Minor in Creative Writing

Section Description: Love a book and wish you could meet and speak with its author? You can. Built around the Visiting Writers Series which brings poets, fiction writers and essayists to Otis from around the country, in this Synchronous Online course, you’ll read and discuss selected works by authors in advance of their visits. You’ll meet the authors, listen to them read, talk about their writing and about aspects of contemporary literary culture. You’ll get the opportunity to connect personally, ask the writers about their work, their experiences, their lives as artists. For the signature assignment, you’ll have the option of developing and delivering an introduction to a visiting author or writing a creative reflection on a writer, their writing, and your own practice. If you are taking this class as a Creative Writing minor, register for the section listed as LIBS316.

Section Description: Love a book and wish you could meet and speak with its author? You can. Built around the Visiting Writers Series which brings poets, fiction writers and essayists to Otis from around the country, in this Synchronous Online course, you’ll read and discuss selected works by authors in advance of their visits. You’ll meet the authors, listen to them read, talk about their writing and about aspects of contemporary literary culture. You’ll get the opportunity to connect personally, ask the writers about their work, their experiences, their lives as artists. For the signature assignment, you’ll have the option of developing and delivering an introduction to a visiting author or writing a creative reflection on a writer, their writing, and your own practice. If you are taking this class as a Creative Writing minor, register for the section listed as LIBS316.

Section Description: What is a novella? A long story? A short novel? Maybe better questions are: Why has this form attracted so many notable authors, leaving us with a rich literary history? Why is the novella so readily adaptable to film? And why does such an uneasy, awkward, yet enduring genre inspire such admiration among readers? In this course—both a reading seminar and a writing workshop—we will investigate an unexpectedly complex and varied form across modern and contemporary traditions, tracing structural, stylistic, and thematic patterns. Over the course of the semester, students will explore methods for structuring narrative and begin writing their own novellas, which may include visual and graphic elements. Special attention will be given to making applicable skills learned in this course to other long-form projects, like graphic and illustrated novels, films, serial podcasts, and games.

Section Description: Western culture's relationship with nature is one of exploitation, conquest, industry, and waste, but it's also empowerment, mythology, conservation, and wonder. In Human Nature, LIBS 314, students examine their own relationship with the natural world. How do fiction, film, science, industry, religion, politics, and advertising shape our connection to our environment and our selves? By studying fiction from indigenous and environmentalist authors as well as cross-genre film about nonhuman species, we will see how stories shape our relationship with nature. From the sustainability and environmental justice movements, we will identify our particular concerns about the planet and make strides to recover our birthright: moving from estrangement with the natural world to integration, from despair to hope, from apathy to care. Or, if we already have a practice of climate resilience--we will fine tune our mission. We will compose narratives and analysis that demonstrate an understanding of how storytelling, language, and the visual realm inform our many roles in this altering ecology. Finally, we will reflect on a plan for future engagement with the natural world, be it protective measures through civic engagement, integration through professional practice, or simply more time spent outdoors.