our ideas about ourselves and the world around us. Crucial to this endeavor is finding the actual stories that we want to tell: not just a narrative that is entertaining and dramatic, but one that is meaningful to us, that says something true and compelling. This is easier said than done, and to that end, we will read canonical and contemporary writers who have become exemplars of the fundamentals of craft like language, narrative voice, dialogue, characterization, etc. We will also do writing exercises to help you refine these fundamentals in your writing and hopefully direct you towards the stories you want to tell. For the course, you will complete one full-length story, which you will present for class critique, and then write a significant revision of that story, which you will either present for a second workshop or turn into me at the end of the quarter.

Instructor(s): V. Tran     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 30201

CRWR 10300. Beginning Poetry Workshop. 100 Units.

Based on the premise that successful experimentation stems from a deep understanding of tradition, this course will help students gain a foundation in poetic constructions while encouraging risk-taking in expression and craft. It will expose students to ways that poets have both employed and resisted patterns in meter, line, and rhyme, and it will ask students to experiment with constraints as a way of playing with formal limitations in their own poems. Students will also explore innovations in diction, syntax, and voice, and apply what they learn from these investigations in workshop discussions. While delving into work by both canonical and emerging poets, students will draft and revise a significant portfolio of their own poems.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. If course is full, sign up for wait list at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/waiting-list.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 30300

CRWR 10400. Beginning Creative Nonfiction. 100 Units.

In this workshop you are free to write about anything at all as long as you do so in an intimate and personal, rather than academic, voice. To that end you will try your hand at a true story—be it a memoir, travelogue, anecdote, character study, essay or argument—and submit it to your classmates, who will edit and critique it. Together we will refine our narratives and our prose, primarily by insisting on rigorous reflection and total honesty. Finding your voice takes time, but we have only ten weeks. So come to the first day of class with ideas and work already underway and ready to share. Be prepared to finish three total rewrites of your work in progress. We will also read and discuss published exemplars of the form. You will leave this class with a polished work sample to use for admission to more advanced courses.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. If course is full, sign up for wait list at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/waiting-list.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 30400

CRWR 10401. Beginning Creative Nonfiction: The Personal Essay. 100 Units.

In this workshop we will study and practice nonfiction's fundamental form, the personal essay. Unlike other forms of prose, the personal essay does not derive its narrative power from actions, events, or plot. Instead it is driven by rigorous reflection and total honesty. Its story is the story of thought itself. Like thought, its form is protean, its structure elastic, making it the perfect vehicle for clarifying and challenging your own thinking, as well as the assumptions of our culture and time. This is a workshop, so come to the first day of class with ideas and work underway and ready to submit. You will write every day and finish three thorough rewrites of your essay. You will also read and write about published exemplars of the form. You'll leave this class with a polished work sample and the skills you'll need to apply for more advanced workshops.

Instructor(s): D. Raeburn     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 30401

CRWR 11505. Translation Workshop: Metawriting. 100 Units.

Metawriting: Translations, Experiments, Processes, Procedures There is no language requirement for this course, in case that is a concern. The aim of this course is to provide students with a playground in which to try out their wildest writing ideas. The context for this course will be other writings: they will fence off and predetermine the words, subject, narrative, characters or plotline of any given work as a means to finding new paths into truer and stronger writerly voices. We will unravel existing works to take from them what we want and make something new from it. We might turn Madame Bovary into a poem, the phone directory into a play, The Travels of Marco Polo into a cookbook, or, similarly, a set of recipes into a collection of short stories. In this way, we will further explore notions of what translation is (from the Latin translatio, to carry over), what writing is, and investigate the endless value of translation, experimenting, processes and procedures as tools that enrich the art and the craft of the writer. It is not mandatory but it is recommended to come to this course with ideas about what you would like to ‘metawrite.’

Instructor(s): U. A. Gabantxo     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 31505

CRWR 12000. Intermediate Fiction Workshop. 100 Units.

This intermediate fiction workshop will build on the fundamental elements of craft laid out in Beginning Fiction Writing and encourage you to begin cultivating your own aesthetic—not merely your own writing style, but more importantly your unique perspective on the world that necessarily informs and is informed by that style. We will read a selection of writers (like Raymond Carver, Paul Bowles, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Lorrie Moore) who have very unique and identifiable voices, and then complement those readings with writing exercises that will help you contextualize, refine, and expand your emerging voice. As always, there will be an emphasis on the workshop process so that you are actively engaging with your own work and the work of your peers.  For the course, you will complete one full-length story, which you will present for class critique, and then write a significant revision of that story, which you will either present for a second workshop or turn into me at the end of the quarter. Please come to class prepared to share your work, your ideas, your enthusiasm, and your honesty.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 32000

CRWR 12101. Reading as a Writer: Chicago Stories. 100 Units.

