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January and July Residencies
Sample Genre Seminars
Genre seminars allow students to become familiar with the conventions of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and to explore the range of responses established writers have had to these conventions. Seminars in all genres are offered every residency. Students are required to attend the three seminars in their elected genre and are welcome to attend seminars in other genres.
January 2012
Poetry, Kelley Wezner
Derek Walcott’s epic poem Omeros
This seminar will focus on Derek Walcott’s epic poem Omeros, with particular attention to his versatile use of language and structure, and inventive reinterpretation of Homeric allusions and techniques.
Creative Nonfiction, Paul Walker
Nature Writing in Canyon Country
We will read selections from Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, Wallace Stegner's The Sound of Mountain Water, and Terry Tempest Williams' Red. Each of these authors takes a different approach in describing, praising, and disturbing the remote, Redrock canyons of the Colorado Plateau, sharing an honest realism about their wild "home" rather than a far-off idealism of wilderness. We will discuss their approaches in terms of general conventions of nature writing as well as the humor, politics, and eroticism found in their work.
Fiction, Tim Johns
J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Short Fiction from South Africa
This seminar focuses on J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, a variety of South African short stories, and the legacy of apartheid in South Africa. While apartheid—a form of white minority rule that ended in South Africa in 1994—inspired a fair share of committed, didactic political writing, it also fostered a brilliant tradition in prose fiction. Indeed, two Nobel Prize winners in literature have so far emerged from this tradition: J. M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer. In our seminar, we will examine how the elevated craft of Coetzee’s novel, as well as rich stories by Gordimer and others, function within the constraints of apartheid’s harrowing legacy.
July 2011
Poetry, Peter Murphy
Williams Carlos Williams
This seminar will focus on Williams’ shorter poems from his Selected Poems (New Directions), and examine them through the lens of two of his essays on poetics: “A New Measure” and “The Poem as Field of Action.” In addition, we will read and discuss Book One of Paterson.
Creative Nonfiction, Mike Morgan
Norman Mailer’s The Fight
We will be reading a seminal work in creative non-fiction, Norman Mailer’s The Fight. We’ll focus on several aspects of the book, including Mailer’s insertion of himself into the work as a narrator and "character." In addition, we’ll examine thematic aspects of the book, the subject of which is the Mohammed Ali versus George Foreman boxing match which took place in 1974 in what was then called Zaire, in Africa. Students who aren’t sports fans should not despair, as the work has significant historical relevance, and very palatable prose from Mailer.
Fiction, Josh Adair
Constructions of the House in English Fiction
This genre seminar will explore the concept of the English house, be it a great one or a cottage, as a metonym for society at large. Strategically exploring depictions of the house in each third of the twentieth century, we will carefully investigate issues of socioeconomic status, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, and imperialism. Queer and space theory will serve as the critical foundations to examine E. M. Forster’s classic Howards End, Beverley Nichols’s little-known mid-century Merry Hall, and Sarah Waters’s supernatural contemporary The Little Stranger.
January 2011
Poetry, Kelley Wezner
Alexander Pope’s Poetry
This seminar will focus on Alexander Pope’s poetry, with particular attention to his range and versatile use of poetic techniques and modes. Our required text is The Poems of Alexander Pope, edited by John Butt; the instructor will provide some supplemental material.
Creative Nonfiction, Jeff Osborne
David Foster Wallace
Wallace, perhaps best known as a postmodern fiction writer (The Infinite Jest), actually wrote an impressive number of essays. While his take on the essay form is not nearly as experimental as his take on the novel, his work does diverge a bit from belletristic orthodoxy. We’ll thus focus some of our attention on how his work fits into and works against the traditions of nonfiction writing: humor writing, sports writing, travel writing, etc.
Fiction, Tim Johns
Haruki Murakami and the Historical Novel
This seminar examines The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997), an ambitious, bizarre, often moving, and profoundly innovative historical novel by the Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. We will explore ways the historical novel has traditionally been crafted by writers of fiction, and how Murakami rethinks and reorients the genre around contemporary Tokyo and World War II-era Japan.
July 2010
Poetry, Barbara Cobb
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Study the art and craft of Shakespeare’s sonnets, particularly the ways in which Shakespeare explores single themes in multiple ways, varying structure, rhythm, literary devices, images, and motifs. The seminar will use Helen Vendler’s The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets as a supplement.
Creative Nonfiction, Laura Dawkins
Prison Narratives
The required texts are Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, composed in 1896-1897 while Wilde served a two-year prison sentence in England, and John Edgar Wideman’s Brothers and Keepers, a memoir of the African American novelist’s relationship with his incarcerated brother Robby Wideman. (Although the Penguin edition of De Profundis includes additional essays by Wilde, students are only required to read “De Profundis.”)
Fiction, Josh Adair
The Postmodern Novel
This seminar will focus upon three particular examples of postmodern fiction by Michael Cunningham, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Peter Carey. More specifically, we will be examining the ways in which each author narrates history and its validity as expressed by historical figures like Virginia Woolf and members of the English gentry. Ultimately, we will seek to understand the impact of fractured narratives, alternate histories, and unreliable narrators as exemplars of contemporary postmodern fiction.
January 2011
Poetry, Kelley Wezner
Alexander Pope’s Poetry
This seminar will focus on Alexander Pope’s poetry, with particular attention to his range and versatile use of poetic techniques and modes. Our required text is The Poems of Alexander Pope, edited by John Butt; the instructor will provide some supplemental material.
Creative Nonfiction, Jeff Osborne
David Foster Wallace
Wallace, perhaps best known as a postmodern fiction writer (The Infinite Jest), actually wrote an impressive number of essays. While his take on the essay form is not nearly as experimental as his take on the novel, his work does diverge a bit from belletristic orthodoxy. We’ll thus focus some of our attention on how his work fits into and works against the traditions of nonfiction writing: humor writing, sports writing, travel writing, etc.
Fiction, Tim Johns
Haruki Murakami and the Historical Novel
This seminar examines The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997), an ambitious, bizarre, often moving, and profoundly innovative historical novel by the Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. We will explore ways the historical novel has traditionally been crafted by writers of fiction, and how Murakami rethinks and reorients the genre around contemporary Tokyo and World War II-era Japan.
July 2010
Poetry, Barbara Cobb
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Study the art and craft of Shakespeare’s sonnets, particularly the ways in which Shakespeare explores single themes in multiple ways, varying structure, rhythm, literary devices, images, and motifs. The seminar will use Helen Vendler’s The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets as a supplement.
Creative Nonfiction, Laura Dawkins
Prison Narratives
The required texts are Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, composed in 1896-1897 while Wilde served a two-year prison sentence in England, and John Edgar Wideman’s Brothers and Keepers, a memoir of the African American novelist’s relationship with his incarcerated brother Robby Wideman. (Although the Penguin edition of De Profundis includes additional essays by Wilde, students are only required to read “De Profundis.”)
Fiction, Josh Adair
The Postmodern Novel
This seminar will focus upon three particular examples of postmodern fiction by Michael Cunningham, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Peter Carey. More specifically, we will be examining the ways in which each author narrates history and its validity as expressed by historical figures like Virginia Woolf and members of the English gentry. Ultimately, we will seek to understand the impact of fractured narratives, alternate histories, and unreliable narrators as exemplars of contemporary postmodern fiction.