Writing

Listed below are the writing courses offered in 2012, and at which site and session each course is offered. If you are unfamiliar with our site codes, please see the site key below. The course title links will take you to the appropriate catalog course description and links to sample syllabi for the course.

If you would like to read about science, humanities, or math and computer science courses, select the appropriate discipline in the following drop down menu.

Writing Course Offerings

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* = day site (no room or board provided)
** = international site (dates vary)

Site Key

* = day site (no room or board provided)
** = international site

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Writing Course Descriptions and Sample Syllabi

Explorations in Writing: Stories and Poems

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The proverb “variety is the spice of life” captures the approach to reading and writing in this course. Exploring a rich array of stories and poems from different cultures, countries, and generations, students learn to identify literary devices and incorporate them into their own writing. 

For example, students might read Verna Aardema’s Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears: A West African Tale and then write their own pourquoi tales to explain natural phenomena. They could incorporate comparison into their descriptions after observing how Marie Louise Allen effectively uses simile in her poem “First Snow,” or they could examine how Gary Soto’s short stories evoke the people and places of his childhood and base their own stories on the people and places they know best.

Class sessions are designed to allow students to experience the rich interplay of reading, writing, and conversation. For example, a morning may find students moving seamlessly from discussing an assigned story in small groups to writing reflective paragraphs to participating in independent reading of works they choose themselves. Or students could be asked to draft poems, share their poems with classmates, and participate in readers’ theater. Students leave the course with an appreciation for diverse genres and voices, as well as a sense of the many opportunities open to them as readers and writers.

Sample texts: Baseball in April and Other Stories, Soto; The Cow of No Color: Riddle Stories and Justice Tales from Around the World, Jaffe, Zeitlin, and Sherman; materials compiled by the instructor.

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Writing and Reading Workshop

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Gathering together a community of young writers and readers, this course helps students develop the vocabulary and critical-thinking skills necessary to discuss writing and reading in sophisticated ways. Students explore a range of reading and writing assignments, some of which they choose themselves with the instructor’s guidance.

Approximately half of each day is devoted to writing and half to reading. Writing is taught by having students do what professional writers do: gather material, decide on topics, confer with peers, draft, workshop, and revise. Daily lessons and one-on-one conferences address writing skills from sentence construction to the use of imagery.

In reading workshops, students choose texts to read and respond to in their journals; they may also read short stories and novels to discuss as a class. Working with the instructor, students develop close reading skills and an appreciation for authors and genres that are new to them. Cooperative learning and constructive criticism are emphasized, and detailed responses from the instructor and peers play an essential role in each student’s growth as a reader and writer.

Sample texts: Independent reading assignments supplemented by instructor-selected short stories and novels; America Street: A Multicultural Anthology of Stories, Mazer; Esperanza Rising, Ryan; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Taylor.

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Writing Workshop: Modern Fantasy

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Novelist Caroline Gordon once said, “A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.” Readers of modern fantasy are transported into magical worlds where people, places, and things are often not what they appear to be. Animals speak, toys come to life, and eccentric characters perform seemingly impossible feats. Worlds are turned upside down, and the familiar becomes the unknown.

Using classic and contemporary texts, students learn to identify the traits that characterize modern fantasy. They venture into extraordinary places such as Narnia in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and witness battles between good and evil like those that take place in Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone. Students may also read Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart and experience what might take place if characters could come alive from the pages of a book.

The course’s workshop approach affords many opportunities to engage in close reading, participate in informed discussion, and reflect upon what these fantastic worlds tell us about our own. In addition, students respond to modern fantasy texts in a variety of written assignments, including literary analysis and reflective writing. Armed with their newly developed understanding of the genre and an appreciation of its nuances, students then craft original pieces of fantasy.

Sample texts: The Black Cauldron, Alexander; The Golden Compass, Pullman; Redwall, Jacques; materials compiled by the instructor.

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Heroes and Villains

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Whether as the evil sultan of Moroccan legends, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the villain, like the hero, is an archetype who appears in literature, drama, and local lore across cultures and centuries. Narratives about heroes and villains are an important part of our shared written and oral traditions. Why do we create them, and what do they say about society?

In this writing-intensive course, students explore what it means to be a hero or a villain and how those terms have changed over time. Through close reading, group discussions, and writer’s workshops, students produce four to six major writing projects, as well as additional smaller pieces. Students might, for instance, construct an analysis that compares Darth Vader from Star Wars to Grendel from Beowulf, or draw from their own experiences to narrate an example of heroism or villainy. Students also learn to distinguish subtle shades of meaning by examining misunderstood villains like the monster in Shelley’s Frankenstein or anti-heroes such as E. B. White’s Templeton the rat, characters who help students discover that heroes and villains are rarely all good or all evil.

