MFA Courses
ENGLISH 520. 2 hrs. Craft and Theory of Fiction. In this course, various issues of craft and theory in fiction are presented by the fiction faculty, in a format which ranges from lectures to seminars. This course provides an analysis of professional and student work, focusing on a particular issue of craft or theory, including the construction of time-lines, the use of sensory detail, characterization, and narrative structure. May be repeated for a total of 8 hours credit.
ENGLISH 540. 2 hrs. Craft and Theory of Poetry. In this course, various issues of craft and theory in poetry are presented by the poetry faculty, in a format which ranges from lecture to short-term seminars. The course provides an analysis of professional and student work, focusing on a particular issue of craft or theory, including traditional verse forms, the use of vernacular speech in poetry, the long poem, the role of place and region in poetry, and the structure of free verse. May be repeated for a total of 8 hours credit.
ENGLISH 530. 2 hrs. Craft and Theory of Creative Non-Fiction. In this course, various issues of craft and theory in creative non-fiction are presented by the non-fiction faculty in a format which ranges from lectures to seminars. The course provides an analysis of professional and student work, focusing on a particular issue of craft or theory, including the role of memory, structure, characterization, point of view, and detailed description. May be repeated for a total of 8 hours credit.
ENGLISH 545. 2 hrs. Poetry Workshop. This workshop focuses on student writing in the poetic form, which is read and evaluated by the entire class. Students expand their writing and critical skills, and strengthen their knowledge of literary standards. May be repeated for a total of 8 hours credit.
ENGLISH 525. 2 hrs. Fiction Workshop. This course focuses on student fiction writing, which is read and evaluated by the entire class. Students expand their writing and critical skills, and strengthen their knowledge of literary standards. May be repeated for a total of 8 hours credit.
ENGLISH 535. 2 hrs. Creative Non-Fiction Workshop. This course focuses on student writing in memoir, autobiography, creative essay, and nature writing. The work is read and evaluated by the entire class. Students expand their writing and critical skills, and strengthen their knowledge of literary standards. May be repeated for a total of 8 hours credit.
ENGLISH 570. 8 hrs. Semester Project in Fiction, Poetry, or Creative Non-Fiction. Students plan their semester projects with their faculty mentor. The project entails twenty-five hours per week of work on the packets of writing exchanged with the mentor. A booklist of twenty books relevant to the craft and theory of the chosen genre will be assembled and documented in an annotated bibliography, and six packets of writing will be exchanged throughout the semester. The faculty mentor may refer the student to other readings in addition to those on the agreed-upon reading list. May be repeated for a total of 24 hours credit.
ENGLISH 650. 8 hrs. Thesis Preparation and Defense. The student will complete the creative thesis of publishable quality under the supervision of the faculty mentor. For prose writers, both fiction and non-fiction, the manuscript should be 200 pages or more; for poetry writers, the manuscript should be 64 pages or more. The student will return for a brief residency of at least three days in which a reading will be given from the completed manuscript and a class will be taught.
First Residency Seminars and Workshop Descriptions: July 2 - July 10, 2011
POETRY AND THE BODY. Irene McKinney. 2-day seminar. This seminar will explore the role of the body in contemporary poetry by examining the work of Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell, Gerald Stern, and 3 or 4 younger poets. The question that arises is: can the body stand in for matters of the spirit, or not? Have we transferred what was once religious or spiritual concern off onto the body? When is this successful, and when not?
THE LONG POEM IN ENGLISH. Eric Waggoner. Seminar-Lecture. Long poems test the reader’s endurance. They also test the writer – Can I sustain this effect over time and space? Can I shape the entire piece into a unified arc? How can I tell when a project is beginning to demand a longer form? How do I begin to build a long-form poem from the ground up? Out of what individual pieces can I create this extended performance? When should I modulate the tone or the rhythm of the poem? And - importantly - how much is too much? This class provides a setting in which writers can ask these questions of themselves and fellow poets during the composition process, and in which writers can also spend deep time with multi-part and book-length poems by other poets, mostly contemporary: From William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore to Charles Olsen and Jorie Graham. Coursework and assignments will divide fairly evenly between the critical and the creative.
LAND LIGHT, SEA LIGHT, HUMAN DWELLINGS. 2-day seminar. Devon McNamara. What did you grow up looking at and where? Did you live at sea level? In the mountains? Small Midwestern town? The indoor outdoors of a great city? How does exploring where your imagery comes from unlock the visual power of concentrated memory to reveal where your poem is going, to charge its rhythms, intensify its shape in the mind’s eye and heart? Together we’ll study and discuss the role of the image in poetry, focusing on the ways its energies can derive from landscape, waterscape, cities, roads and towns, where remembrance, longing, insight, and our infinite feelings and intelligences reside. Handouts of poems by Czeslaw Milosz, Gerald Stern, Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, Philip Levine, and others will be supplied during the session. Required Reading: Jane Hirschfield. Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. HarperCollins, 1997.
POETRY WORKSHOP. This workshop will be led by the poetry faculty on a rotating basis, meeting every day throughout the residency. (10 days.) Workshop size will be no more than 8 students.
ASPECTS OF 3RD PERSON POINT-OF-VIEW. (2-day seminar) Richard Schmitt. This class will examine two different aspects of 3rd person point-of-view. First, we will examine how time elements, the handling of how time passes, affects the point-of-view in “Lunch in winter” by William Trevor and “Hey Sailor, What Ship?” by Tillie Olsen. We will also look at the endings of “Revelation” by Flannery O’Connor and “Gusev’ by Anton Chekov to see how those endings made necessary certain point-of-view choices. All four stories must be read before class.
THE HILLBILLY SPEAKS OF RIVERS. Doug Van Gundy. The Appalachian Poetry of James Wright. (Seminar/Lecture) James Wright is regarded as one of the seminal voices of 20th century poetry. While much is written in the critical literature of his portrayal of the industrial Midwest, his affinity for marginalized figures and his complex relationships with other poets (Roethke, Bly and his own son Franz), very little has been mentioned regarding the Appalachian nature of his work. Wright grew up along the Ohio River in the Appalachian counties of Ohio and by his own account, his family background “goes very deep and far back into West Virginia and Ohio.” Participants in this one day seminar will compare Wright’s work with that of other “Appalachian” poets and explore the themes of poverty, history, heritage, location and self-reliance in James Wright’s poems.
THE MUSIC OF POETRY. Mark Defoe. 2 hours. A review of those poetic techniques that give poetry its symbiotic connection with music – rhyme, meter, beat, rhythm and all the sonic devices available to the poet in writing a poem.
FICTION WORKSHOP. Visiting faculty. 5-days for 2 and one-half hours.
NON-FICTION WORKSHOP. Visiting faculty. Daily for 10 days, 2 and one-half hours per day.