Subject Area: Creative Writing

This gateway course for the Minor in Writing is a comparative and historical overview of the origins and functions of writing systems, from cuneiform script and Australian Aboriginal iconography to contemporary literature. It will train students in the analysis of the pragmatics of language performances, and in the poetics and rhetorics of the transmission of thoughts and feelings. Using examples from all kinds of literatures, it will show how texts can actively foster cultures and empower individuals. Techniques of compositional analysis will be supplemented with contemporary cultural theory. Students will have the opportunity to workshop their own writing in class and in online writing laboratories.