Creative Writing Spring 2022

Creative Writing Spring 2022

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This course is an introduction to the creative writing process, in which you’ll do exercises in writing poetry, fiction, and dramatic scripts. There will also be selected readings of exemplary stories, poems, and plays. Open to all students. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisite:  English 114, or equivalent. Priority enrollment given to Eng: Creative Writing, Eng: Ed w/ Creative Writing concentration and Cinema majors. Instruction and extensive practice in writing poetry, fiction, and plays, with selected readings of exemplary stories, poems, and plays. This course is the prerequisite to Short Story Writing, Poetry Writing, and Playwriting.  Instructors’ names will be published in June. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisite:  Prerequisite:  English 114, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to creative writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Students learn to read like writers through lecture-discussion and reading assignments. Submerges the student in literature and asserts the importance of reading.  We will analyze the basic craft elements intrinsic to four genres of writing: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and playwriting. Together we will apply this study to your own writing.  We will explore ways to access your own individual imagination. Through practice, writing can become a way to engage with yourself and the world.
 

Prerequisite: ENG 216 or ENG 218 or equivalent. Examination of the literary genre of graphic memoir and graphic biography within the medium of comics. (Plus-minus ABC/NC, CR/NC allowed) (This course is offered as ENG 300 and C W 501. Students may not repeat the course under an alternate prefix.)
 

Prerequisites for C W 506: C W 101 or C W 301 with a grade of C or better. Enrollment limited to C W majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Covers agents, corporate and small publishing houses, E-publishing, markets, publicity, etc. Students write letters to agents/editors, press releases for book tours, and several short papers. (This is a paired course offering. Students who complete the course at one level may not repeat the course at the other level.)
 

Prerequisites: Upper-division standing; C W 101 or 301. How do we write about / from / in the body?  How can we use language to embody gender, identity, materiality?  In this course we’ll look at how a variety of poets and writers do just that and explore strategies for translating material states and bodily identity into writing. This course will be conducted along the same lines as other Creative Writing Process courses — that is, we will focus on process as we “write through” our topic using a series of contemporary literary readings and creative assignments.

 

Prerequisites: Creative writing major; ENG 214 or equivalent with a grade of C- or better; CW 301 or equivalent. The aim of this class is to foster your growth as a poet. Toward that end, we’ll engage in lots of reading and writing designed both to get you thinking about how poems do what they do (craft!) and to expand the range of possibilities for the ways your own poems might be made, what they might say, and how they might mean. The class will include whole-class discussions of published poems as well as small, break-out workshop/discussion groups during which you'll discuss poems written by your fellow student writers. At the midpoint in the semester, you'll write a draft of the analytical essay that will fulfill your GWAR requirement; at the end of the semester, you'll submit the final, revised version of that essay. This course also satisfies the university’s GWAR requirement. Creative and critical writing. (ABC/NC only.)
 

Prerequisites: C W 301; ENG 114; ENG 214; B.A. majors in ENG, Creative Writing and ENG, Edu. (Creative Writing). Explore craft elements of fiction: plot, dialogue, character, point of view, place, etc. Focus is on published writing and exercises. Some student work is discussed. Satisfies the General Education GWAR/C WEP requirement. An exploration of how writers translate their vision onto the page. (Emphasis on HOW). Emphasis is on assigned reading material, but some student work will also be discussed in small groups.

 

Faculty and visiting writers representing a wide range of styles and subjects will visit the class to read and discuss their writing. Students will respond to the readings and visits on an ongoing basis through critical essays and creative writing exercises. Paired with C W 820. Note:  this course can be used to fulfill 3 units of the “creative process” requirement. It can only be taken once for credit. Students who have completed C W 820 may not take C W 520 for credit. CROSS GENRE COURSE.
 

Journal writing is a personal space for writers to recapture the exquisite richness of personal experience in order to understand themselves and inspire imaginative ideas that lead to stories, poetry, plays and film. As such, we will explore journal writing as a literary form and as a tool to gather ideas for our own creative work. We will read excerpts from a range of writers’ journals and see how their entries found their way into their creative work. Students are expected to keep a journal as a response to stimuli the world presents to them, to record memories, to gather ideas in raw form, and to refine ideas and creative work.  The reading of assigned journals coupled with on going writing exercises will generate poems, stories, personal essays, or scenes or monologues through the semester.

