Mar 29, 2024  
Catalogue 2020-2021 
    
Catalogue 2020-2021 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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ENGL 207 - Intermediate Creative Writing: Literary Non-Fiction

Semester Offered: Spring
1 1 unit(s)
Topic for 2020/21b: Writing about the City. This course focuses on nonfiction writing about cities. We begin with a week of readings of reports about the pandemic (Rivka Galchen’s report from a hospital in New York City, Arun Venugopal’s radio-report on a morgue, Wang Fang’s Wuhan diary, Slavenka Drakulic surviving COVID-19 in Stockholm) before reading books that are considered classics: George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London; A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous; Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. More recent books: Patti Smith’s Just Kids; Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Harlem is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. Also, a novel which often seems to blur the lines between fiction and nonfiction: Teju Cole’s Open City. Students are expected to write brief book-reports (less than a page) for each class and two short pieces of nonfiction about cities. Amitava Kumar.

Prerequisite(s): Open to any student who has taken ENGL 205  or ENGL 206 .

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS



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