This course invites writers to reconsider the influence of Chicago’s public and private spaces on genre and artistic form. How does one tell a “Chicago story”? Is the “City on the Re-Make” best told in prose or poem? Is there a “Chicago epic”? Working through these questions, students analyze and explore the technical vocabularies of other writers’ responses in a variety of literary genres. Examples here include how political or social conflicts have shaped fiction writers’ definition of characters and point of view in Chicago writing. Similarly, how have the city’s historical geographies of South Side, the Great Migration, and the suburb influenced form in poetry and creative nonfiction? What theoretical approaches have been particularly influential in understanding “place” among Chicago writers? Using workshop format, students develop their own creative responses, building connections to their adopted critical approaches. To these ends, we examine work by writers including Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Conroy, Aleksandar Hemon, and Sterling Plumpp, as well as the city’s rich legacies in drama, the visual arts, and music.

Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. Sign up for wait list by contacting instructor if class is full.
Note(s): This course meets the general education requirement in dramatic, musical, and visual arts. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 12102. Introduction to Genres: Writing and Performance. 100 Units.

This course examines how writing and performance intersect, inform, and inspire each other. Using techniques from literary, theatrical, and storytelling traditions, we explore how to get a well-crafted story first on and then off the page. How does telling a story aloud fuel the writing process? How does the writing heighten the performance? How does the students’ understanding of audience, voice, point of view, scene, and character development influence both disciplines, and how does storytelling play a part in our daily lives, whatever career paths we find ourselves headed for? The class focuses on personal narrative storytelling and incorporates a wide range of models—literature, podcast, video, and live performance—as well as a wide range of assignments—writing, journal reflection, reading out loud, and theatrical technique—and culminates in a final storytelling performance. Student collaboration, feedback, and discussion are priorities.

Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. Sign up for wait list by contacting instructor if class is full.
Note(s): This course meets the general education requirement in dramatic, musical, and visual arts. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 12103. Reading as a Writer. 100 Units.

How does a writer read? Not for a seminar, which is the first contradiction this course must face. A poet may cultivate distracted reading, a novelist may undertake research of scholarly scope and rigor. To read for writers is to read for generative use in writing. Two examples central to this course will be Lydia Davis's translation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary with her own Ten Stories from Flaubert and Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot, and Ted Berrigan's Sonnets read alongside the poems by Frank O'Hara which they imitate. Members of this class will learn to read creatively, and to perpetrate literary (mis)readings, including translation, parody, homage, recovery of lost voices, and physical treatments of books. Students will write reflections upon the experience of reading literature from the perspective of a writer throughout the quarter, as well as experimenting with creative imitations of literary precursors.

Terms Offered: Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. If course is full, sign up for wait list at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/waiting-list.
Note(s): This course meets the general education requirement in dramatic, musical, and visual arts. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 12104. Introduction to Genres: Four Western Myths. 100 Units.

Consider the proposition that myths inform the fabric of our thought, from its structures to its particularities. If this is so, how do we understand the power these myths exert on our imaginations? Is this power always benign? Is there a malevolent shadow these myths can cast on our collective soul? Let’s examine four myths that arise out of the Western tradition. Two of them are old: the story of King Oedipus and the myth of the Holy Grail. The other two are newer: the story of the Wizard of Oz, the first complete American myth, and the story of Star Wars, as much a commentary on myth as a myth itself. Both of these newer myths have insinuated themselves into the popular imagination, in ways that the earlier myths are so ingrained they have the ability to be continually made novel. In this course, you will read texts that transmit these myths (Sophocles, Chrétien de Troyes, and L. Frank Baum), you will consider films that depict these myths (Edipe Re by Pasolini, The Da Vinci Code by Howard, The Wizard of Oz by Fleming, and Star Wars by Lucas), you will examine theories that interpret these myths (Freud, Weston, Lévi-Strauss, and Campbell, respectively), and, finally, and perhaps most importantly, you will generate your own versions of these myths in various creative forms: poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, screenplays, and drama.

Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. If course is full, sign up for wait list at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/waiting-list.
Note(s): This course meets the general education requirement in dramatic, musical, and visual arts. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 12113. Intro to Genres: Humor. 100 Units.