 

Prerequisite: Senior standing in Creative Writing.  Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing, Creative Writing, and English: Education (Creative Writing). Work In Progress is an advanced process course that offers senior creative writing majors the opportunity to delve into an extended writing project of their own design and engage in a series of writing experiments that will enhance the work of deepening, extending, and re-envisioning that project. Early in the semester you’ll look through drafts of past work to discover the raw material that you want to deepen and explore throughout the semester. Our emphasis will be on the critical (and exciting) exploratory phase of the writing process, and we’ll study and try out a variety of creative practices that writers use to keep their projects alive, open, and dynamic over the long haul. CROSS GENRE COURSE

 

 Prerequisite: Senior standing in Creative Writing.  Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing, Creative Writing, and English: Education (Creative Writing). “Work in Progress” is a writing course intended to be taken during senior year. From the start, we shift emphasis from “progress” to practice. We focus on writing, reading, and other modes of study as entangled practices, getting us into a zone where it all can feed us. We tap into makers and practitioners (some will be our guests) dedicated to creative life practices. We generate questions (for them and for ourselves) on the ways that works of creative imagination get made. We support each other at realizing a set of open projects, moving outside the trap of individual success or failure. And we contemplate what’s outside school, shifting to realize how our combined practices help open ways of doing the kind of work we want to be doing. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisites: C W 301; C W 511GW or C W 512GW or C W 513GW. Enrollment limited to creative writing majors; non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. This course will explore different aspects of fiction writing craft by critically analyzing published short stories, as well as fellow students’ creative writing.  Students will then apply and hone these craft concepts through in-class writing exercises and written assignments, transforming conceptual knowledge of craft into “how to” applicable knowledge.  Each student will then explore their creative process and consider how it can include critical thinking, consciously applying craft in three written assignments and a complete short story.

  

Prerequisite: TH A 130 (for CW majors: C W 301 and C W 511 or C W 512 or C W 513) Priority given to creative writing, English education, and drama majors. We will be studying a variety of definitions and models of monologues, such as childhood as the treasure chest of memory, dramatic stories that are ripped from the headlines, history, celebrations of one’s culture and identity, stand up routines with blistering social commentaries and more. We will various performance techniques, which include the influence of dance, music and poetry on the art form.  We will explore the connection between the page and the stage.  We will practice a variety of vocal, physical and writing exercises designed to help students relax so that characters and their stories can emerge.  Students will develop their own pieces and apply these techniques and methods to their own projects.

 

C W 609 Directed Writing BA Student: Permission of the instructor is required to take this course; you will be dropped without prior consent of the instructor. By the middle of the semester before you plan to enroll in Directed Writing, submit a sample of your writing in the instructor’s mailbox along with a note explaining that you want to take their Directed Writing class. Be sure you include your name, address, phone number and e-mail. If the instructor is on leave, please email your writing sample to her or him.

 

Prerequisite:  C W 301; C W 302; C W 511GW or C W 512GW or C W 513GW; or consent of instructor. Join the staff of Transfer, the literary magazine of the Creative Writing Department, established in 1950, and one of the longest running student literary magazines in the US. The course is designed to give you a working taste of what it takes to put out a literary magazine (including critical analysis and discussion of short-listed submissions, proofreading, solicitation and distribution) and to make you think about the world of literary magazines and your own beliefs in literature.  Come prepared to analyze and discuss text and investigate your own literary aesthetics.  In order to bring Transfer into the 21st Century, in addition to assisting the editors publish the print magazine, class members will create, design, and edit their own literary magazine.  If you’re interested in being an editor of Transfer, at the end of the semester you will be given the opportunity to apply for an editor position for the next issue. This is a process course (not a lab) and can be used to fulfill 3 units of the Creative Process requirement. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisite: C W 101 or 301 with a grade of C or better. Enrollment is limited to undergraduate majors in English: Creative Writing and English: Education (Creative Writing). Non-majors admitted with consent of instructor. Paid and unpaid internship positions designed to give CW students practical knowledge and experience are available through local literary and arts organizations, civic and community organizations, Bay Area school districts and within the Creative Writing Community at SF State. Check out our Community Projects in Literature Internship Leads in our Resources section.. Incredible academic internships are also available for C W 675/875 credit through SF State's Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (ICCE). Check out their list of paid and unpaid internships. These working by remote and/or in person internships are robust opportunities to 'learn by doing'. If you have any questions please contact Matthew Davison, davison@sfsu.edu. C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.

