Sketch of Wheeler Hall by Wendy Xin
Session D (July 6 - August 14)
Hilma af Klint, Â
Session D | Tom Kozlowski
Perhaps nothing is more human, more desired, and more poorly understood than love. What does it look like? What makes it "true"? How can we trust it? What are its boundaries or lack thereof? Who decides? Shakespeare tells it one way, ThĂch Nhất Hạnh another. Marvin Gaye and Lauryn Hill and all those pop stars spin more versions still. Any path you take will lead to poets and prophets, heartbreak and healing, justice and struggle, but each path starts and ends with you and what kind of love you have for yourself. For in the end, the fate of personal, public, and planetary health all rest upon a fundamental commitment to compassion as an energy of transformation.Â
Together in this course, we’ll think love, read love, write love, and unlearn love. We'll work through its expansive manifestations across poems, novels, parables, letters, songs, films, and spiritual guidance all over time and space. Moreover, as a writing-intensive course and Cal requirement, we’ll hone the analytical skills needed for critical thinking, patient attention, and nuanced, persuasive argumentation. Expect to read something new every day, and prepare to be consistently engaged with drafting, journaling, reflection, and revision. With consistent dedication, you’ll be stunned to see not only growth in clarity and confidence in style but lasting self-discovery.Â
"The Careless Typist," 1901. Bettmann Archive.Â
Session D | Vikram Chandra
A short fiction workshop.
Over the course of the semester, each student will write and revise a short story. Each participant in the workshop will edit student-written stories and will write a critique of each manuscript.
Throughout the semester, we will read published fiction and also essays by working writers about fiction and the writing life.
The intent of the course is to have the students learn about and practise the techniques that enable writers to construct a convincing and engaging representation of reality on the page.
Please note that students will only write fiction within the genre of psychological realism. We will not workshop science fiction or fantasy fiction.
Session D | Melanie AbramsÂ
In this online class, you'll learn to read like a writer by studying the craft of creative writing, explore your own process by writing your own short stories and poems, and then get feedback in small peer workshops designed to help you become an even better writer and reader. Students will read and analyze contemporary fiction and poetry (i.e.: what’s being published today) and write a variety of exercises as well as more formal pieces. Note that this is not merely a generative writing class, but one where you will learn the craft of writing, so come prepared to learn what constitutes a strong story and poem and then integrate it into your own work. Attendance is mandatory. Come write with us this summer!
Session D | Srijani Ghosh
We will explore several different popular genres—detective fiction, science fiction, horror, fantasy, the Hollywood musical, and the Western—to discover what makes these genres “popular” and in what ways they produce their mass appeal. Is popular fiction simply light leisure reading for the public or do they have "literary" merit beneath the generic formulas? How do popular fictional works play an integral role in helping us understand the dynamics of gender, science, cultural norms, and politics of the era?Â
Session D | Geoffrey O’Brien
This course will present the genre of speculative fiction in the U.S. and its historical commitment to imagining plausible and implausible alternatives to the present. We will begin by looking at the later Golden Age of the science fiction short story, the 1960s and 70s, and then proceed to treat some representative novels from the 1970s to the contemporary. Along the way, we’ll consider some of the crucial topics and concepts that form the imaginary of this genre, from advanced technology and what it affords and subtracts from the human (artificial intelligence, the end of work, extended longevity, interstellar travel and contact with other entities, etc.), to the hyper-urban, as well as questions of race, class, gender, capitalism, climate, war, and colonialization as they encounter and acquire new and estranging contexts. We’ll also attempt to theorize some of the modes and tropes by which such fictions explore these questions: apocalypse, futurity and deep pasts, new bodies and forms of communication, the hivemind, virtuality, and so on, as well as the traditional narrative conventions enlisted to support these representations.