2007-2008
Fall 2007
Monday
Fern Field
THEA266 –Screenwriting
Call No. 18999
Room B120
This course will walk students through the process of developing a property for production. Students should have a property (in many cases this will be a completed screenplay, but it could be a play, a book or story they want to adapt, or a documentary project) they have already worked on; the class will be devoted to discussing the kinds of decisions made regarding production: what would it cost to make this film? what demands might be made on a writer under various production scenarios?
Tuesday
Stu Krieger
CRWT252J – Theory and Craft of Writing – Screenplay
Call No. 19000
Room B120
This is a beginning screenwriting workshop; priority will be given to first year students.
Tuesday
Tom Lutz
CRWT250 – Theory for Writers
Call No. 19001
Room B120
This seminar will introduce students to basic literary and film theory that might be helpful to them as writers, from Aristotle to Zizek. It also will be useful to anyone looking for an academic position, since these theories are the lingua franca of academic departments of literature and film.
Wednesday
Tod Goldberg
CRWT262 – Fiction Workshop
Call No. 19002
Room B120
This workshop introduces students to the basic tenets of creative writing, from story conception to execution on the page, as well as advanced analysis of both student and published work. Focus will be on creating new work as well as polishing stories/chapters after initial workshop with an eye towards both thesis and publication.
Thursday,
Lance B. Taylor
CRWT201 – The Writer’s Life
Call No. 19003
Room B120
This course will examine the professional side of the TV writer’s life, with sessions on pitching, on the development process, on being part of a writing team, and other issues. A number of guest speakers will visit as part of the course to discuss different aspects of the television world.
Winter 2008
Monday
Juan Felipe Herrera
CRWT263 – CHILDREN’S LITERATURE WORKSHOP
Call No. 19195
Room B120
Welcome to this course. I look forward to your energy, words, zest and creativity. A high emphasis on producing a lot of no-holds barred writing is the mode for the workshop. I want you to imagine you are on an excursion into a joyous and life-flowing garden with four coronas. Our first stop will be Pat Mora’s book of flavors and I will introduce to you the art of writing a children’s picture book. We will build on Mora and leap to Here in Harlem and see how poetry can become fiction without losing its attributes. Then, we go to Iggulden’s Dangerous Book for Boys and rethink and re-write the genre. Our last stop will be the National Book Award winning, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” and we will explore the young adult novel. We may also discuss children’s playwrighting and children’s plays with music.
Monday (1st class January 16th, Room B118)
Tod Goldberg
CRWT262 – FICTION WORKSHOP
Call No. 19196
Room B117
This workshop introduces students to the basic tenets of creative writing, from story conception to execution on the page, as well as advanced analysis of both student and published work. Focus will be on creating new work as well as polishing stories/chapters after initial workshop with an eye towards both thesis and publication.
Tod Goldberg is the author of three critically acclaimed and award-winning books of fiction and has published widely in literary and general-interest magazines. He has worked as a staff and free-lance journalist and maintains a must-read literary blog about the Los Angeles literary world.
Tuesday
Tom Lutz
CRWT288 – THESIS WORKSHOP
Call No. 19197
Room B120
This multigenre workshop is designed for students in either their penultimate or last quarters as they finish their theses.
Tuesday (begins at 5:00)
Stu Krieger
THEA266 – SCREENWRITING
Call No. 19198
Room B120
THEA 266 is a comprehensive introduction to the craft of screenwriting with a primary focus on the production of original work. Each student will write a minimum of 60 pages of a screenplay, based on their own idea, supplemented by a detailed outline of the project intended to lay out the remaining scenes. Each students work will be read, discussed and critiqued on a weekly basis by the entire class.
Wednesday
Stu Krieger
THEA267 – WRITING FOR TELEVISION
Call No. 19199
Room B120
This workshop will concentrate on series television shows and their forms and requirements. Each students work will be read, discussed and critiqued on a weekly basis by the entire class.
Thursday
Keith Harris
ENGL275 -- FILM AND VISUAL CULTURE
Call No. 19850
Room B120
The subject of this seminar is racial peformativity. The goal of the seminar is to develop further the notion of peformativity beyond that of gender performativity, and develop ways of discussing race within its proper contexts of culture and ideology. In an effort to exptrapolate a theory of racial performativity from theories of gender peformativity, we will, therefore, explore theories and histories of race alongside contemporary Cultural Studies and Performance Studies theories of performance and performativity. We will seek our objectives through the use of visual and written texts in various racial and ethnic cultural traditions. There will be five screenings on Tuesdays from 5:00-8:00. Date and location of the screenings: TBA.
Wednesday
Allison HedgeCoke
CRWT270 – Poetry Workshop (Strategy of Poetry)
Call No. 19201
Room B114
This is an active creative process workshop. Participants will explore essential schematics and intricacies of remarkable design in poetry. This workshop will create a time and place where one may consider the value of purposeful approach and intentional method as profound premeditation. This course will investigate usefulness of critical set-up,
skillful technique and skeletal construction while engaging participants in cogitative poetic process. Exercises modeling mindful device, tactic, and maneuvers entertain a theory that in poetry, ruse is a necessary thing. The Poetry Workshop is devoted to the close reading of student works and the writing of a series of poems (number and/or length to be determined by instructor). Blackboard will be used in this course.
