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Course Description

Summary

This Scriptorium, a “place for writing,” functions as a class for writers interested in improving their critical essay-writing skills. We will read to write and write to read. Much of our time will be occupied with discussion, writing, and revising—essai means “trial” or “attempt”—as we create new habits and strategies for our analytical writing. We will write in various essay structures with the aim of developing a well-supported thesis; in addition, we will revise collaboratively, improve our research and citation skills, and study grammar and style. Our learning goals include practicing to write with complexity, imagination, and clarity, as we study model examples that address the theme of monsters. We will study a novel, a play, a novella, short stories, critical essays and theory, a poem, and a film about monsters.

Readings may include Medea and Other Plays by Euripides and translated by Philip Vellacott, We Have Always Lived at the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, “Smartening Up” by Aoko Matsuda and translated by Polly Barton, “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, “The Birth-Mark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” by Ursula Le Guin, “All Included” by Paul La Farge, “The Head” by Bora Chung and translated by Anton Hur, “The Lottery in Babylon” by Jorge Luis Borges and translated by Andrew Hurley, “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka and translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, and "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning.