This course will introduce students to methods of encountering what’s unfamiliar to them through experiments in poetry and prose. Students will increase their confidence by taking creative risks in a community of supportive writers. We will address the elements of craft that are integral to the creation of poetry and fiction – tone, symbolism, rhythm, dialogue, allusion, and spatial and temporal variation. Guided by creative exercises, students will learn how to locate these elements at work in their own writing. They will read and discuss the place of these elements in the work of diverse international authors. Armendinger, Fall.
Poetic Forms & Innovations
In this course, we will see that form is always an invention, and that constraint is often liberating to the poem. We will practice writing in a variety of forms, from sonnets to haiku, Oulipo to hip-hop. We will think about the relationship of form to subject matter, as we explore the work of diverse poets who reinvent traditional forms and lay the groundwork for new modes of poetic speech. Armendinger, Spring 2010.
Poetry & Public Space
This course is a site-specific collaboration in finding/making poetry outside the walls of the classroom. Half of our work will be in the local community – in parks, on public transit, at the farmer’s market, and in neighborhoods. We will write in public, set up collaborative poetry stations, and reflect on our experiences through poetry. Our readings will explore the relationship between poetry, documentary, activism, and the boundaries between public and private space. Armendinger, Fall 2009.
This is a service-learning course in which Pitzer students and community participants explore autobiography through multimedia and interdisciplinary forms. Assignments are organized around hands-on community service offering autobiographical creative/writing workshops at the off-campus community-based location Prototypes Center for Women (http://www.prototypes.org/). Pitzer students work hands on with community clients to explore autobiography as visual, as performance, as written, as spoken, in short as a self- and socially-reflective endeavor which produces a private space within prevailing public discourse, a space of individual or collective identities, a space of social theory, resistance, revision, self-empowerment, and as a space of experimental or therapeutic art. Students engage autobiography across mediums, forms, and purposes. Harris, Spring 2010.
In a culture that is haunted by the fear and stigma of different bodies, what does it mean to encounter that difference within one’s own body? How do poets and fiction writers learn new modes of assemblage from illness and disability? We will explore both internal and external dimensions of illness, the ways the body and mind change, and how the surrounding culture contributes and responds to illness, giving particular attention to the experiences of cancer, HIV, Alzheimer’s, and disability. We will also ask how literature itself can be considered a practice of healing. Students will respond to readings in literature and theory through their own poetry and fiction, literary essay, and community outreach. Armendinger, Fall 2009.
Writing Los Angeles
A writing course that looks at the Southern California landscape through the eyes of novelists, journalists, historians and social critics. Students will read a number of novels and non-fiction pieces that have as their focus the examination of Southern California life, particularly Los Angeles in all of its diversity. Among the authors to be considered are: Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, Walter Mosley, Susan Straight and Nina Revoyr. Writing assignments will ask students to examine the social and political scene that is uniquely L.A. Levering Sullivan, Spring 2010.
This course is intended to support the efforts of poets with an established writing practice. Most of our time will be spent in workshop, helping each other's poems to grow in depth and direction. We will also give attention to our creative influences in poetry and other disciplines. Armendinger, Spring 2010.
This is an advanced course in the writing and reading of fiction. Through reading and writing assignments, students will experiment with various techniques of fiction, and develop the ability to recognize, describe, and use them. Students will practice all phases of the writing process--notetaking, sketching, drafting, revising--with the goal of developing their own creative processes and discipline as writers. Although we will read many published stories, the primary focus of this seminar is student writing. Accordingly, this class is conducted in a "workshop" manner. We will spend the majority of our class time discussing student stories, offering critiques and giving each other ideas. Revoyr, Spring 2010.
