ENGL 207 - Intermediate Creative Writing: Literary Non-Fiction

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2022/23b: Writing About the City. This course focuses on nonfiction writing that maps urban lives. 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 portray cities. A few examples: George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London; Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion; Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis; 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. The reading of the books listed above are often accompanied by supplementary readings that are posted on Moodle. 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