By balancing both critical and creative writing, students gain the necessary skills for close textual reading and hone their abilities to read and respond thoughtfully to a variety of texts.

Sample texts: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson; Dungeon Vol. 1: Duck Heart, Sfar and Trondheim; The Thief Lord, Funke.

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Writing and Imagination

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Writing is an act of imagination; it builds from the raw materials of life and language. Students in this course read, write, and discuss a variety of genres including poems, short stories, and essays. They are encouraged to approach writing as a craft and to discover the processes and techniques that writers in all genres share. For example, students learn strategies for generating ideas, and they explore the concept and techniques of point of view.

This course brings together students and instructors who, as experienced writers themselves, serve as mentors to guide students through the process of creative writing. During writing workshops, both the instructor and peers offer detailed criticism geared toward revision. Through this process of writing, critiquing, and revising, students develop confidence in their own writing and creative powers.

Sample texts: Materials compiled by the instructor; a supplemental text such as The House on Mango Street, Cisneros, or Past Perfect, Present Tense: New and Collected Stories, Peck.

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Whodunit?: Mystery and Suspense in Literature and Film

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This writing class introduces students to an intriguing genre of popular culture: mystery. What elements create a mystery? How do cinematography and sound in film build suspense? What are the literary merits of the mystery genre, and what do mysteries tell us about our culture?

Students read classic mystery writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Agatha Christie. They also study clips from a variety of films, including early horror classics and film noir from the Forties and Fifties. By examining literary techniques such as characterization and plot, as well as film techniques such as camera angles and lighting, students analyze the ways writers and directors manipulate these key elements to build suspense and heighten tension on the page and the screen.

Students apply their knowledge of mysteries in formal critical essays and in their own brief stories and scenes.

Sample texts: Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Poe; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle; And Then There Were None, Christie; Red Harvest, Hammett.

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Creative Nonfiction

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Students in this course explore the literary devices and story-telling skills of creative writers and apply them to the crafting of fact-based narratives. 

Beginning with memoir and personal essays and moving to essays about the world around them, students learn to tell true stories using the traditional tools of fiction and poetry, with particular attention to evocative imagery and the beauty of language. By reading the work of accomplished creative nonfiction writers such as David Foster Wallace, James Baldwin, and Joan Didion, students learn about the interplay of personal experience and journalistic reporting and consider how a writer’s voice and experiences shape a text. Students assess the freedoms and constraints of creative nonfiction by reading and discussing the work of writers who experiment with the boundaries of the genre.

In addition to daily reading and writing exercises, students complete four to six major essays. They experiment with literary elements, techniques for organizing essays, creating meaningful transitions, and beginning and ending their works effectively. Students leave the course with a clearer sense of audience and their own authorial voices, as well as a deeper understanding of the strategies and practices of strong nonfiction writing.

Sample texts: In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, Gutkind, ed.; materials compiled by the instructor.

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Fiction and Poetry

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E. L. Doctorow said, “Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” In this class, students draw inspiration from the published works, journals, and rough drafts of writers such as Alice Munro, John Updike, Rita Dove, and Li-Young Lee. Examining a range of content, techniques, styles, and structures, students discover what it means to read like a writer. For instance, they may debate the distinction between the realistic and the fantastic in Gabriel García Márquez’s “I Sell My Dreams” or the value of concrete imagery in Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish.”

Beginning with the spark of an idea and moving through the drafting stages, students write short fiction and poetry in various forms. Under the guidance of the instructor, students provide frequent feedback on each other’s drafts. The workshop format of the course creates an enriching space that fosters students’ development as writers. Students not only learn to give and receive criticism with tact and grace, but also refine their personal aesthetics, building a communal understanding of how voice, style, and structure comprise strong poetry and prose.

Note: This course focuses on poetry and realistic, literary fiction. The genres of science fiction, fantasy, romance, and mystery are not part of this course.

Sample texts: An anthology such as Best American Short Stories of the Century, ed. Updike; The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Strand and Boland; materials compiled by the instructor.

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Crafting the Essay

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Participants in this course examine the concepts and practices authors use to craft engaging personal essays and learn to use the literary devices and figurative language common in fiction and poetry to enrich their own nonfiction prose.

Through textual analysis and class discussion of readings by creative nonfiction writers such as Annie Dillard, Richard Rodriguez, and Charles Simic, students learn the hallmarks of effective personal essay writing. In their own work, students experiment with imagery and language, tone and mood, and a variety of structures.

In addition to daily readings, informal writing assignments, and regular workshops, students complete four to six major essays. They gain a clearer sense of the skills and practices of successful writers and greater knowledge of their own strengths as authors. In addition, they leave the course with critical-reading skills that transcend disciplines and will help them in future coursework.

