Teaching
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Mini Syllabi
In the spirit of literary citizenship, check out what's going on in my classes and don't forget to check out Assay's Syllabi Bank. This information is subject to change at any time and may not reflect the current incarnation of the class. If you have questions, please drop me an email or stop by my office. Everything is always a work in progress.
Fall 2019: Eng 3740r
Creative nonfiction Workshop: Immersion Writing
Creative nonfiction Workshop: Immersion Writing
Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Immersion Writing
English 3740r
English 3740r
Class Description:
Humans are wired to tell stories. It’s the way we were created, for good reason. It’s history, it’s survival, it’s entertainment. When we put the stories of a place, the stories of our journeys, to paper, we have travel writing and that serves its own purpose. The stories don’t have to be exotic and neither do the places. What they have to be, though, is interesting to the reader. In this class, we’ll explore the journey of getting to that place within our own writing. We will be using Robin Hemley’s Field Guide to Immersion Writing as our guide to learning about immersion journalism, immersion memoir, and travel writing. As we write our own immersion journalism, memoir, and travel writing, we will also learn the craft of workshop and revision.
Required Texts:
Other Readings:
Humans are wired to tell stories. It’s the way we were created, for good reason. It’s history, it’s survival, it’s entertainment. When we put the stories of a place, the stories of our journeys, to paper, we have travel writing and that serves its own purpose. The stories don’t have to be exotic and neither do the places. What they have to be, though, is interesting to the reader. In this class, we’ll explore the journey of getting to that place within our own writing. We will be using Robin Hemley’s Field Guide to Immersion Writing as our guide to learning about immersion journalism, immersion memoir, and travel writing. As we write our own immersion journalism, memoir, and travel writing, we will also learn the craft of workshop and revision.
Required Texts:
- Robin Hemley, Field Guide to Immersion Writing
- J. Drew Lanham, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature
- Elizabeth Rush, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore
- Julija Sukys, Siberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter's Reckoning
Other Readings:
- Nellie Bly, "Ten Days in a Madhouse"
- Marya Hornbacher, "The World is Not Vague: Nonfiction and the Urgency of Fact"
Fall 2019: Eng 4910/5950
Creative nonfiction workshop: Flash/travel writing
Creative nonfiction workshop: Flash/travel writing
Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Flash Travel Writing
English 4910/5950
English 4910/5950
Class Description:
Chattanooga is a place with a complicated history of movement, from the Chattanooga Choo Choo to the Great Migration to the Trail of Tears. We will be reading a variety of texts from a variety of viewpoints to discuss the way that travel writing functions as a form and how it has been used—or not available—to certain members of the population at particular times. We will read the 1949 Negro Motorist’s Green Guide, published to keep African American travelers safe; we will read Jan Morris, a famous travel writer who is also transgender, alongside other writers I hope will stimulate our thinking about gender, privilege, and who is allowed to travel and write about it.
Our creative expression in this class will be in the form of flash nonfiction and we will discuss our work in a variety of ways, with weekly essays and weekly workshops. We will study the craft of very short prose, discuss how the craft of narrative, exposition, scene-making, and characters functions on the pages we study for inspiration and how we can incorporate that understanding in our own work. The goal is to complete the class with a manuscript—whether a flash piece or a segmented essay made up of those flash pieces—suitable for submission to literary journals.
We are never “nowhere”; we are always “somewhere”—physically, psychologically, socially, environmentally—and that “somewhere” affords possibilities and enacts limitations on our thoughts, our actions, our choices and their consequences.
Required Texts:
Suggested Materials:
We will be reading excerpts from these texts, which will be posted online. You are not required to purchase these books, but if you’re interested in what we’re reading, you might want to find them.
Workshop/Responses:
Chattanooga is a place with a complicated history of movement, from the Chattanooga Choo Choo to the Great Migration to the Trail of Tears. We will be reading a variety of texts from a variety of viewpoints to discuss the way that travel writing functions as a form and how it has been used—or not available—to certain members of the population at particular times. We will read the 1949 Negro Motorist’s Green Guide, published to keep African American travelers safe; we will read Jan Morris, a famous travel writer who is also transgender, alongside other writers I hope will stimulate our thinking about gender, privilege, and who is allowed to travel and write about it.
