CCRWT 3900 Junior Seminar in Creative Writing
Open to Creative Writing majors only, this course will help students hone their critical writing skills through in-depth analyses of contemporary authors across primary genres. The central focus of the course is craft analysis—the strategies and structures employed by accomplished writers to assemble creative work into the form of finished stories, poems, essays, and plays, and into book-length collections of the same. Keeping in mind a popular rather than a scholarly audience, students will analyze contemporary literary texts in ways literary critics might write book reviews or art essays for literary journals, focusing on technical merit as well as thematic content, and on specific ways technique and content interact and enhance one another, or fail to complement one another. Though the course will emphasize book-review writing, students will also critique each other’s creative work in peer review workshop sessions. Through in-class discussion and thoughtful, written responses, students will demonstrate an increased understanding of the writer's craft in ways intended to inform their own creative work in and beyond the Creative Writing Junior Seminar.
Prerequisite
6 credits of 2000-level CCRWT courses