Wednesday, 6:40 – 8:30
Kiely Hall 148
Office: Klapper 633
Office Hours: Wednesdays, 4 – 5:30
Email: [email protected]
TO PURCHASE
- Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)–available for a good price through the QC Bookstore, though you can purchase it wherever you want.
- Open AI ChatGPT account
- You’ll need to bring a device to class to use ChatGPT, preferably a laptop or tablet with keyboard; in a pinch, a phone will work but may be unwieldy as you move beyond the AI to your own writing.
ASSIGNMENTS
In-Class Writing
We will write in just about every session, usually starting with a ChatGPT prompt. You’ll be free to explore whatever topics interest you. You’ll share a lot of this writing, in the spirit of informal workshops through which you help each other think about what all this informal writing might become. Keeping this writing in an organized way, along with AI content that initiated them.
Readings
Each student will perform three practice readings during the semester–a short one from a class text, five-seven minutes from a text of their choice, and ten minutes from their own work. We’ll practice connecting with an audience. Whether a reading is boisterous or subdued, the key is making an audience feel like you’re a person communicating with them, rather than talking at them (or hiding from them!). Humor can go along way to making that connection, but so can a variety of feelings. It’s possible to over-read or under-read, though it’s impossible to define either in a general way. Each reading is unique. With all this mind, students will offer each other feedcack: What connects? Is the reader’s tone working? Is anyting confusing or inaudible? What techniques might the writer try out?
Essays
During the second half of the semester, you’ll begin to develop ideas for a 2500 – 3000 word (9-12 page) nonfiction essay. Nonfiction is a broad category, including narrative journalism, various essay forms, memoir, biography, and cultural criticism. The genre is up to you, and you’ll make your decisions in conversation with the group.
Workshops
During the final few weeks of the semester, each of you will workshop a draft of the essay you’ll turn in at the end. You’ll revise it, considering feedback from your classmates and me.
These workshops will build on mini-workshops we’ll have done throughout the semester. Our goal is to support each writer with substantive feedback. The writer will decide on the format of the workshop. It might be a holistic workshop, or it might be more focused–concentrating on particular elements of craft, like voice, structure, diction, research, description scenes, or characters. When writers turn in a draft to workshop, they’ll include a set of questions they want us to consider as a group. It will be our job to offer critical and respectful feedback that helps push each other to do our best work.
MFA Program Statement on Integrity and Writing Communities
A number of linguists have claimed that each person actually uses a different language, unique unto themselves. But at the same time, languages of all kinds are part of the human commons, essential survival tools to communicate and relate to oneself and others. While we tend to value originality, many historical literary cultures have valued just the opposite, fostering the recognition and transmission of imitation, replication, and common codes over time. Writers in our program—and our cultural milieu—navigate these subtle lines between collectivity and originality.
While our program aims to foster a sense of common purpose and collaborative work, we understand that each voice is unique and that recognition of passages, forms, or ideas directly copied without permission can be a damaging and disturbing phenomenon. As members of a writing community, we are responsible to each other—and to the university’s academic integrity policies. We are signing on to be ethical and supportive audiences of each other’s work. So, rather than dictate more rules, we aim to consider the meaning and practice of limits and boundaries as part of our curricular approach. In our courses and community programming, we intend to nurture an awareness among faculty and students alike as to how we participate in ndcommon work and maintain the integrity of our own unique perspectives and contributions.
The Journal Cherry Tree‘s AI Policy
Submissions that make use of an AI tool must also meet the standard of significant imaginative or intellectual transformation as laid out in fair use laws. We require that submissions which use AI be accompanied by a description of the process, include links to source material, delineate clearly human and AI contributions, and be as explicit as possible about the origins of the AI in question. Work entirely generated by AI will not be accepted. We generally will reject on the grounds of plagiarism a work which borrows too heavily from other published authors.
With these guidelines in mind, you will submit any and all AI Prompts and Responses with your work, for both informal and formal assignments.
Learning Goals
- To advance a nonfiction essay from initial spark to a polished draft
- To practice a variety of workshop techniques
- To practice public speaking and presentation techniques and styles
- To contextualize our own writing with relation to a history of writing technologies
- To become literate in AI tools–for research, writing inspiration, or collaboration
- To push the limits of AI with regard to literary form
- To become fluent in philosophical and poltical questions about the implications of AI
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