Spring 2008
Monday
Steven Biller
CRWT252G 002 – Nonfiction, Magazine Writing
Call No. 19635
Room B120
This course gleans fiction techniques such as dramatic scene, image, voice, story movement, and point of view for literary nonfiction. Students will sharpen their writing skills through the critical reading and writing of nonfiction works. The course — consisting of instruction, discussion, and workshops — offers students an opportunity to develop dramatic, true stories using scenes, dialogue, detail, and nuanced research of their chosen subjects. Weekly workshops will emphasize coaching to refine and polish the works for either publication or personal satisfaction.
Tuesday
Gary Amdahl
THEA252I 002 – Theory and Craft of Writing, Playwriting
Call No. 19886
Room B120
This is an introductory course in writing for the stage, taught at the graduate level. That means we will be starting from scratch but I will assume fairly broad but not deep familiarity with the basic outline of dramatic literature. By “broad” I mean more precisely that I hope you have read and seen a lot of plays. “A lot” isn’t in fact a very precise a term, but it’s the one that fits: if it seems like “a lot” to you, that’s good enough for me. Part of what we’ll be doing over the course of the quarter is identifying what a good foundation in dramatic literature consists of, and in what ways that foundation is different for a playwright, as opposed to an actor.
As for familiarity with theatrical skills: it’s great if you’ve done some acting, and equally fine if you’ve done none and are in fact shy. Our primary objective will be to understand how a writer can work on a stage. Writing words to be spoken on a stage to tell a story to an audience is one of the oldest forms of literature—but also, at least for us, here and now, one of the strangest.
The principal job of a playwright is to give actors words that they can use to literally build a story in front of people. It’s not at all like writing a story to be recited from a podium. A story must be built on a stage while people are watching. The audience must see the construction taking place. They must understand every word, every action, every
silence. There is no place for meditation or musing, no possibility for “setting it aside and getting back to it later.” Clarity is everything. My plan is to examine the nature of stage speech from the beginning as a different species of language. We’ll start with
simple conversations and become, week by week, more complicated and daring, as we try to build psychological and spiritual landscapes, as we try to build cathedrals of human nature, with simple gestures and clear language.
Wednesday
Stu Krieger – Thesis Workshop
THEA299 002
Call No. 19640
Room TBA
Designed for students working on their thesis, usually in the last two quarters of the program. Focuses on student work, with emphasis on bringing thesis projects to conclusion.
Wednesday
Deanne Stillman - Creative Non Fiction Workshop
CRWT230 002
Call No. 19638
Room B120
THE TRUE STORY: A WORKSHOP IN WRITING WHAT'S REAL
In this workshop, we explore how our best writers have chosen to write about actual historical, cultural, and personal events. We also learn what separates journalism from nonfiction that deals with similar topics, from strange subcultures to bizarre wilderness treks to murder most foul. Drawing on passages from Mikal Gilmore, Charles Bowden, Joyce Carol Oates, John McPhee, Jon Krakauer, Annie Dillard, Isabel Fonseca, Tony Horwitz, and the instructor's own work, participants explore the ways writers have "elevated" the truth to make it more than just another tale of woe, horror, or joy. Along the way, participants write about an actual event or moment, using place and character to reveal not just that things happen, but how and why. Students can either continue a work in progress, or start a new one.
Thursday
Tom Lutz – Thesis Workshop
CRWT299 002
Call No. 19504, Section 201
Room TBA
Designed for students working on their thesis, usually in the last two quarters of the program. Focuses on student work, with emphasis on bringing thesis projects to conclusion.
Thursday
Tod Goldberg – Thesis Workshop
CRWT299 002
Call No. 19645
Room TBA
Designed for students working on their thesis, usually in the last two quarters of the program. Focuses on student work, with emphasis on bringing thesis projects to
Gayle Brandeis
CRWT263 002 – Fiction Workshop, for non fiction writers
Call No. 19637
Room B120
In this workshop, we will delve deeply into the craft of fiction. Our focus will be on developing and polishing student work, through both in class exercises and the workshop process. We will also analyze published fiction, and will explore different aspects of craft, such as point of view, dialogue and voice.
Saturday, April 5th
Kate Gale (Red Hen Publishing)
CRWT290 002 -- Publishing Workshop
Call No. 19666
(1 unit Independent Study w/Tom Lutz)
Room B120
Founding Editor/Director of Red Hen Press, Kate Gale has a BA/MA in English with emphasis on Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in American Literature from Claremont Graduate University. She is a poet and writer with four books of poetry, a novel, a bilingual children's book, editor of three literary anthologies, and has recently completed the libretto for the opera "Rio de Sangre" by Don Davis.