 

Prerequisites:  (If this is your first time as an instructional aide, please register for C W 859 Practicum in Teaching.) Advanced undergraduate standing, grade of B+ or better in the course in which the student will be an aide, and approval of the department Chair.  Students are placed with a creative writing faculty member in a supervised practicum/internship experience, in which they explore the theoretical and practical aspects of teaching creative writing. This is the course to sign up for if you want to be an instructional aide, (I.A.) in a specific undergraduate class for 3 units of credit. CROSS GENRE COURSE. Please contact Nona Caspers, ncaspers@sfsu.edu, for a permit number and to arrange the meeting times.

 

Prerequisite:  Consent of instructor and a 3.0 GPA.  Upper division students may enroll in a course of Independent Study under the supervision of a member of the Creative Writing department, with whom the course is planned, developed, and completed. This course may be taken for one, two, or three units. No priority enrollment; enrollment is by petition, and a copy of your unofficial SF State transcript. Independent Study forms are available online at the Registrar's website under Independent Study (699, 899). This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with, and the department chair, and must be turned in with a copy of your unofficial transcript. Please request a permit number from your instructor when they approve the 699 form.

 

GRADUATE CLASSES:

Note:  Preference in all Creative Writing graduate courses will be given to students admitted to either the M.A. or the M.F.A. programs in Creative Writing.  Preference in M.F.A. level courses will be given to students admitted to the M.F.A. program.  Priority in M.A. and M.F.A. writing workshops and creative process courses will be given to students admitted in the genre of the course.  Other Creative Writing M.A./M.F.A. students may enroll in these courses only with the permission of the instructor.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Consent of Instructor; Grade of B or better in the course or its equivalent in which the student will be an aide. This course is an application of previously acquired knowledge through assisting instruction and learning pedagogical strategies--in other words, you will be a graduate instructional aid (GIA) in the course for 3 units of credit. Please contact instructor Nona Caspers, ncaspers@sfsu.edu, for a permit number and to arrange the meeting times.  CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Priority enrollment given to graduate Creative Writing fiction students; open to Creative Writing students in other genres only on a space available basis, to be determined at the first class meeting. This course is an advanced short story writing course taught in a workshop setting. We will explore different aspects of fiction writing craft by critically analyzing published short stories, as well as fellow students’ short stories.  Students will then apply and hone these craft concepts in their own written short stories, transforming conceptual knowledge of craft into “how to” applicable knowledge.  Each student will then explore their creative process and consider how it can include critical thinking, consciously applying craft in their three workshop short story submissions.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. In this class we will explore some aspects of the “business” of creative writing—how writers find and create audiences for their work, find editors and publishers, and pay the rent—as well as how they create lives in which art and the creative process are central. This is a survey class, not a seminar, so while this class will not teach you how to become a best-selling writer in ten easy steps, it will provide you with a larger sense of the business side of creative writing, while encouraging you to develop your ability to distinguish between the business of creative writing and the art. Each class period will involve lecture & discussion by guest speakers (poets, writers, literary agents, book editors, literary journal publishers, reading series curators, book distribution managers, free-lance writers and editors, literary nonprofit managers, and the like). You will be given a writing and/or research assignment the week before each presentation to lead you into the speaker’s field.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Permission of the instructor is required to take this course; you will be dropped without prior consent of the instructor. The semester before you plan to enroll in Directed Writing, submit a sample of your writing in the instructor’s mailbox along with a note explaining that you want to take their Directed Writing class. Be sure you include your name, address, phone number and e-mail. If the instructor is on leave, please email your writing sample to her or him.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing, M.A. or M.F.A. in Creative Writing. This seminar will focus on theories, practices, and literature of Black thought and Black feminist imaginaries. We will read some of the significant Black feminist literature and scholarship with particular attention to Black feminist theorizing of and at the intersections of race and gender. The bulk of our reading will concentrate on 20th and 21st century texts with particular attention to the ways that Black feminists (even those retroactively so-named) have long insisted on the material, social, and spiritual significance of Black lives, Black life, and Black thought.
     We will read across genre and field to consider the myriad discourses in which Black feminist theorizing has intervened. The selection of writers, artists, and thinkers whose work will guide our interrogations will be drawn from the following: Phillis Wheatley, Rebecca Cox Jackson, Zora Neale Hurston, Fanny Lou Hamer, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Hortense Spillers, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, Lucille Clifton, Susan Lori Parks, Saidiya Hartman, Adrienne Piper, Daphne Brooks, Octavia Butler, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Samiya Bashir, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others.
     Central to the course investigations is Carolyn Martin Shaw’s description in “Disciplining the Black Female Body: Learning Feminism in Africa and the United States”: “The individual, the social agent or actor, is a product of culture and produces culture. An individual's subjectivity is determined by that which he or she is subject to (such as laws, language, and stories) and that which he or she is subject of (such as personal decisions, actions, and stories). What holds together fragmentary cultures and part societies? I find the term discourse useful for thinking about linkages and articulations within and across “part societies.”” And across fields. We will read, write, and think through how Black feminist imaginaries may reframe our understandings of the individual, the state, and the state of things.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in the Creative Writing program. Language makes leaps and can cross over genre boundaries. In this course, students will explore writing across genres, reading and creating works that transgress conventional categories of fiction, poetry, memoir, and translation. We will also examine literary language that crosses over into non-written forms such as film and visual art. Cultural progress results when genres and their respective communities meet and mingle. Genre fluidity is the name of the game. Readings will include work by China Mieville, Sally Wen Mao, Haruki Murakami, Anne Carson, and Nnedi Okorafor..

