Graduate 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 program.
E630A Recent American Women Poets
Students in this class will read 12-15 books of poems covering the range of work by North American women poets from language poetry to autobiographical free verse to formal poetry. Each student will concentrate on the work of a particular poet for a seminar paper, write a shorter paper on some aspect of poetics and take a mid-term. Poets to be studied will include such poets as Jorie Graham, Carolyn Forche, Lyn Hejinian, Anne Waldman, Alice Notely, Louise Glück, and Lucille Clifton.
E 630B – The Poetry of Witness
Matthew Cooperman
This course will examine the concept of witness as it pertains to poetry. It will entail, generally, an examination of witness as a social and historical construction, and specifically, a consideration of the "poetry of witness" as defined by Carolyn Forche in her landmark anthology Against Forgetting. We will consider the debate through the lens of Holocaust Studies, feminism, queer theory, Marxism and Language poetics, and through the reading of criticism, essays and whole collections of poetry. Students will give a substantial presentation and will write a long term paper on a topic of their choosing.
E630B The Short Story
It has been said that God created human beings for the stories. As endlessly fascinating as people themselves are the stories they tell. Our primary aim will be to read and enjoy stories and to learn about the history and roots of the story, the forces influencing writers, and the elements involved in constructing stories. Although often compared with novels, the story is closer in intensity and economy to poetry. We will read a wide range of stories, critical works about genre, and will study the stories of particular writers such as Chekhov, O'Connor, Turgenev, Kafka, Garcia Marquez, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cheever, Maupassant, Joyce, Alice Munro, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Sherwood Anderson, Isaac Babel, Grace Paley, Raymond Carver, and others.
E630C Narrative Voice in the Short Story
Voice has come to mean for writers more than style, more than tone, more than sound. It is perhaps the element that most guides (and at times eludes) authors in their search for a story's direction. As one writer has said, to find one's voice is to follow a whisper. During the class we'll examine the expression and development of voice in the short fiction, using such diverse stories as Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, Merce Rodoreda's The Salamander, and Amy Bloom's Love Is Not a Pie. We'll be looking at process and craft--a detailed, intensive analysis of the short story form. Emphasis will be on the contemporary short story.
E 641V – Writing the Literary Life
Judy Doenges
In this course, students will read and write nonfiction about poets, prose writers, their work, and their craft, as well as essays about literature as a cultural necessity and treasure. In the process, students will become more active participants in the literary life. This will be a hands-on class on writing about literature and authors from a personal perspective, with an eye towards producing publishable work. Student assignments may include: short and long book reviews, essay-length reviews, essays on the student’s literary influences, and an essay on a larger literary trend. Authors may include: Jarrell, Ozick, Byatt, McClatchy, Kazin, O’Connor, Sontag, and Bellow.
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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