Graduate Nonfiction Course Descriptions

Fall 2007

08N:262:001 Readings in Nonfiction:  Nonfiction and the Image – Instructor:  Robin C Hemley

Description:  In this course, we will examine the relation of the image, specifically the photographic image, but not exclusively, in relation to nonfiction. How do we apprehend reality, and what is meant by reality in our attempts to capture and represent it in photographic and literary terms? How is the photograph enhanced by words and how is it hindered? How is the word enhanced by the photograph and how is it hindered? Is the subtext of the photograph always ambiguous? Does it necessarily impart beauty even as it tries to suggest ugliness? In what manner is a “moralized ideal of truth-telling,” to use Sontag’s phrase, irrelevant or obstructive to the nonfiction writer’s task? And is the task of the nonfiction writer finally as blurry as an out-of-focus photograph?

Much of this course will be devoted to reading, viewing, and writing about various images that others have created: the snapshot, the postcard, visual art, media images, home movies. In many instances, we’ll use these outside images as prompts for personal or lyric essays or essays we can’t even classify. Part of the class will also involve us going out into the world armed with cameras and actively hunting for images that we will use as prompts for further essays.

You can expect a writing assignment every week, but these assignments will not all be critiqued or even handed in. Part of the aim of this course is to generate material in an original and perhaps experimental manner. I’d like for you to consider all of your work in this regard as an exercise. I’ll ask people to read from their work every week, but we won’t be critiquing them in the traditional workshop manner. That’s something you can get from your other courses. As this is a large class, if we tried to critique everyone’s work, we would be slowed to a crawl. Instead, we’ll talk as much about the process as the product. Halfway through the course, we will schedule individual conferences to talk about your work.

08N:262:002  Readings in Nonfiction: History of the Essay – Instructor:  Jeffrey L Porter

Description: Now that the essay has made a remarkable comeback as an artistic form, it’s time to place it in perspective. No genre is as rich and varied as the literary essay. If the sheer heft of the venerable Oxford Book of Essays (nearly 700 pages) is any indication, then the history of the essay is marked by a surprising degree of animation and expressive activity, from the inaugural work of Montaigne (going on about his kidney stones) and Burton (who in writing about depression—or melancholy—invents its linguistic cure) to the modern efforts of George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, E. B. White, Joan Didion, and Annie Dillard on politics and culture. In between lies a galaxy of stylistic and intellectual feats, including the arch ironies of Jonathan Swift and the first-person experiments of Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt, as well as the lively criticism promoted in the literary magazines The Rambler, The Tatler and The Spectator. Not to mention, of course, the great American essayists Thoreau and Emerson. This course will introduce students to the range of the essay as it has evolved from the early modern period to our own. The class will be organized, for the most part, chronologically, beginning with the likes of Montaigne, Bacon, and Burton, and ending with contemporary examples of the form (W. G. Sebald, e.g.). The writing assigned for this course will look at the readings not only as objects of analysis but also as models for our own short stylistic experiments in the art of the essay. Texts, TBA.

08N:350:001  Essay Writing Workshop:  The Fictional Nonfiction “I” – Instructor:  Susan Lohafer

Description:  This course is about ways of representing the “I” in literary nonfiction.  Readings will include both first-person short stories and narrative personal essays.  By demonstrating ways of “writing the ‘I’” in both fiction and nonfiction, these texts will help us learn to recognize, talk about, and practice strategies for creating or constructing a first-person speaker.  What is meant by the credibility, likeability, complexity, persuasiveness, etc., of a personal “voice” in literary prose?  How is the carefully crafted persona of a nonfiction essay different from the narrator of a fiction who tells his or her “own” story?  Where--and what--is the fuzzy, shifting, and perhaps illusory boundary between fiction and nonfiction?  Where possible, readings will include paired works for comparison--e.g., Isaac Babel’s “Answer to an Inquiry” and “My First Fee,” a memoir-like and fictionalized account of the same event.  Despite our unorthodox schedule (see below), you will be turning in a three-to-four-page exercise about once a week, several five-to-six-page essays, and a ten-to-fifteen-page final project in your area of interest.  Although one of the exercises may be classified as fiction, the rest of your writing--including the final project--will fall into the category of literary nonfiction.  This is an intensively hands-on, “practitioner” course for advanced writers willing, for a time, to follow a regimen of prescribed assignments.  Formal notions of subjectivity and identity (Lacanian, feminist, etc.) rarely come into play, for this is not a course in theory.  Our focus will be on the writing strategies we examine and test in a “workshop” environment, and we will spend the great majority of class time discussing the writing you do in response to the assignments. 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT SCHEDULING:  This course meets 10:30 – 12:20 Tuesdays and Fridays, from August 28 to October 2, and from October 16 to November 16 (dates inclusive).   In other words, the in-class hours will be about the same as in a normal semester, but they will be bunched together in two sessions with a break in between.  As much as possible, the workload will be distributed throughout the term, and there will be assigned reading and writing even during the “independent study” periods when class does not meet.  Note:  Attendance at some portion of the 2007 NonfictioNow conference will be expected and will replace the meeting on November 2. 

QUESTIONS:  Anyone interested is welcome to call me collect at 423-282-6233.  My on-leave address is 1311 Cattail Point, Johnson City, TN  37601.  E-mail is the best way to reach me: susan-lohafer@uiowa.edu or sklohafer@aol.com.
This course is taught by Susan Lohafer.

08N:350:002  Essay Writing Workshop – Instructor:  John-Philip D’Agata

Description:  This is a come-as-you-are workshop for essayists of all stripes.  Our focus will be primarily on student work, with occasional outside reading and writing assignments. Each student will receive two formal workshops over the course of the semester. Registrants are advised to sign up for this course with the understanding that work that may not fit in to their aesthetic view of the world will most likely be discussed.

08N:350:003  Essay Writing Workshop – Instructor:  Mary Ruefle

Description:  This is a graduate writing workshop in creative nonfiction and as such it is understood that the participants are serious writers who will bring to the table projects that are either already in progress or soon to be; our emphasis will vary depending on the state of these creations and cannot be predetermined. Students with predetermined expectations should probably not be writing in the first place (to be discussed). it makes one wonder if human beings with predetermined expectations should be living in the first place. It makes one wonder where the first place is or was. Occasional outside reading and writing assignment.

08N:355:001  Nonfiction Writing Workshop:  The Ethnographic Essay – Instructor:  Bonnie Sunstein

Description:  Graduate NONFICTION WRITING course

08N:550:  Special Project In Nonfiction Writing – Instructor:  Staff

Description:  An instructor number and approval are required for registration in this course. Contact the instructor (or designated individual) for the instructor number, which you enter as the section number when you register. At the same time you should make the required semester hours, time, and place arrangements.

08N:580:  Thesis in Nonfiction Writing – Instructor:  Staff