 

Faculty and visiting writers representing a wide range of styles and subjects will visit the class to read and discuss their writing. Students will respond to the readings and visits on an ongoing basis through critical essays and creative writing exercises. Paired with C W 520. Note:  this course can be used to fulfill 3 units of the C W 810 (creative process) requirement. It can only be taken once for credit. Students who have completed C W 520 may not take C W 820 for credit.  CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate Creative Writing students or consent of the instructor. M.A. and M.F.A. students from all genres are welcome (should the course be over-enrolled, priority will be given to Playwriting students). Calling all playwrights, directors, actors, stage managers, production managers and graphic artists!  Greenhouse 2022 is looking for full length and short plays to be presented in a guerilla style theatre format in various indoor and outdoor spaces on the SF State campus for our annual festival of new work. Playwrights must be highly self-motivated in the creative process.  They must be willing to help cast their own plays and do whatever it takes to get their work up.  The festival will be held in April. Master classes with local professionals will guide students with helpful tools in dramaturgy, publicity and marketing, fundraising and grant writing. For more information please contact Anne Galjour at agaljour@sfsu.edu. May be repeated for a total of 9 units.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Fourteen Hills is a working small press as well as a graduate course in editing and literary publishing. Each year, in the spring, we publish one issue of Fourteen Hills: the SFSU Review, a nationally recognized literary print magazine, as well as in fall the Michael Rubin Book Award (MRBA) by an SF State student or recent graduate. Fourteen Hills is run entirely by students with support from our Faculty Advisor and the Department of Creative Writing. The course is designed to give students an opportunity to observe and participate in many aspects of running a literary magazine, from editorial decisions to distribution logistics, from public relations and event planning to conducting author interviews. Students in the class serve as staff for the journal, working closely with the editors to consider and evaluate work for publication in the upcoming issue as well as learning about the copy-editing process, visual art selection, cover design, distribution, sales, and promotion. The course is taught primarily by the Editor-in-Chief, with guidance from the Faculty Advisor. Small group work will be led by the Fiction and Poetry genre editors. CROSS GENRE COURSE.

 

Prerequisites: Classified graduate standing in M.F.A. creative writing; priority enrollment given to M.F.A. creative nonfiction students; open to other M.F.A. genre and M.A. creative nonfiction students only on a space available basis, to be determined at the first class meeting. In this workshop, we are going to explore the exciting possibilities of the growing genre of creative nonfiction. In this workshop, we will explore and develop our voices and roles as writers in the expanding genre of creative nonfiction. We will read a wide range of creative nonfiction formats -- narrative journalism, memoir, hybrid forms, and epistolary essays -- from writers who draw on multiple sources, such as life experience, social critique, research, and community engagement, to tell stories in compelling ways. We will examine authorial power and analyze the representation of identity as a component of craft. We will experiment with different types of research -- from oral history to data analysis. Students will workshop their creative nonfiction, share at least one revised piece, and complete writing assignments. In-class writing exercises will focus on experiments in form and voice. Together, we will discuss and apply anti-racist practices that support all writers as we share our full voices and stories. May be repeated for a maximum of 18 units. 