In this course, we’ll explore the uses of humor in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, with an eye toward thinking about how humor can function not just to amuse and entertain, but to highlight the depths of other complicated emotions. We’ll read stories, essays, and poems to try and figure out what makes humor work in the various forms, and then we’ll turn our attention to your work. The class will include weekly writing exercises designed to help you generate ideas for projects that you’ll eventually share with the class for critique, and we’ll spend part of the term engaging in workshop discussions.

Instructor(s): M. Falkoff     Terms Offered: Spring

CRWR 12114. Intro to Genres: Beyond the Michigan Sea. 100 Units.

This course invites readers to reconsider Chicago as a “Great Lakes city” through a variety of genres, including graphic novel, fiction, and documentary photography. Our study is initiated through a reading of Ted McClelland’s journalistic essays, then moves on to creative work by writers and artists including Barbara Blondeau, Stuart Dybek, Arthur Siegel, and Chris Ware. Is Chicago a common point of destination and experience? Versus Walt Whitman, how does the artist’s eye have defining power in the 21st century? Under the present mayor, is Chicago a modern or postmodern city? In exploration of these questions, participants will develop their own individual and collaborative creative responses to “the City on the Lake.”

Instructor(s): G. Cycholl     Terms Offered: Spring

CRWR 13000. Intermediate Poetry Workshop. 100 Units.

Poets often turn to the constraints and conventions of lyric forms (sonnets, sestinas, pantoums, etc.) as a way to generate material and experiment within a poetic tradition.  The history of poetry, however, is as rich in genres as it is in forms. How is genre different from form?  How do the two intersect?  How have different genres evolved over time?  In this course we will study various traditional genres (the elegy, the epistle, the dramatic monologue, for example) alongside such "non-poetic" genres as the essay, the obituary, and the travelogue, in the hopes of expanding and refining our encounter with the art.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 33000

CRWR 13006. Investigations through Rhyme. 100 Units.

Rhyme, and its almost necessary companion, Meter, have found their way into almost every form of expressive language, low and high: from sonnets to limericks, quatrains to playground insults, plays to songs, mnemonic devices for school children to didactic sermons, raps to jingles -- even the occasional novel. Though it may be something of a mystery as to Why, that rhyme can be pleasing to the reader (and listener) is established. What practical use, however, might it be to the writer? This course -- welcoming writers of any stamp -- will explore how composing in rhyme uncovers previously unsuspected pathways in a writer's imagination, and is a powerful editing tool, as well. Rhymed poetic, dramatic, and rhetorical writings and basic verse structures (the Onegin stanza, sonnet, quatrain, etc) will be introduced and analyzed. The focus, however, will be on the "translation" of works of prose -- some selected, but mostly pieces original with the student -- into rhymed verse, with the aim of exploding/unfolding those works out in fresh directions. Possible texts/authors/artists: Shakespeare, Pope, William Blake, Chuck D, Emily Dickenson, Yip Harburg, Cole Porter, Magnetic Fields, Ogden Nash.

Instructor(s): M. Maher     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 33006

CRWR 14000. Intermediate Creative Nonfiction. 100 Units.

In this course we will examine what is creative about so-called creative nonfiction. What makes a personal essay or literary journalism different from straight journalism or editorial opinion? By what alchemy do we transmute facts into art? Through daily and weekly reading, writing, and editing you will learn to combine the facts of the matter at hand with your own retrospection and reflection. Your grade will be based on the artistry you display in balancing the factual with the personal and in recognizing how they can both complement and contradict one another. This is a workshop, so come to the first day of class with work underway and ready to share. Be prepared to write every day of the week and to finish two complete rewrites of an essay of fifteen or so pages. We will also read and discuss published exemplars of the form.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 34000

CRWR 22100. Advanced Fiction Workshop. 100 Units.

This advanced fiction workshop is for students who have taken Beginning or Intermediate Fiction Writing and produced a body of work, large or small, that reflects their developing aesthetic and style. In our workshops, we will focus on the fundamentals of craft like language, voice, and plot and character development, but with an eye also on expanding our perspective on our subject matter and the form we use to write about it. To that end, we will read a selection of writers (like Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Donald Barthelme, Alice Munro, George Saunders, Tim O’Brien) who experiment with form, who unravel the rules of a well-made story and reconstitute it in order to tell their own particular narratives in a more meaningful way. Our goal in this class is to create a constructive, critical atmosphere that facilitates and demands the process of revision, and that expands the horizon of expression for each student while also refining their emerging voice. For the course, you will complete one full-length story, which you will present for class critique, and then write a significant revision of that story, which you will either present for a second workshop or turn into me at the end of the quarter. Please come to class prepared to share your work, your ideas, your enthusiasm, and your honesty.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42100

CRWR 22110. Advanced Fiction: Exploring Your Boundaries. 100 Units.

