Katharine Weber

Introduction to Fiction Writing

ENGL 200

This course introduces students to the elements of fiction writing. While each section of the course will vary in approach and structure, activities and assignments may include intensive reading, workshops, writing, short and flash fiction, and exercises emphasizing various aspects of fiction such as place, dialogue and character. Students should check the online schedule for specific descriptions of each section. Admission to this course is open, though students may not take this course in the first semester of their first year. Seats are reserved for students in each class year. Offered annually in multiple sections.

Creative Nonfiction Workshop

ENGL 202

Students in this workshop will write imaginative nonfiction in any of its traditional forms: memoirs, reflections, polemics, chronicles, idylls, lampoons, monographs, pamphlets, profiles, reviews, prefaces, sketches, remarks, complaints — anything but the traditional college essay. As in other writing workshops, attention in class will be paid above all to the writing itself, word by word, sentence by sentence. Admission to this course is open, though students may not take this course in the first semester of their first year. Seats are reserved for students in each class year. Offered in most years.

Writing Fiction, Nonfiction and other Narrative Forms

ENGL 204

This course is an introductory workshop in which students will develop skills in a range of narrative strategies, reading a variety of texts: fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and graphic novels and memoirs, as well as blog essays and other relatively new formats and styles of literary expression. As these multiple forms are explored in the course of the semester, students will write new material each week, with an emphasis on understanding structure, pace, setting, time, dialogue, character and narrative voice. Students will be encouraged to experiment with fiction and nonfiction approaches to the same material. The workshop will pay rigorous attention to language and form, sentence by sentence, and will also focus on developing insights and strategies for revision.Students in this class are assumed to possess basic English writing competence and mature ability to give and receive thoughtful criticism.Admission to this course is open, though students may not take this course in the first semester of their first year. Seats are reserved for students in each class year.

ST: Creative Writing Workshop

ENGL 291

Advanced Fiction Writing

ENGL 300

This workshop will focus on discussion of participants' fiction as well as on exercises and playful experimentation. Principally, we will be concerned with how stories work at every level. As we consider narrative strategies and practical methods for developing individual styles, along with approaches to revising work, we also will read, as writers, a variety of outside texts. Check with the English department administrative assistant for submission deadlines. Prerequisite: ENGL 200, 202 or 204 or submission of a writing sample and permission of instructor. Offered annually.

Advanced Creative Nonfiction

ENGL 302

Students in this workshop will write imaginative nonfiction in any of its many forms and will write and revise one or more pieces to produce 75-90 pages over the course of the semester. As with all writing workshops, classroom discussion will require an openness to giving and receiving criticism. Outside reading will include essays and at least one book-length work by acknowledged masters of the form. To better explore questions of craft, written responses to these readings will be due each week. Check with the English department administrative assistant for submission deadlines. Prerequisite: ENGL 200, 202, 204, or a similar course; submission of writing sample; and permission of instructor.

ST: Reading & Writing Novella

ENGL 391

Senior Seminar in Creative Writing

ENGL 405

Offered in more than one section each year, this seminar is required for English majors pursuing an emphasis in creative writing. The course will involve critical work on a topic chosen by the instructor (such as "Reliable and Unreliable: Investigating Narrative Voice," "Beginnings and Endings," "The Little Magazine in America" and "Documentary Poetics") to provide context and structure for students' creative work. Students should check online listings for the specific focus of each section. Although not primarily a workshop, this seminar will require students to work on a substantial creative project (fiction, nonfiction or poetry). Students pursuing honors will take ENGL 497 rather than the Senior Seminar. Open only to senior English majors who are completing the emphasis in creative writing.

ST: Sr Sem in Creative Writing

ENGL 491

Individual Study

ENGL 493

Individual study in English is a privilege reserved for senior majors who want to pursue a course of reading or complete a writing project on a topic not regularly offered in the curriculum. Because individual study is one option in a rich and varied English curriculum, it is intended to supplement, not take the place of, coursework, and it cannot normally be used to fulfill requirements for the major. An IS will earn the student 0.5 units of credit, although in special cases it may be designed to earn 0.25 units. To qualify to enroll in an individual study, a student must identify a member of the English department willing to direct the project. In consultation with that faculty member, the student must write a 1–2 page proposal for the IS that the department chair must approve before the IS can go forward. The chair’s approval is required to ensure that no single faculty member becomes overburdened by directing too many IS courses. In the proposal, the student should provide a preliminary bibliography (and/or set of specific problems, goals and tasks) for the course, outline a specific schedule of reading and/or writing assignments, and describe in some detail the methods of assessment (e.g., a short story to be submitted for evaluation biweekly; a thirty-page research paper submitted at course’s end, with rough drafts due at given intervals). Students should also briefly describe any prior coursework that particularly qualifies them for their proposed individual studies. The department expects IS students to meet regularly with their instructors for at least one hour per week, or the equivalent, at the discretion of the instructor. The amount of work submitted for a grade in an IS should approximate at least that required, on average, in 400-level English courses. In the case of group individual studies, a single proposal may be submitted, assuming that all group members will follow the same protocols. Because students must enroll for individual studies by the seventh class day of each semester, they should begin discussion of their proposed individual study well in advance, preferably the semester before, so that there is time to devise the proposal and seek departmental approval before the registrar’s deadline.