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. In this course, you will delve into your fiction, explore and hone your voice, and take large, daring leaps toward your most cherished goals as a writer. We’ll turn close attention to each student’s manuscript in an atmosphere of aesthetic rigor and mutual support. We’ll pay attention to a range of factors at play, including characterization, plot, point of view, developing and sustaining narrative tension, internal/external conflict, evocation of setting, treatment of time, and the range of possibilities for dialogue, theme, structure, imagery, voice, and style. As a springboard for discussion, and to fill our wells, we’ll also read a few short stories and novel excerpts, with an eye toward strategies relevant to the writing of all fiction. You are encouraged to experiment, explore, and be open to inspiration and the sparking of ideas. May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate status in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. Students will concentrate on the creation and revision of their poetry.   The class format will include discussion of reading assignments, group discussion of student work, and in-class and at-home writing assignments. May be repeated for a total of 18 units.

  

Prerequisite: Creative Writing Majors only. Students working for the first time as Graduate Instructional Aides in undergraduate Creative Writing courses are required to take this Practicum course concurrent with their GIA teaching semester. Students meet as a group once every three weeks and post teaching journals and case studies on iLearn on a weekly basis. This course provides pedagogical grounding for pragmatic classroom teaching work and offers students a structured forum in which to discuss their teaching under the supervision of an experienced teacher and in collaboration with other Graduate Instructional Aides. Open to both M.A. and M.F.A. Creative Writing students. Undergraduates accepted by special permission. This position is for course credit, only. If you are a graduate student interested in applying to the paid teaching positions, you will need to take C W 860 Teaching Creative Writing to qualify. CROSS GENRE COURSE.  Open to B.A., M.A. and M.F.A. Creative Writing students. B.A. students should email mcarter@sfsu.edu for a permit number.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. This course is required to apply to our paid graduate teaching associate positions. Applications for these positions are accepted at the end of each Spring semester, and you may be enrolled in this class to apply. This course introduces advanced graduate students to the art and practice of teaching creative writing. Creative Writing 301 will serve as our prototype. We’ll be reading essays and interviews, discussing aspects of creative writing pedagogies (including practices that center equity and inclusion) and performing a variety of rigorous teaching activities. We’ll discuss giving useful feedback for student writers; designing effective writing assignments; use of texts and craft models; strategies for leading discussions of literary works and student works-in-progress. Students will also prepare and execute mini lectures on a range of craft and process topics and develop a detailed syllabus for an introductory creative writing course.  We'll help each other experiment and give each other permission and encouragement to locate and develop our own teaching style and voice.  CROSS GENRE COURSE.

  

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing in Creative Writing. Paid and unpaid internship positions designed to give CW students practical knowledge and experience are available through local literary and arts organizations, civic and community organizations, Bay Area school districts and within the Creative Writing Community at SF State. Check out our Community Projects in Literature Internship Leads in our Resources section. Incredible academic internships are also available for C W 675/875 credit through SF State's Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (ICCE). Check out their list of paid and unpaid internships. These working by remote and/or in person internships are robust opportunities to 'learn by doing'. If you have any questions please contact Matthew Davison, davison@sfsu.edu. C W 675/875 may be taken twice for 6 units of credit.

 

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate M.F.A. in Creative Writing students or permission of the instructor. TV’s Ricky Vasquez visits Justin Torres’s high school bedroom to critique the author's CD collection. Andrea Long Chu argues on behalf of a bizarre hypothesis she admits to not believing. Hilton Als recalls his confounding relationship with his twin SL, a fellow “White Girl” and Black man who may not even be Als’ friend.  Davey Wrede’s wrenching confession of stealing another game designer’s work--the game the reader is playing. A “magic encephalopod” repeating the mantra-like phrase “don’t know," rescues Lynda Barry from writer's block.

     In this generative, online course, students will engage with their own don’t-knows as method of non/fiction creation. Employing techniques from mindfulness and analysis of contemporary personal essays and games, the course will examine the role of imagination and the unreal within literary nonfiction. Most course materials will be available for free online with the exception of the game The Beginners Guide which can be purchased and played over Zoom in groups of multiple students. 

 

Prerequisite: Restricted to graduate students in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing or consent of instructor. Sometimes a writer comes up with a wonderful idea for a story/novel/essay/memoir, however, that initial wellspring of inspiration can then devolve into draft after draft after draft that eventually goes nowhere. If this experience resonates with you, you are not alone. In this multi-genre narrative writing process course, we will strive to evolve our writing process, discovering new approaches in writing a first draft of a creative work of literature, and then developing the artistic and dramatic intent of that work during the revision process. We will explore how each writer has their own unique set of writing process issues that can cause a creative work’s artistic and dramatic intent to be unfulfilled, and then develop problem solving methods to address these issues in order to fulfill the work’s artistic and dramatic vision. By writing our own critical analysis craft essays of assigned readings, we will learn how to address our own unique process issues discovered in the course, with the goal of creating a sustainable problem solving methodology that can be used throughout our writing career, thus ensuring our future artistic inspirations will be transformed into published works.   