Our creative expression in this class will be in the form of flash nonfiction and we will discuss our work in a variety of ways, with weekly essays and weekly workshops. We will study the craft of very short prose, discuss how the craft of narrative, exposition, scene-making, and characters functions on the pages we study for inspiration and how we can incorporate that understanding in our own work. The goal is to complete the class with a manuscript—whether a flash piece or a segmented essay made up of those flash pieces—suitable for submission to literary journals.
We are never “nowhere”; we are always “somewhere”—physically, psychologically, socially, environmentally—and that “somewhere” affords possibilities and enacts limitations on our thoughts, our actions, our choices and their consequences.
Required Texts:
- Dinty W. Moore, ed., The Rose Metal Guide to Flash Nonfiction
- Julija Sukys, Siberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter’s Reckoning
- Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction
- Bookmark
- Quotidiana.org
- Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies
- Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction
- The Humble Essayist
Suggested Materials:
We will be reading excerpts from these texts, which will be posted online. You are not required to purchase these books, but if you’re interested in what we’re reading, you might want to find them.
- Joy Castro, ed., Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family
- Jane Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode
- Robert Root, The Nonfictionist’s Guide
- Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir
Workshop/Responses:
- We will be using a form of hypoxic workshop this semester. You will write a 500-word flash essay every week to be workshopped by the class every week.
- Your critical responses to our course readings will take the form of Steven Harvey's Paragraph of the Week.
Spring 2020: ENg 4950/5550
Short Prose Collections Workshop
Short Prose Collections Workshop
Short Prose Collections
English 4950/5550
English 4950/5550
Class Description: This course will introduce writers to several dimensions of writing an essay collection or short story collection through reading, writing, and analysis. We will study the craft of collections as we move towards workshopping our own. Students will also lead the class in a discussion of one of our texts and write a craft paper. In the end, students who have successfully completed this course will have written at least 55,000 words. The goal for this course is for you to write a first draft of a short story collection or essay collection. If you are coming to class with an existing collection, our goal will be to get you through a substantive revision.
This course is designed to be the short-form corollary to the Novel Writing Workshop. This is not a course in which we will concentrate on long-form narrative (novel, memoir). This is a course in short form collections. We will talk about the multitude of ways that collections are created, but if your goal is to write a longform narrative on a single story, this is not the class to progress in that project, and let's talk about how to get your project where it needs to go.
Required Materials (Subject to Change):
This course is designed to be the short-form corollary to the Novel Writing Workshop. This is not a course in which we will concentrate on long-form narrative (novel, memoir). This is a course in short form collections. We will talk about the multitude of ways that collections are created, but if your goal is to write a longform narrative on a single story, this is not the class to progress in that project, and let's talk about how to get your project where it needs to go.
Required Materials (Subject to Change):
- Sandra Scofield, The Scene Book
- Post-it Notes in several colors and sizes.
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Intentional Collection
Unintentional Collection Short Books Chapbooks Formally Oddball/Hybrid |
Fiction
Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map
Kevin Barry, Dark Lies the Island -or- Leslie Nneka Arimah, What it Means when a Man Falls from the Sky Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street Rebecca Meacham, Morbid Curiosities Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities |
Nonfiction
Paul Gruchow, Boundary Waters
Michele Morano, Grammar Lessons Brian Doyle, The Wet Engine Paula Carter, No Relation Heidi Czerwiec, Sweet/Crude -or- Desirae Matherly, Echo's Fugue |
Recommended Materials:
- Jane Allison, Spiral, Meander, Explode
- Robert Root, The Nonfictionist's Guide
Spring 2020: Eng 3740r
Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Creative Writing: Nonfiction
English 3740R
English 3740R
Class Description:
Welcome to Creative Writing: Nonfiction! In this course, we will be looking at all aspects of nonfiction, from process to craft to criticism. English 3740 is a writing course, so I expect you to take your writing (and the writing of your peers) seriously. I expect you to be open to honest and critical discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of your work and that of your classmates. I expect you to be willing to experiment with your writing—get out of your comfort zone—and try out some of the ideas brought up in class. All writing is creative. But this is also a reading course— writers read. It’s how we learn. We will not only read various texts to demonstrate various concepts, we will read each others’ work with compassionate, critical eyes with a goal of helping each other improve our craft.
