Undergraduate Study
Recent Topics Courses in Creative Writing
The following course descriptions are taken from recent issues of the Rambler, the Department's student newsletter. They describe some of the topics courses (courses not regularly offered) taken by students in the Creative Writing concentration.
E403 Nature WritingThis class has a double focus. Half is reading nature writing: we'll read some of the more interesting and powerful contemporary nonfiction writers about nature and the environment, and we'll talk about what they're doing with their texts, how they do it, and what issues their work deals with and raises. The other half is writing nature writing: we'll experiment with kinds of nature and environmental writing ourselves, work on style, organization, effectiveness, complexity, and so on, and share our work as a class. Much, but not all, of your writing will be in the form of a journal about a local "natural" place; we'll probably read the equivalent of one book every two weeks. The work-load will be spread over the term in roughly equal weekly amounts.
E470 Willa Cather
Willa Cather is among the most influential writers of the 20th Century, though her work was consistently under-rated until fairly recently when a new group of critics re-discovered Cather's work and wrote about its significance in the development of the modern and contemporary novel. Often seen only as a writer of the frontier, Cather was actually a sophisticated observer of American society in all its aspects and spent most of her long life in the East. The course will concentrate on at least five of Cather's novels with some coverage of her journalism and short fiction as well.
E470 Flannery O'Connor
This course will provide a close examination of one of the most distinctive American writers of the twentieth century, a writer who seems to belong to another age in her emphasis on spiritual salvation and redemption. Students will study the vision and technique that mark and animate O'Connor's fiction and will examine her growth as an artist by reading her novels, short stories, essays, and letters. This course may fulfill the category II distribution requirement for Teaching Certification majors only.
E475 American Poetry
The dialogue within this course will be between affirmation (of self, of a unified U.S. culture, of words' ability to coincide with that to which they refer) and negation (of those same subjects). Whitman and Dickinson establish the terms for this dialogue, but it is re-enacted in a variety of forms throughout the twentieth century. How is poetic form related to national identity? Is form breaking also nation making? In what way is poetry about bringing into being an ideal self (both individual and collective) that did not exist before the writing of the poem? Is poetry more concerned with the nature of the self than other genres? We will be seeking to make sense of the particularity of poetic discourse; but we will also be looking at what that particularity can tell us about the national culture from which it arose and to which it paid homage.
E480 Beat Generation Writing
What shared experiences, poetics, cultural milieu, and historical pressures made Beat Generation Writing a movement? Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, et al. This course will trace Beat Generation writing in its inception, development, and continuing impact. Starting with The Portable Beat Reader, which includes East coast beats, West coast beats, fellow travelers like Bob Dylan and Ken Kesey, and "Tales of Beatnik Glory" by Diane DiPrima, Anne Waldman, Joyce Johnson, and Jan Kerouac, students will focus on works such as Allen Ginsberg's Howl & Other Poems, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Dharma Bums, and Dr. Sax, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Endless Life: The Selected Poems, William Burrough's Junky and Naked Lunch, Amiri A. Baraka's Dutchman/The Slave, Carolyn Cassady's Heart Beat: My Life with Jack & Neal, and Gary Snyder's Riprap, Cold Mountain Poems.
For information about course offerings and registration procedures for the upcoming semester or summer session, please view the Rambler, the Department's student newsletter.
This information is not intended to replace your advisor or the information in the CSU General Catalog, the Class Schedule, or the Department Checksheets.
Contact us: Attn: Marnie Leonard – Through the mail at 1773 Campus Delivery Eddy Hall, Ft. Collins, CO 80523-1773. On the phone at (970) 491-2403. By e-mail at Marnie.Leonard@colostate.edu.
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