Course Descriptions for Summer 2017
224.001: Introduction to Creative Writing
Online
Julie Shigekuni, jshig@unm.edu
Course Description: This introductory level course in creative writing will be divided into the study of creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. You will begin by writing about life as you know it based on experience. You will then re-imagine your remembered past into fiction, and go on to produce what Janet Burroway calls “Concrete Significant Details” in a series of poems. You will spend four weeks in each genre, reading work published in Janet Burroway’s anthology and writing to increase your understanding of forms. In the remaining three weeks, you will develop a piece of writing in the genre of your choosing.
This introductory course assumes that you have little or no experience writing personal essays, stories, and poems and provides the beginning writer with a range of methods and structures with which to posit questions and search for answers creatively. Every reading discussion and writing experiment is designed to emphasize an element of craft involved in creative writing. Online classwork will consist of individual small and large group discussions as well as individual writing experiments and structured workshops.
297.001: Later American Literature
Online
Matthew Hofer, mrh@unm.edu
This course surveys the evolution of American literature from the mid-nineteenth century through the twentieth, with special emphasis on those cultural and social issues frequently associated with modernism as well as modernity. Every week we will discuss at least one major fictional work, a generous selection of influential poems, and also a significant film.
298.001: Workshop in Literature or Writing
MTWRF 1400-1600
Breanna Griego-Schmit, mamapeep@unm.edu
315.001: Interdisc Approaches to Lit: The Outlaw and the Outlawed in American Literature
Online
Ying Xu, yingxu@unm.edu
A UNM OCAC (Online Course Advisory Council) and a national QM (Quality Matter) certified course for its best online practices, ENGL315: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literature: The Outlaw and the Outlawed in American Literature examines the nature, function, and context of the outlaw and the outlawed (people, spaces, and practices) and their literary representations in American literature. With a brief introduction to early outlawry in American history, the course focuses mainly on nineteenth-century and twentieth-century texts and writers. Texts read and viewed in the course include Gregory Monro’s Calamity Jane: Légende de l’Quest (2014), Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), Bret Harte and Mark Twain’s Ah Sin: A Play in Four Acts (1877), John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854), María Ruiz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don (1885), Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying (1993), Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller (1981). We will study the transcultural, transgendered and interdisciplinary manifestations and the different literary, political, socio-historical, and media contexts in which the outlaw/ed may be encountered and represented. The course covers topics such as western stories, frontier conflicts, malesubjectivity, sexuality, immigration acts, bodies of law and the outlawed bodies, and passing and identitynegotiation.
354.001: Milton
Online
Marissa Greenberg, marissag@unm.edu
John Milton's Paradise Lost holds a unique place in the history of literature and culture. Milton found inspiration for his retelling of the falls of Satan and Adam and Eve in the Bible and Shakespeare, in science and global encounters, and in the religious and political turmoil of seventeenth-century England. So too modern writers, such as Neil Gaiman and Ursula Le Guin, have found inspiration in Milton's epic.
The primary goal of this course is to introduce you to Paradise Lost and its broad tradition of literary and cultural influence. Through in-depth reading of Milton's epic alongside some of its adaptations, we will explore early modern and modern characterizations of heavenly and earthly beings, the themes of free will, temptation, and virtue, and poetic invention.
You will participate in small-group discussions of Milton's engagement with the pressing issues of his day, including theology, gender, politics, and race and ethnicity. You will also write short papers on adaptations of Paradise Lost, culminating in an adaptation of your own. Other elements of this fully online course include brief lectures and reading quizzes.
420.001: Travel Writing
Online
Stephen Benz, sbenz@unm.edu
Maybe you've enjoyed travel articles in magazines like National Geographic or Smithsonian and thought you'd like to try writing in a similar vein. This class will help get you started. We'll explore the elements that make for a good travel story: sense of voice, development of character, and the evocation of telling details. Travel writing is a rich and versatile genre, embracing a multitude of topics and forms. A travel story may concern spiritual awakening, cultural encounter, politics, anthropology, science, nature, food, philosoph you name it. The journey motif is embedded deep in the human psyche. It enriches stories, poems, memoirs, essays, even scripture. In fact, the oldest storytelling we know about concerns travel and travelers. Gilgamesh. Odysseus. Moses. Aeneas. For centuries, storytellers have turned again and again to travel for inspiration. Now, its your turn. During this 8-week summer course, you will have the opportunity to write several types of travel articles/stories, including blogs, review articles, informative articles, and personal essays. Readings from accomplished travel writers will serve as models. You will also have the chance to share your work with your peers through an online discussion board.
