Bryn Mawr College

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Courses Offered

Please note: enrollment in the Creative Writing workshop is a three step process. Students must:
(1) preregister
(2) download and print a Creative Writing Program questionnaire, complete this and drop it off (hard copy) to Professor Daniel Torday ’s faculty mailbox in English House by the end of the pre-registration period.
(3) attend the first meeting of the class in the Fall term. Note: Students applying to 300-level courses without having completed the corresponding 200-level course must submit a writing sample.

Spring Registration Information:
Please note, enrollment in the Creative Writing workshop is a three step process. Students must:
(1) preregister
(2) download and print a Creative Writing Program questionnaire from the Creative Writing homepage, complete this and drop it off (hard copy) to Professor Daniel Torday ’s faculty mailbox in English House by the end of the pre-registration period.
(3) attend the first meeting of the class in the Spring term. Note: Students applying to 300-level courses without having completed the corresponding 200-level course must submit a writing sample.

This page displays the schedule of Bryn Mawr courses in this department for this academic year. It also displays descriptions of courses offered by the department during the last four academic years.

For information about courses offered by other Bryn Mawr departments and programs or about courses offered by Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges, please consult the Course Guides page.

For information about the Academic Calendar, including the dates of first and second quarter courses, please visit the College's master calendar.

Spring 2013

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/ UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
ARTW B159-001	Introduction to Creative Writing	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH	English House III	Todd,J.
ARTW B260-001	Writing Short Fiction I	Semester / 1	Lecture: 7:00 PM-10:00 PM M	English House I	Tebordo,C.
ARTW B261-001	Writing Poetry I	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM F	English House III	Fried,D.
ARTW B263-001	Writing Memoir I	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM M	Dalton Hall 6	Thomas,S.
ARTW B269-001	Writing for Children	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH	English House Lecture Hall	Mosier,E.
ARTW B364-001	Longer Fictional Forms	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM W	English House III	Torday,D.

Fall 2013

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/ UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
ARTW B260-001	Writing Short Fiction I	Semester / 1	Lecture: 12:45 PM- 2:15 PM TTH	English House III	Torday,D.
ARTW B261-001	Writing Poetry I	Semester / 1	Lecture: 2:15 PM- 3:45 PM TTH	English House III	Kirchwey,K., Torday,D.
ARTW B264-001	News and Feature Writing	Semester / 1	Lecture: 7:00 PM-10:00 PM T	English House II	Ferrick,T., Torday,D.
ARTW B265-001	Creative Nonfiction	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM W	English House III	Torday,D.
ARTW B266-001	Screenwriting	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM F	English House I	Doyne,N., Torday,D.
ARTW B269-001	Writing for Children	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH	English House I	Mosier,E., Torday,D.

Spring 2014

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/ UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
ARTW B159-001	Introduction to Creative Writing	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH	English House III	Todd,J.
ARTW B240-001	Literary Translation Workshop	Semester / 1	LEC: 2:15 PM- 3:45 PM TTH		Kirchwey,K.
ARTW B260-001	Writing Short Fiction I	Semester / 1	Lecture: 11:15 AM-12:45 PM TTH	English House III	Torday,D.
ARTW B268-001	Writing Literary Journalism	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM M	English House III
ARTW B360-001	Writing Short Fiction II	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM TH	English House III
ARTW B361-001	Writing Poetry II	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM W	English House I	Kirchwey,K.
ARTW B364-001	Longer Fictional Forms	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM W	English House III	Torday,D.

