Life Writing Seminar

 

Professor: Dorothy Albertini  

 

Course Number: BAC 120

CRN Number: 10361

Class cap: 12

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon       12:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin Language Center 118

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts  

 

 

“...The call of the writer is the same as the call of the reader. / Take me to other planes of myself.  Agnes Martin said her paintings were for / people to look at before daily care strikes. Suppose reading and writing do their best / work after daily care has struck (and struck hard).”  C.D. Wright. We will gather to do our best work with and for reading and writing.  Life Writing has many forms; usually it is a kind of personal narrative.  For our purposes, let’s think of Life Writing as practice in attending to life (including memory--yours, others’), using the lens of writing.  Our methods will include observation, listening, reflection, recursion, close reading, and writing practice. In class, we’ll read and we’ll write; during the week outside of class, you’ll continue to hold space to be a writer, flexing your muscles of observation and attending to what’s there. The goal is to create more fluidity for you between your mind and the page.  There will be regular short assignments (usually one page or less), and you'll have the opportunity to revise and grow the texts you create over the course of the semester, with the support of in-class revision workshops. Think of this class as a container you will fill, with many hands ready to help steady the weight