Future Course Offerings - 2024/2025

 Course

Fall 2024

CRWR 1100 - Introduction to Creative Writing I*

P

CRWR 1200 - Introduction to Craft and Process in Creative Writing*

P

CRWR 1240 - New Forms and Media: Networked Narratives

P

CRWR 2140 -Writing and Creativity on the Web

CRWR 2300 -Fiction and Poetry

 P

CRWR 2900 - Special Topics

Fall 2024: Comedic Forms - In this topics course, students will engage with humour writing—from both a craft and cultural perspective—across the genres of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, script, and stand-up
Spring 2025: Graphic Narratives - Words and pictures: how can they work together to create stories and evoke emotions? Let's find out, by reading and creating illustrated stories, graphic poems, fictional and nonfictional comics. In this introductory course, students will learn about the history of comics/graphic narrative, and different disciplinary, cultural and aesthetic approaches to the relationship between image and text via short lectures, hands-on activities, reading and discussion.  Note: this is a creative writing course, not a fine arts or digital media course. The focus will be on the use of words, and the images/objects we do make will involve paper and pencil, pen and ink, collage and cardboard, although students who wish to experiment with digital media may speak to the instructor for permission. Students will be graded on their writing skills and use of narrative/metaphor, not their drawing ability, although students will be expected to show some development in their visual as well as linguistic literacy throughout the course. 
Summer 2025: Writing Monstrosities (Condensed)  We will explore notions of ‘the monster’ and the monstrous. This is not a genre class per se (in which we will explicitly write horror or ‘monster’ stories) but rather one in which we will examine what it means to be a disturbed or disturbing figure, a figure stripped of humanity or a figure void of those essences we associate with nature/the human. As the support texts for this class will prove, every day human beings can sometimes be read through the lens of the monstrous and written about by employing the tropes of the monstrous. At the extreme end of monstrosities we might find the ‘walking dead’ of contemporary zombie films and literature, but we might also find the negligent drug-addicted mother of Bydlowska’s ‘Drunk Mom’ or the corrupt politician. Our goal in this class is to identify the tropes associated with monstrosities and to employ them in our own writing. Most of our classes will consist of four components: writing exercises (based on generative material), a short lecture, a seminar-style discussion of the week’s readings, and then group work or a roundtable on the ideas raised in class or in the creative work students have in progress. The remaining classes will be workshops. Students are welcome to work in whatever genre(s) they like and to change genres if inspired to do so. 

P

CRWR 3100 - Techniques in Short Fiction

P

CRWR 3110 -Techniques in Poetry

P 

CRWR 3120 - Screenwriting and Drama: Character and Dialogue

P

CRWR 3130 - Creative Nonfiction: Writing from the Self

P 

CRWR 3140 - New Forms and Media: Sites and Platforms

P

CRWR 3200 - Short Fiction

CRWR 3210 - Poetic Forms

CRWR 3220 - Screenwriting and Drama: Structure and Plot

CRWR 3230 -Creative Nonfiction: Writing Beyond the Self

CRWR 3240 - New Forms and Media: Web Series

CRWR 3301 - Mythological Narratives

CRWR 3302 - Themes in Literary Writing

CRWR 3400 - Advanced Special Topics

Spring 2025: Autofiction - In this course we will study notable works of autofiction and practice techniques for turning your life experiences into fiction 
Spring 2025: Oral Literature & Performance - Students will study examples of oral literature as it has been practiced around the world since time immemorial. We will look at the depth, complexity and beauty of the oral tradition, the use of sound and image in oral forms and develop our own work in response. Students will be given exercises to develop confidence in movement, performance and their speaking voice along with opportunities to practice oral delivery and performance. This course will develop appreciation for listening as much as performing and will enhance professional skills for all kinds of presentation.