2013-14 Catalog Data

ARTW B125 Writing Science Not offered 2013-14 How does scientific research make its way out of the lab? Science translates from research experience to journals written for the expert and is often translated again for more general audiences--appearing in venues such as newspapers, essays and memoirs. What is gained and what is lost when science is translated? This is a half-semester, half-credit course. Cross-listed as CHEM B125

ARTW B159 Introduction to Creative Writing Spring 2014 This course is for students who wish to experiment with three genres of creative writing: short fiction, poetry and drama. Priority will be given to interested first-year students; additional spaces will be made available to upper-year students with little or no experience in creative writing. Students will write or revise work every week; roughly four weeks each will be devoted to short fiction, poetry, and drama. There will be individual conferences with the instructor to discuss their progress and interests. Half of class time will be spent discussing student work and half will be spent discussing syllabus readings. Division III: Humanities

ARTW B240 Literary Translation Workshop Spring 2014 Open to creative writing students and students of literature, the syllabus includes some theoretical readings, but the emphasis is practical and analytical. Syllabus reading includes parallel translations of certain enduring literary texts (mostly poetry) as well as books and essays about the art of translation. Literary translation will be considered as a spectrum ranging from Dryden's "metaphrase" (word-for-word translation) all the way through imitation, adaptation, and reimagining. Each student will be invited to work with whatever non-English language(s) s/he has, and to select for translation short works of poetry, prose, or drama. The course will include class visits by working literary translators. The Italian verbs for "to translate" and "to betray" sound almost alike; throughout, the course concerns the impossibility and importance of literary translation. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as COML B240

ARTW B260 Writing Short Fiction I Fall 2013, Spring 2014 An introduction to fiction writing, focusing on the short story. Students will consider fundamental elements of fiction and the relationship of narrative structure, style, and content, exploring these elements in their own work and in the assigned readings in order to develop an understanding of the range of possibilities open to the fiction writer. Weekly readings and writing exercises are designed to encourage students to explore the material and styles that most interest them, and to push their fiction to a new level of craft, so that over the semester their writing becomes clearer, more controlled, and more absorbing. Division III: Humanities

ARTW B261 Writing Poetry I Fall 2013 This course will provide a semester-long survey of the formal resources available to students wishing to write print-based poems in English, beginning with syllabic verse, accentual verse and accentual-syllabic (metered) verse, as well as free verse. Students in this course will gain experience writing in forms including cinquains, syllabics, Anglo-Saxon accentual verse, and sonnets. The course is writing-intensive, and students will write, or rewrite, work every week. Through in-class discussions, they will also become capable critics of each other's work. The objective of the course will be to provide students with a sense of poetic subject and with the skills to find a form and a voice with which to express themselves on the printed page. Division III: Humanities

ARTW B262 Playwriting I Not offered 2013-14 An introduction to playwriting through a combination of reading assignments, writing exercises, discussions about craft and ultimately the creation of a complete one-act play. Students will work to discover and develop their own unique voices as they learn the technical aspects of the craft of playwriting. Readings will include work by Sarah Ruhl, Deb Margolin, Nilo Cruz, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Greenspan, Lisa Kron, and others. Short writing assignments will complement each reading assignment. The final assignment will be to write an original one-act play. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ARTT B262

ARTW B263 Writing Memoir I Not offered 2013-14 The purpose of this course is to provide students with practical experience in writing about the events, places and people of their own lives in the form of memoir. Initial class discussions attempt to distinguish memoir from related literary genres such as confession and autobiography. Writing assignments and in-class discussion of syllabus readings explore the range of memoirs available for use as models (excerpts by writers including James Baldwin, Lorene Cary, Annie Dillard, Arthur Koestler, Rick Moody, Lorrie Moore, and Tim O'Brien) and elements such as voice and perspective, tone, plot, characterization and symbolic and figurative language. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI)

ARTW B264 News and Feature Writing Fall 2013 Students in this class will learn how to develop, report, write, edit and revise a variety of news stories, beginning with the basics of reporting and writing the news and advancing to longer-form stories, including personality profiles, news features and trend stories, and concluding with point-of-view journalism (columns, criticism, reported essays). The course will focus heavily on work published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times. Several working journalists will participate as guest speakers to explain their craft. Students will write stories that will be posted on the class blog, the English House Gazette. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI)