Sample Texts: Back to the Lake: A Reader for Writers, Cooley; materials compiled by the instructor.

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Writing by the Bay

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What influence does a place have on who we are or on what we write? The towering redwood forests and rugged coastline of Northern California are the setting for a complex tradition of nature writing as well as a distinct social and literary history. In this course, students explore the Monterey Bay area and its literature, using the physical setting and readings to inspire their own personal narratives and critical essays.

Looking to writers such as N. Scott Momaday, Mary Austin, and Henry David Thoreau, the class begins by addressing the challenges of capturing a place on the page; students tackle ideas of the sense of place, the politics of space, and the ways authors evoke a sense of space in literature. The class then moves to texts by authors such as John Steinbeck, Ishmael Reed, and Shawn Wong, whose works reflect the social issues of a growing population. Through these readings, students consider how a single region can be captured in diverse literary styles and how local sites visited during field trips, such as Cannery Row or San Juan Bautista Mission, can have contrasting or even conflicting meanings to different writers.

Personal and critical essay writing assignments help students develop creative-writing skills such as “show, don’t tell,” as well as the organization, sentence variety, and rhetorical precision that constitute strong nonfiction prose.

Sample texts: Cannery Row, Steinbeck; San Francisco Stories: Great Writers on the City, Miller; materials compiled by the instructor.

Field Trip Budget:
$780 — $975 per 3-week session (depending on enrollment)

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The Graphic Novel

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One of the most innovative literary forms of recent years, the graphic novel is a work that uses a combination of words and sequential art to convey a narrative. From the Filipina-American narrator in Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons to Bosnian survivors in Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde to an AIDS educator in Judd Winick’s Pedro and Me, the graphic novel has become a significant medium for tackling a wide range of historical, social, and political issues. In this writing-intensive course, students discover how graphic novels use words and images to expand traditional narrative structures and conventions.

By examining literary techniques such as tone, flashback, and characterization, as well as visual elements such as framing, shading, and perspective, students analyze how artists and writers marry visual art and literature. Using a text such as Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to guide them, students learn the particulars of the genre before proceeding to more advanced critical analysis. For example, students might examine Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s politicized deconstruction of superheroes in Watchmen, or they may discuss the use of extended metaphor in Art Spiegelman’s treatment of the Holocaust in Maus.

Throughout the session, students apply their knowledge of the graphic novel in formal critical essays and in creative pieces that explore techniques of sequential art, such as layout and plot breakdowns.

Note: This course includes some controversial material; it is recommended for students who have completed 9th grade or higher.

Sample texts: Understanding Comics, McCloud; American Born Chinese, Yang; Dropsie Avenue, Eisner; Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons.

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The Critical Essay: Literature and the Arts

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In this course, students approach literature and the fine arts as texts to be read with a critical eye. Engaging art forms as diverse as painting, poetry, fiction, photography, and classical music, students explore not only how the arts frame different views of the world but also how different views of the world frame the arts. How, for instance, are Picasso’s painting Guernica, Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury, and Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring all expressions of and reactions to disillusionment and rapid change in the wake of political and social unrest? Students also examine how artists are inspired by and interpret each other’s work. For example, how do Margaret Bourke-White’s photographs of Buchenwald inform Susan Sontag’s reflections on representations of atrocity in Regarding the Pain of Others? In addition to engaging the arts directly, students read and debate the ideas of eminent art and literary critics.

As they begin to develop a language for writing about the arts, students complete essays that define, describe, compare, and contrast. In later assignments, students evaluate, analyze, and interpret artistic works. In these essays, students consider critics’ opinions and construct their own interpretations. They produce four to six major writing projects, developing their skills through an intense process of drafting, critiquing in workshops, and revising.

Sample texts: An anthology such as Literature for Composition, Barnet; a novel such as Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf; materials compiled by the instructor.

Field Trip Budget:
$780 — $975 per 3-week session (depending on enrollment)

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The Critical Essay: Popular Culture

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In this course, thinking and writing about popular culture provide students with the opportunity to train a critical eye on the familiar. Students consider how elements of popular culture—drawn from film, television, popular music, and advertising—shape and are shaped by our society and value systems. Through lectures, critical readings, and class discussions, students acquire sophisticated tools to analyze the meanings, audiences, and social impact of popular culture.

In addition, students read and evaluate analyses of contemporary culture and its icons by scholars and journalists. Topics of inquiry range from rap to shopping malls and include essays by authors such as Stuart Hall, Naomi Wolf, Molly Bang, Scott McCloud, and bell hooks. Writing assignments include a rhetorical analysis of an advertisement, an analysis of a film, and an essay in which students consider a person, place, or thing as a cultural artifact. Students produce four to six major writing projects, developing their skills through an intense process of drafting, critiquing in workshops, and revising.

