Writing Workshop: Embodied Poetics

Catalog description

This class involves the study and analysis of selected literary and compositional issues and elements as they relate to somatic inquiry. Topics cover a wide range of subject matter and methods and vary from semester to semester. These may include but are not limited to: works of literature; forms of composition; literary history; writing practice (including prose, poetry, and multigenre); literary criticism; as well as film and media studies. Larger frames for the class may include somatic psychology, studies of the nervous system, animal ethologies, and performance-based approaches to posture and gesture events. We build projects centered upon somatic experiments of different kinds, asking, in the words of Akilah Oliver, "What are the limits of the body?" Prerequisite: 3 credits of 300-level coursework or by permission of instructor.