CREATIVE WRITING AND POPULAR CULTURE
08C:115:SCA / 145:115:SCA
Instructor: Ellie Catton
Blog site: http://cwpopculture.blogspot.com/
“One day, men will look back and say I gave birth to the twentieth century.”
- JACK THE RIPPER
“Human beings can’t see anything without wanting to destroy it, Lyra.”
- LORD ASRIEL
ABOUT THIS CLASS
A successful workshop is a space in which everybody is trusted, respected, and heard. We are not here to pass judgment on each others’ art. We are here to investigate it, to unpack it, to take it apart and find out how it works. Our goal is never to reach a verdict (“good” or “bad”, “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it”), but to listen well, read generously, and try to understand every text on its own terms.
Please only submit work that will not make you or anybody else in the class feel uncomfortable if it is discussed critically in class. Work that deals in any way with themes of sexual abuse or sexual violence will not be discussed.
COURSE GOALS / OBJECTIVES
We will become better writers, by inspiration and example; we will become better people; and we will question what it means to be an artist in the world today.
ATTENDANCE POLICY
You may not be absent from more than two classes and expect to pass this course. If exceptional circumstances force your non-attendance, you must to notify the instructor by email at least two hours prior to the start of class.
PARTICIPATION
You are expected to do the required reading each week. Come to class with questions, concerns, impressions, and doubts. Participating well doesn’t necessarily mean talking the most– it also means listening to, acknowledging, and respecting your fellow students.
MATERIALS & REQUIRED TEXTS
Please read The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman) and From Hell (Alan Moore). Additional materials will be provided in photocopy form.
GRADING
Your overall grade for the course will be split in this way:
Attendance (15%)
Participation (15%)
Weekly blog presence (15%)
Take-home exercises (each worth 3%) (30%)
Workshop piece (15%)
Post-workshop conference (10%)
BLOG COMMUNITY
Each week I will be posting articles, stories, poems, youtube clips, TED talks, questions, and remarks on to the blog at http://cwpopculture.blogspot.com/. You will each be required to leave comments on this blog at least once a week (more frequently is preferable), with a view toward creating an online community that reflects and enlarges upon the live community we create in class. We will discuss the growth and personality of the site as the semester progresses.
OFFICE HOURS AND CONFERENCES
Following your workshop, I will collect the responses written by your peers, read them, and then return them to you in person at a thirty-minute post-workshop conference, conducted either at Tspoons (corner Market and Linn) or at the Dey House (N Clinton St).
I am also happy to arrange weekly drop-in office hours.
WORKSHOP STANDARD
The work you hand in for peer workshop must be typed, proofread, and finished. Sketches, summaries and ellipses are not permitted.
At the post-workshop conference I will give your piece a score out of 15. You will then have the opportunity to return to the work and revise it according to our discussion. You may continue to hand in the piece, in its various drafts and incarnations, until the semester’s end. I will grade it anew each time. NB: Your score out of 15 will only ever increase with each revision.
WORKSHOP PROCEDURE
You will need to hand in your work to be workshopped at least one week prior to the date of your workshop to ensure that I have time to photocopy it and distribute to your classmates. Please either email the work to me by attachment or leave a hardcopy in my mailbox in the Dey House front office. I must receive the work by 12p.m. on Monday (the Monday one week before your scheduled workshop) at the very latest.
CLASS SCHEDULE
23 Aug – Introduction.
Take-home exercise 1: First Person
30 Aug – The Individual.
Reading: photocopy packet
Take-home exercise 2: We Didn’t Start the Fire
6 Sept – Contemporary Culture (The Dead Zone).
Reading: photocopy packet
Take-home exercise 3: Smug Metaphors
13 Sept – Lights & Camera.
Reading: photocopy packet
Take-home exercise 4: Sight Unseen
20 Sept – Information / Wisdom.
Reading: photocopy packet
Take-home exercise 5: Advertisement & Review
27 Sept – The Audience and the Consumer.
Trial Workshop (blind)
Reading: The Golden Compass
Take-home exercise 6: Android Chekhov
4 October – Genre Lines.
Workshop 1: Lauren
Workshop 2: Mitchell
Reading: The Golden Compass
Take-home exercise 7: The New Myth
11 October – The Epic, the Mythic, and the Awesome.
Workshop 3: Michelle
Workshop 4: Benjamin
Reading: The Golden Compass
Take-home exercise 8: Erasure
18 October – Contemporary Poetry. (instructor: Steven Toussaint)
Reading: poetry packet
Take-home exercise 9: I Google Myself
25 October – Contemporary Poetry. (instructor: Steven Toussaint)
Reading: poetry packet
Take-home exercise 10: Pilot Episode
1 Nov – What We Learned From HBO.
Workshop 5: A. Maria
Workshop 6: Brandon
Workshop 7: Casey
Reading: From Hell
8 Nov – “Based On The Book By…”
Workshop 8: Alyssa
Workshop 9: Christine
Workshop 10: Jared
Reading: From Hell
15 Nov – Shock and Censorship.
Workshop 11: Sydney
Workshop 12: Michael
Workshop 13: Ellen
Workshop 14: Ashley
Reading: From Hell
22 Nov – THANKSGIVING BREAK – NO CLASS
29 Nov – The Individual, Redux.
Workshop 15: Joel
Workshop 16: Anna
Workshop 17: Amanda
Last chance to make up assignment credits.
6 Dec – Final Class
Grades returned.
