Spring 2025 Writing UN3018 section 001

Inhabiting Form: Writing the Body

Inhabiting Form

Call Number 14724
Day & Time
Location
M 12:10pm-2:00pm
To be announced
Points 3
Grading Mode Standard
Approvals Required None
Instructor Samantha Zighelboim
Type SEMINAR
Method of Instruction In-Person
Course Description

The body is our most immediate encounter with the world, the vessel through which we experience our entire lives: pleasure, pain, beauty, horror, limitation, freedom, fragility and empowerment. In this course, we will pursue critical and creative inquiries into invocations and manifestations of the body in multiple genres of literature and in several capacities. We will look at how writers make space for—or take up space with—bodies in their work.

The etymology of the word “text” is from the Latin textus, meaning “tissue.” Along these lines, we will consider the text itself as a body. Discussions around body politics, race, gender, ability, illness, death, metamorphosis, monstrosity and pleasure will be parallel to the consideration of how a text might function itself as a body in space and time. We will consider such questions as: What is the connective tissue of a story or a poem? What is the nervous system of a lyric essay? How is formal constraint similar to societal ideals about beauty and acceptability of certain bodies? How do words and language function at the cellular level to build the body of a text? How can we make room to honor, in our writing, bodies that have otherwise been marginalized?

We will also consider non-human bodies (animals & organisms) and embodiments of the supernatural (ghosts, gods & specters) in our inquiries. Students will process and explore these ideas in both creative and analytical writings throughout the semester, deepening their understanding of embodiment both on and off the page.

Web Site Vergil
Department Writing
Enrollment 15 students (15 max) as of 5:05PM Sunday, December 8, 2024
Status Full
Subject Writing
Number UN3018
Section 001
Division Interfaculty
Fee $15 Creative Writing C
Section key 20251WRIT3018W001