Sample text: Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, Solomon and Maasik.

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The Critical Essay: Film

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From the bustling Manhattan of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) to the mythologized American west of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), films have captured our imagination and our culture. More than just popular entertainment, films reflect the society that produces them. What, for example, does a gangster film like Howard Hawks’s Scarface (1932), a domestic melodrama like Dorothy Arzner’s Craig’s Wife (1936), or an adventure classic like Merian C. Cooper’s King Kong (1933) reveal about how we viewed our institutions, our country, and ourselves during the Great Depression?

Through lectures, critical readings, and discussions, students in this writing course acquire the sophisticated skills necessary for college-level critical writing. Students analyze the form and content of classic Hollywood cinema (1910-1960), exploring how directors employ specific strategies to achieve desired results and how films create meaning, target audiences, and affect society at large. In addition to film clips from various cultures and eras, students watch four complete films, including one work by an acknowledged pioneer of world cinema, such as Akira Kurosawa, Agnès Varda, Satyajit Ray, or François Truffaut.

Students write four critical essays in addition to a number of shorter projects such as scene analyses and reviews. Each essay is developed through a process of drafting, critiquing in workshops, and revising. Students learn to research specific details to support thesis statements, organize their thoughts coherently, and forge original voices with which to express their views.

Sample texts: Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film, Prince; A Short Guide to Writing about Film, Corrigan.

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Utopias and Dystopias

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From Plato’s Republic to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, utopian and dystopian literature often examines the fine line between a perfect and an oppressive society. What makes the difference between an ideal world and a nightmare? Through extensive critical and creative writing, students in this course explore how utopian and dystopian works are constructed and how they can be used to engage some of the most pressing sociopolitical concerns of the times. 

Class sessions are designed to help students develop skills as both scholars and practitioners of utopian and dystopian literature. As scholars, students identify, discuss, and write about the underlying rules, laws, and ideologies relating to economics, politics, gender roles, religions, and technologies within the works they examine. For example, after reading Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta or Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, students may write an essay about dystopian protagonists and how they are able to effect change in unjust, oppressive societies. Likewise, students might compare gender roles in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland and Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower. As practitioners, students have the opportunity to construct and share their own utopian or dystopian visions.

Students produce four to six major writing projects, including both critical and creative work. They develop their writing through an intense process of drafting, critiquing in workshops, and revising.

Sample texts: The Republic, Plato; The Parable of the Sower, Butler; materials compiled by the instructor.

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Advanced Fiction

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This course provides an immersion into contemporary literary fiction, particularly the short story. In addition to writing short stories, students read and discuss works primarily by modern and contemporary fiction writers who work in a range of genres such as Flannery O’Connor, Tim O’Brien, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jamaica Kincaid. Students learn to hear the written word with a writer’s ear and examine the principles and practices of fiction writing such as plot, theme, and character development. The course strongly emphasizes comprehensive revision based on workshop comments and conferences with the instructor. Students leave the course with a working knowledge of the principle tenets of writing fiction and a portfolio of their own polished stories.

Note: This course does not focus only on realistic, literary fiction. Students are welcome to explore other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, romance, and mystery.

Sample texts: The Story and Its Writer, Charters; American Short Story Masterpieces, Carver; 20^th Century Ghosts, Hill; materials compiled by the instructor.

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Politics and Film

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As early masterworks like Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (Russia, 1925) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (Germany, 1927) illustrate, film has always been a key medium for exploring and confronting urgent political and social concerns around the world. By dramatizing important, controversial events and situations, directors place viewers into narrative contexts that allow them to experience people and circumstances that might otherwise remain somewhat remote.

This course examines films from different cultures and traditions that deal with some of the most pressing international political issues of our time. From David O. Russell’s deconstruction of American military intervention in the Persian Gulf War in Three Kings (United States, 1999) to Fernando Meirelles’ poignant portrait of abject poverty and the devastation of AIDS in northern Kenya in The Constant Gardener (United Kingdom, 2005), students analyze crucial works of world cinema within the complex historical and political contexts which give rise to such films. Beginning with a classic of political filmmaking such as Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (Algeria, 1967), students learn the language of contemporary film criticism and focus on critical issues such as poverty and violence, the just use of force, imperialism, and oppression based upon race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Students also consider how directors approach political issues from different perspectives and narrative techniques.

Students study four to six complete films in depth, and write and revise four formal critical essays. Through intense discussion and analytical writing, students grapple with some of the most prescient issues that our world faces today and gain the foundational skills necessary to successfully engage the ever-increasing complex global society in which we all live.

Sample texts: My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir, Morgan; We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rawanda, Gourevitch; A Short Guide to Writing About Film, Corrigan.

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