Spring 2025 Writing UN3010 section 001

SHORT PROSE FORMS

Call Number 14723
Day & Time
Location
R 4:10pm-6:00pm
To be announced
Points 3
Grading Mode Standard
Approvals Required None
Instructor Alan Ziegler
Type SEMINAR
Method of Instruction In-Person
Course Description Prerequisites: No Prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. Flash fiction, micro-naratives and the short-short have become exciting areas of exploration for contemporary writers. This course will examine how these literary fragments have captured the imagination of writers internationally and at home. The larger question the class seeks to answer, both on a collective and individual level, is: How can we craft a working definition of those elements endemic to short prose as a genre? Does the form exceed classification? What aspects of both crafts -- prose and poetry -- does this genre inhabit, expand upon, reinvent, reject, subvert? Short Prose Forms incorporates aspects of both literary seminar and the creative workshop. Class-time will be devoted alternatingly to examinations of published pieces and modified discussions of student work. Our reading chart the course from the genres emergence, examining the prose poem in 19th-century France through the works of Mallarme, Baudelaire, Max Jacob and Rimbaud. Well examine aspects of poetry -- the attention to the lyrical, the use of compression, musicality, sonic resonances and wit -- and attempt to understand how these writers took, as Russell Edson describes, experience and made it into an artifact with the logic of a dream. The class will conclude with a portfolio at the end of the term, in which students will submit a compendium of final drafts of three of four short prose pieces, samples of several exercises, selescted responses to readings, and a short personal manifesto on the short prose form.
Web Site Vergil
Department Writing
Enrollment 9 students (15 max) as of 5:05PM Sunday, December 8, 2024
Subject Writing
Number UN3010
Section 001
Division Interfaculty
Fee $15 Creative Writing C
Section key 20251WRIT3010W001