ARTW B265 Creative Nonfiction Fall 2013 This course will explore the literary expressions of nonfiction writing by focusing on the skills, process and craft techniques necessary to the generation and revision of literary nonfiction. Using the information-gathering tools of a journalist, the analytical tools of an essayist and the technical tools of a fiction writer, students will produce pieces that will incorporate both factual information and first person experience. Readings will include a broad group of writers ranging from E.B. White to Anne Carson, George Orwell to David Foster Wallace, Joan Didion to James Baldwin, among many others. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI)

ARTW B266 Screenwriting Fall 2013 An introduction to screenwriting. Issues basic to the art of storytelling in film will be addressed and analyzed: character, dramatic structure, theme, setting, image, sound. The course focuses on the film adaptation; readings include novels, screenplays, and short stories. Films adapted from the readings will be screened. In the course of the semester, students will be expected to outline and complete the first act of an adapted screenplay of their own. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI) Counts toward Film Studies

ARTW B268 Writing Literary Journalism Spring 2014 This course will examine the tools that literary writers bring to factual reporting and how these tools enhance the stories they tell. Readings will include reportage, polemical writing and literary reviewing. The issues of point-of-view and subjectivity, the uses of irony, forms of persuasion, clarity of expression and logic of construction will be discussed. The importance of context--the role of the editor and the magazine, the expectations of the audience, censorship and self-censorship--will be considered. Division III: Humanities

ARTW B269 Writing for Children Fall 2013 In this course, students have the opportunity to write imaginatively for children and young adults. Through reading and in-class discussion, we will examine the specific requirements of the picture book, the chapter book and the young adult novel. This analytical study of classic and contemporary literature will inspire and inform students' creative work through the discoveries they make about style and structure, creating compelling characters, the roles of illustration and page composition in story narration, and the ever-evolving fairy tale. Students will receive guidance for their creative work through in-class exercises, peer review and private conferences with the instructor. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI)

ARTW B360 Writing Short Fiction II Spring 2014 An exploration of approaches to writing short fiction designed to strengthen skills of experienced student writers as practitioners and critics. Requires writing at least five pages each week, workshopping student pieces, and reading texts ranging from realist stories to metafictional experiments and one-page stories to the short novella, to explore how writers can work within tight confines. Prerequisite: ARTW 260 or work demonstrating equivalent expertise in writing short fiction. A writing sample of 5-10 pages in length (prose fiction) must be submitted to the Creative Writing Program during the preregistration period to be considered for this course. Division III: Humanities

ARTW B361 Writing Poetry II Spring 2014 This course assumes that reading and writing are inextricably linked, and that the only way to write intelligent and interesting poetry is to read as much of it as possible. Writing assignments will be closely connected to syllabus reading, including an anthology prepared by the instructor, and may include working in forms such as ecphrastic poems (i.e poems about works of visual art or sculpture), dramatic monologues, prose poems, translations, imitations and parodies. Prerequisite: ARTW 261 or work demonstrating equivalent familiarity with the basic forms of poetry in English. A writing sample of 5-7 poems must be submitted to the instructor to be considered for this course. Division III: Humanities

ARTW B364 Longer Fictional Forms Spring 2014 An advanced workshop for students with a strong background in fiction writing who want to write longer works: the long short story, novella and novel. Students will write intensively, and complete a long story, novel or novella (or combination thereof) totaling up to 20,000 words. Students will examine the craft of their work and of published prose. Prerequisite: ARTW 260 or proof of interest and ability. Division III: Humanities

ARTW B403 Supervised Work Students who have had a Creative Writing Major approved through the Independent Major Program will work with a member of the Creative Writing Program faculty on a semester-long 403 (Independent Study) as a final project their senior year. Highly qualified Creative Writing minors and concentrators may petition the program to complete an independent study, subject to the availability of faculty to supervise such projects.

ARTW B425 Praxis III Counts toward Praxis Program