This advanced fiction workshop is for students who have taken Beginning or Intermediate Fiction Writing and produced a body of work, large or small, that reflects their developing aesthetic. Our workshops will focus on the fundamentals of craft like language, voice, and plot and character development, but with an eye also on expanding the formal possibilities in our storytelling. To that end, we’ll examine the work of writers (Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Donald Barthelme, David Foster Wallace, Alice Munro, Tim O’Brien, et al.) who experiment with form, who unravel the rules of the “well-made story” and reconfigure it in order to present their unique vision of the world—an encouragement for you not necessarily to be “experimental” writers, but to explore more meaningful, memorable, and perhaps innovative ways of telling your own stories. For thecourse, you will complete one full-length story, which you will present for class critique, and then write a significant revision of that story, which you will either present for a second workshop or turn into me at the end of the quarter.

Instructor(s): V. Tran     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 42110

CRWR 23100. Advanced Poetry Workshop. 100 Units.

In this course, we will examine various formal, theoretical, and sociological currents in contemporary American poetry as a means of provoking and informing our own creative work in the lyric field. While the class will be a “writing workshop” first and foremost, we will also study recent books of poetry from a variety of contemporary “schools” at work in the fertile, sectarian, and maddeningly complex landscape of today’s lyric writing. We will also attend poetry readings by some of these authors here at the University in order to explore the world of contemporary verse as fully as possible. It is important to keep in mind, however, that this is ultimately a course about your work as a poet. Throughout the semester, we will read one another’s writing within the broad context of contemporary American poetics, and yet we will respect the solitary and idiosyncratic nature of the lyric enterprise as well.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43100

CRWR 23109. Advanced Poetry Workshop: Orphic Voices. 100 Units.

The myth of Orpheus covers impressive range: the greatest poet and musician of the mythical age, he married Eurydice after voyaging with the Argonauts, his song capable of taming wild nature, drawing listening animals into his aura, only to have his beloved slain by a serpent’s bite. From there, he charmed his way into the underworld with his lyrics, gaining permission to bring Eurydice back to the world on the condition he not look back, one that he couldn’t abide. In his grief, he sang mournful chants and praised Apollo above all, inspiring the wrath of Dionysus, who compelled his Maenads to thrash him to pieces. The legend concludes with Orpheus’ head bobbing down the Hebrus River, to wash finally to a cave on Lesbos, where it prophesied for ages until quieted by a command from Apollo. But was Orpheus’ voice ever truly silenced? There are four kinds of Orphic poets: the poet who sings plaintive songs of love; the poet who sings the glories of nature; the poet who, having visited the underworld, reveals its mysteries; and the poet-prophet. In this advanced poetry workshop, we will examine the works of five modern poets who exemplify one or more of these traits: Mina Loy (love and mysteries); Lorine Niedecker (nature); Ronald Johnson (nature, mysteries, prophecy); and Rainer Maria Rilke and Robert Duncan (all four traits). In addition to modeling their work after these poets, students will fashion their own version of the Orpheus myth.

Instructor(s): P. O'Leary      Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 43109

CRWR 24001. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Aiming for Publication. 100 Units.

The goal of this workshop is to produce the kind of nonfiction published by magazines aimed at the smart, general reader: the New Yorker, Harper's, and the Atlantic Monthly, as well as smaller journals. You may write a personal essay, argument, memoir, character study or travelogue, as well as reportorial, researched, and investigative pieces. No matter what rubric your nonfiction falls under, we will help you to distinguish between the situation--the plot or facts at hand--and the story, which is the larger, more universal meaning that arises naturally from these facts. By developing both these strands and tying them artfully together you will make your piece as appealing as possible to editors and a discerning audience. Come to the first day of class with work underway and ready to share. Be prepared to edit and critique every one of your classmates’ drafts and to finish three full revisions of your own work in progress. We will also read and discuss successful published work. You will leave this class with a polished sample of your best work.

Instructor(s): Raeburn Daniel      Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44001

CRWR 24100. Advanced Creative Nonfiction Workshop. 100 Units.

