“Broken Genres” is for adventurous readers interested in experimental literature--works that create unfamiliar, often challenging literary experiences. In this class, you'll encounter surreal folk tales, tarot-driven adventures, poststructuralist fantasy, a meditative zombie tale, and more (possibly including work by: Octavia Butler, Shirley Jackson, Anne Carson, Leonora Carrington, Layla Long Soldier, Italo Calvino, Anne de Marcken, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ben Marcus, and Michael Ondaatje).
This class is primarily seminar-based, but will include short lectures, guided discussions, and workshops. In seminar, we'll discuss assigned readings as complex achievements on their own, but also consider them in relation to a history of experimental literary forms. With the support of writing workshops, you'll take copious notes, write and revise formal responses to texts, and pursue creative explorations of your reading experiences, which can be written, visual, performative, or audio creations. Student groups will collaborate to offer special seminar sessions and activities as part of our work on each text. Lectures will provide context for our study and introduce you to the fundamentals of the literary arts, including key questions around narrative and story that motivate academic inquiry, creative experimentation, and literary scholarship.
Anticipated Credit Equivalencies:
8 - Introduction to Literary Arts and Studies
4 - Intermediate Literary Studies: Seminar in Experimental Fiction
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Academic Details
literature, writing, and humanities.