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing MFA CW or consent of instructor. Over the past two decades, the field of creative writing has undergone a number of significant developments. One of the most exciting and far-reaching is literary fiction’s cross-pollination with what has been called “the more speculative genres.” Authors as stylistically diverse as Kazou Ishiguro, Karen Russell, Marlon James, and Michael Chabon have used the tropes of science fiction, fantasy, detective novels, and comic books to help revitalize literary fiction in an age of hybridity and interconnection, while at the same time helping to redefine the very idea of realism. In this course we will map the “genre borderlands” exploring the idea of genre fiction, how various genres have changes in the past fifty years, and how writers of all stripes have used genre tropes to push the boundaries of both literary and genre fiction. Concurrent with these discussion, we will also try our hand at writing in various generic styles, pushing our own work to new and exciting places.

 

Prerequisite: Classified graduate standing M.F.A. CW or consent of instructor. Beginning with strategies such as poetic sequences and serial poetry, the goal of the course is for students to create a unique chapbook of 16 pages that is coherent in theme and/or structure.

 

The centuries-old comedic genres aren't going anywhere--satire, farce, burlesque, comedy of manners, parody.  Nor is our pleasure in laughter, "that sudden glory," ever likely to wane. It's hard to imagine a time in which comedy could feel more urgent, more necessary, or more impossible. We turn to comedy, as ever, to entertain and amuse. We also treasure it as a force of disturbance, of disruption. We look to comedy "to comfort the afflicted." We also cherish its power "to afflict the comfortable." It can be a howl of pain, or an eruption of joy. It can interrogate or comfort. We hold dear its power to transgress, and at the same time, we fear its power to offend.  And often struggle over the distinction. 
      In this course, we'll read and view contemporary theatrical comedic works with a wide range of intentions. We'll analyze the aims of these works and the strategies their creators have employed, responding to creative prompts each week in search of our own discoveries. We'll be exploring works by a variety of theater artists, likely including: Young Jean Lee, Jen Silverman, Qui Nguyen, Hansol Jung, Martin McDonagh, Sheila Callaghan, Taylor Mac, Danai Gurira, James iJames, Tina Satter, Ngozi Anyanwu, Sara Porkolob, Tracy Letts, Charlayne Woodard, Will Eno, Clare Barron, Caryl Churchill, and Robert O'Hara.  In the final weeks of the semester, each student will share a draft of all or part of a comedic play of their own.

 

C W 893 Written M.A. Creative Project (3 units)
Prerequisite:  advancement to M.A. candidacy in English: Creative Writing.  Advancement To Candidacy (ATC) and Culminating Experience Proposal forms must be on file in the Division of Graduate Studies the semester before registration. These 3 units M.A. students sign up for while working on the culminating experience/thesis/written creative project, which may be a collection of short stories, a group of poems, a novel or a play.  Enrollment is by permission number during priority registration/enrollment: you will be emailed the correct class and permission numbers to enroll in your section. You must enroll in this course or your will not receive credit for your thesis.

 

C W 893 Written M.F.A. Creative Work (6 units)
Prerequisite:  advancement to M.F.A. candidacy in Creative Writing; Advancement To Candidacy (ATC) and Culminating Experience Proposal forms must be on file in the Division of Graduate Studies the semester before registration. These 6 units M.F.A. students sign up for while working on the culminating experience/thesis/written creative project, which is expected to be a book length collection of short stories, or poems, or a novel or a play of publishable quality.  Enrollment is by permission number during priority registration/enrollment: you will be emailed the correct class and permission numbers to enroll in your section. You must enroll in this course or your will not receive credit for your thesis.

 

C W 899           Independent Study                             ARR
Prerequisite:  consent of instructor and a minimum GPA of 3.25.  A special study is planned, developed, and completed under the direction of a faculty member. This course may be taken for one, two, or three units. No priority enrollment; enrollment is by petition, and a copy of your unofficial SF State transcript. Independent Study forms are available online on the Registrar's website under Independent Study (699, 899). This form must be signed by the instructor you will be working with, and the department chair, and must be turned in with a copy of your unofficial transcript. Your instructor will give you a permit number once they have approved the 899 petition.