Sample Course Offerings in Undergraduate Creative Writing

& Graduate Workshops in Critical-Creative Writing

.The Body Other/The Othered Body

An advanced graduate-level Creative/Critical Writing Workshop designed for those "other" creative writers and thinkers who want the (w)rite/right to employ language in original, innovative, introspective and embodied ways so as to respond to (and/or from) non-dominant locations of identity. 

The class will evolve and proceed based on the interests and needs of the class members, as guided by the Profe.  Primary texts for this course are students’ own writings, supplemented by additional works—poems, essays, videos, live performances, film, exhibitions, and/or artwork — assigned to provoke an(other) response. In-class and take-home writing exercises will also offer students multiple approaches to arriving at their material.  The title of the course is intentional.  

—- Professor Cherríe Moraga

The Craft of Poetry: Asian American Experimental Poetry

Asian America is in the process of recalibrating the legacy of its activist origins, the terms of its panethnic constitution, and the possibilities for interracial solidarity with Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. As pandemic and protest reshape our lives, how can we reimagine Asian America at present? What can poetry offer at this conjuncture, not as a statement of identity but as its enactment?

In this workshop-based course, we will read as writers, focusing on the work of poets (including Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Cathy Park Hong, Bhanu Kapil, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Srikanth Reddy, and Solmaz Sharif) who fashion thought experiments, build speculative worlds, rewrite imperial records, and generate new modes of documentation and witness—reformulating the terms of Asian American identity through formal experimentation. Through them, we will learn the craft of poetry and discover the focus, vision, and resources that poetry provides. —- Professor Swati Rana.

“Chronicles of Desire” – Creative and Critical Nonfiction

In Spring 2020, Maestra Moraga’s class, “Chronicles of Desire – Creative and Critical Nonfiction Writing” went online. A class of 25 students, we met virtually for a full eleven weeks. In the final weeks of the quarter, students also worked virtually in small groups to create a series of Final Public Chronicles in response to COVID-19 — its death toll; its impact on frontline workers; its deeply personal meanings from multiple cultural perspectives. We offer you this video as one example of our collective voice; created by the following writers, in order of presentation: Vicky López; Raveen Sivashanker; Olivia Berriz; Preetha Swaminathan; and, Lane Murphy.

Playwriting /Writing for Performance

Writing for Perfolasses are taught regularly in the Department of English by Professors Stephanie Batiste and Cherríe Moraga.

Visit the English Department website for a list of courses listed by the quarter. Search via faculty name. For course numbers: see "Specialization Requirements” on previous page.

MULTI-GENRE CREATIVE WRITING

This course brings together critical analysis and creative writing through the examination of Black short story and autobiographical writings. Together, we will think critically about the relationship between race, identity, and writing as we discuss how Black scholars and authors have negotiated, eschewed and/or subverted the dominant representations of antiblackness that precede them. We will also use these interventions to think about the story elements of character, point of view, plot, place, description, and revelation. Our critical work will guide our creative work. By the end of the quarter you will have written two original pieces: one short story and one autobiographical narrative.

— Professor Felice Blake