The goal of this workshop is to attempt the kind of nonfiction published by magazines aimed at the smart, general reader: the New Yorker, Harper's, and the Atlantic Monthly, as well as smaller journals. You may write a personal essay, argument, memoir, character study or travelogue, as well as a more journalistic profile of a person, place, or culture. We also welcome reportorial, researched, and investigative pieces. No matter what rubric your nonfiction falls under, we will help you to distinguish between what Vivian Gornick has called The Situation—that is, the plot, or facts at hand—and The Story, the larger, more universal meaning that arises naturally from these facts. By developing the two and by tying them more artfully you will make your piece as appealing as it can be to editors and a discerning audience. Come to the first day of class with ideas and work underway and ready to share. Be prepared to write every day and to finish three full revisions of your work in progress. We will also read and discuss successful published work. You will leave this class with a polished sample of your best work.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 44100

CRWR 25000. Adaptation: Text and Image. 100 Units.

A course concerned with the marriage of image and text that explores films, illuminated manuscripts, court masques, comic books/graphic novels, children's picture books, and present-day (perhaps local) theater productions that deal at their core with the balance and dance between story and picture. Examples of work studied would be Chris Marker's La jetée, any of the masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones collaborated on, the comics of Winsor McCay, William Blake's engraved poems and images, as well as more contemporary works, e.g., Superman comics and music videos. The theatrical collaborations of the instructors themselves (The Cabinet and Cape and Squiggle, both produced by Chicago's Redmoon Theatre in the last year) will be discussed as well.

Instructor(s): Maher, Maugeri     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Submit a three-page writing sample and a one-paragraph statement of intent. Visual materials are welcome but not required. Creative Writing students: To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 28465

CRWR 26001. Writing Biography. 100 Units.

Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 46001,ENGL 12700,ENGL 32700

CRWR 26100. Writing the Graphic Novel. 100 Units.

This course provides for the development of raw ideas into storytelling in graphic form, from the most simplistic scrawl and doodle to multi-page, complex comics. Students will develop graphic narratives of varying lengths, culled from their own sketches, notes, and memories gathered throughout the class. A wide variety of storytelling and graphic “languages”—spanning from hieroglyphics to Hitchcock—will be discussed and dissected, as students employ a variety of tools and approaches to build a language of symbols and icons entirely their own.

Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 26300. Documentary for Radio: Audio Verité 100 Units.

Audio Verité will focus on creative nonfiction radio storytelling, exploring how to document the world through sound and story. Students will learn essential radio skills, including the following: identifying worthwhile stories, writing for radio, finding a voice as narrator, recording interviews and ambient sound, and editing, mixing, and producing short, vivid, sound-rich documentaries. The class will also contain a strong critical listening and component, and active participation will be expected.

Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. Contact instructor to sign up for wait list.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 26341. Picturing Words/Writing Images (Studio) 100 Units.

What is the relationship between reading and looking? Images in mind and images on paper—words in mind and on the page—we will explore the intersection of these different ways to think, read, and look, as we make poems, drawings, paintings, etc., in class. We will investigate the problem of representing language as it is expressed in the work produced in class. Studying works by contemporary visual artists like Jenny Holzer and Ann Hamilton, and practicing poets such as Susan Howe and Tom Phillips will inform our investigation. The course will feature visits to our studio by contemporary poets and visual artists, who will provide critiques of student work and discussion of their own ongoing projects. These visitors will help to frame our artistic and literary practice within the ongoing conversation between word and image in modern culture. We will ask, what are the cognitive, phenomenological, social, and aesthetic consequences of foregrounding the pictorial/visual aspect of alphabetical characters? (C, H)

Instructor(s): J. Stockholder, S. Reddy     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Third- or fourth-year standing. Previous experience in an arts studio or creative writing course recommended, but not required.
Equivalent Course(s): BPRO 26500,ARTV 26901,ARTV 36901,CRWR 46341,ENGL 24319,ENGL 34319

CRWR 27100. TV Writing: The Sitcom. 100 Units.

Instruction, reading, and dialogue centering on the writing of the half-hour television comedy script. Aesthetic elements (i.e., formal requirements of the genre as well as the basics of technique) will be presented and assessed; practical necessities (including tricks of the trade) will be explained; real-world network and cable T.V. "ins and outs" will be touched upon. Classroom discussion, covering reading both theoretical and instructional, will be conducted in conjunction with participation by each student in the actual writing of a script. Although humor itself is subjective and ineffable, there are right and wrong ways to go about achieving it. The right ways—and how to get them on paper—will be illuminated in this class.

Instructor(s): J. Perzigan     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Instructor consent required. Submit a 3–5 page writing sample and a one-paragraph statement of intent. Creative Writing students: To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): No prior experience necessary. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 25800

CRWR 27101. Beginning Screenwriting. 100 Units.

This course introduces the basic elements of a literate screenplay (e.g., format, exposition, characterization, dialog, voice-over, adaptation, vagaries of the three-act structure). Weekly meetings include a brief lecture period, screenings of scenes from selected films, extended discussion, and assorted readings of class assignments. Because this is primarily a writing class, students write a four- to five-page weekly assignment related to the script topic of the week.

Instructor(s): J. Petrakis     Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through classes.uchicago.edu. If course is full, sign up for wait list at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/waiting-list.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 47101

CRWR 27103. Advanced Screenwriting. 100 Units.

This course requires students to complete the first draft of a feature-length screenplay (at least ninety pages in length), based on an original idea brought to the first or second class. No adaptations or partially completed scripts are allowed. Weekly class sessions include reading of script pages and critique by classmates and instructor.

Instructor(s): J. Petrakis     Terms Offered: Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

CRWR 27105. Theater and Performance Studies Colloquium. 100 Units.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of Director of Undergraduate Studies and Chair of TAPS
Note(s): Required of fourth-year students who are majoring or minoring in TAPS. Creative Writing or MAPH students who are preparing theses for performance may participate with consent from their home department and the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Students participate in both Autumn and Winter Quarters but register once.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 47105,TAPS 29800

CRWR 28100. Journalism: News Writing in the Digital Age. 100 Units.

Journalists today are expected to meet the standards that guided reporters in the 20th century but more quickly and more often for the dynamic media of the 21st Century. In this course we will study and practice traditional and emerging forms of stories and reports, as well as the interactive conversation that turns readers into participants, contributors, and editors. We will cover the news, meet and beat deadlines, conduct interviews, keep a beat blog, discuss the legal and ethical obligations of the profession. As much as possible, we will follow the rituals of the job, completing regular assignments that target a particular audience.

Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): To apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 48100

CRWR 29200. Thesis/Major Projects Seminar: Fiction. 100 Units.

This advanced fiction course is for BA and MA students writing a creative thesis or any advanced student working on a major fiction project.  It is primarily a workshop, so please come to our first class with your project in progress (a story collection, a novel, a novella, etc.), ready for you to discuss and to submit some part of for critique.  As in any writing workshop, we will stress the fundamentals of craft like language, voice, and plot and character development, with an eye also on how to shape your work for the longer form you have chosen.  To supplement our workshops, we will read and discuss published fiction relevant and hopefully informative to your specific projects, while also exploring the potential avenues towards publication.

Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Required for students working on BA or MA thesis in fiction; for others to apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 49200

CRWR 29300. Thesis/Major Projects Seminar: Poetry. 100 Units.

This course is an advanced seminar intended primarily for seniors and MAPH students writing honors theses in creative writing as well as advanced students who are working on major projects. Because it is a thesis seminar, the course will focus on various ways of organizing larger poetic “projects.” We will consider the poetic sequence, the chapbook, and the poetry collection as ways of extending the practice of poetry beyond the individual lyric text. We will also problematize the notion of broad poetic “projects,” considering the consequences of imposing a predetermined conceptual framework on the elusive, spontaneous, and subversive act of lyric writing. Because this class is designed as a poetry workshop, your fellow students’ work will be the primary text over the course of the quarter.

Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Required for students working on BA or MA thesis in poetry; for others to apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 49300

CRWR 29400. Thesis/Major Projects Seminar: Creative Nonfiction. 100 Units.

This course is for BA and MA thesis students and those writing a long piece of nonfiction. It can be an extended essay, a memoir or travelogue, literary journalism, or an interrelated collection thereof. It is a workshop, so come to the first day of class with your work underway and ready to submit. You are required to edit your classmates' writing as diligently as you edit your own. I focus on editing because writing is, in essence, rewriting. Only by learning to edit other people's work will you gradually acquire the objectivity you need to skillfully edit your own. You will profit not only from the advice you receive, but from the advice you learn to give. I will teach you to teach each other and thus yourselves, preparing you for the real life of the writer outside the academy.

Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Required for students working on BA or MA thesis in creative nonfiction;for others to apply, submit writing through online form at creativewriting.uchicago.edu/courses/submission.
Note(s): Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 49400