In this class, we’ll be concentrating on place writing—both reading and writing—within the context of studying the Montaignian essay. We will start small, examining the world with a microscope, reading and writing on small subjects, finding the value in the immediate, in the local. As we continue the semester, we will expand our lens and explore the prismatic world of nature-place- travel writing.
Required Materials:
Workshops:
Welcome to Creative Writing: Nonfiction! In this course, we will be looking at all aspects of nonfiction, from process to craft to criticism. English 3740 is a writing course, so I expect you to take your writing (and the writing of your peers) seriously. I expect you to be open to honest and critical discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of your work and that of your classmates. I expect you to be willing to experiment with your writing—get out of your comfort zone—and try out some of the ideas brought up in class. All writing is creative. But this is also a reading course— writers read. It’s how we learn. We will not only read various texts to demonstrate various concepts, we will read each others’ work with compassionate, critical eyes with a goal of helping each other improve our craft.
In this class, we’ll be concentrating on place writing—both reading and writing—within the context of studying the Montaignian essay. We will start small, examining the world with a microscope, reading and writing on small subjects, finding the value in the immediate, in the local. As we continue the semester, we will expand our lens and explore the prismatic world of nature-place- travel writing.
Required Materials:
- The Scene Book, Sandra Scofield
- Boundary Waters, Paul Gruchow.
- Please bookmark Patrick Madden’s website, <www.quotidiana.org>
- Other readings, as assigned on Canvas.
Workshops:
- Lightning Workshop
- Priorities in Revision Responses
Fall 2020: eng 4980
Senior Seminar: Food Writing
Senior Seminar: Food Writing
English 4980: Senior Seminar
From Plate To Page: Food Writing
From Plate To Page: Food Writing
Class Description:
Welcome to the Senior Seminar! In this capstone course, we will use food and all its peripheral conversations to create discussions and projects that utilize your skills and talents as English majors across creative writing, literature, and rhetoric and professional writing. This course is designed to represent all three tracks and the particular joy of this course will be in its cross-disciplinary conversations about our texts. The goal is to create a final outward-facing project of your own choosing that will be most useful to you in the next stage of your life. The texts for this class have been very carefully chosen to represent a wide variety of food writing, written by a wide variety of writers with different audiences, backgrounds, and purposes.
Food is never neutral. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes food as a universal human right. Our goal in this senior seminar is to use the skills that you’ve gained as an English major to interrogate and complicate what seems facile. We will read literature, creative texts, and professional work and consider them with our own unique knowledge and skills in literary analysis, craft analysis, and rhetorical analysis.
Class Mission Statement: This class operates under the foundational principle that food is a neutral good, absent any moral or ethical value. There is no such thing as bad food. We also agree that food and access to food is a basic, fundamental human right. We acknowledge that food is fuel for our bodies and our reading and writing of the body is a neutral good. Furthermore, this class operates under the belief that our bodies are a neutral good and the function of our bodies (which includes sex and pleasure) is a neutral good, absent of moral or ethical judgments.
Required Materials:
Welcome to the Senior Seminar! In this capstone course, we will use food and all its peripheral conversations to create discussions and projects that utilize your skills and talents as English majors across creative writing, literature, and rhetoric and professional writing. This course is designed to represent all three tracks and the particular joy of this course will be in its cross-disciplinary conversations about our texts. The goal is to create a final outward-facing project of your own choosing that will be most useful to you in the next stage of your life. The texts for this class have been very carefully chosen to represent a wide variety of food writing, written by a wide variety of writers with different audiences, backgrounds, and purposes.
Food is never neutral. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes food as a universal human right. Our goal in this senior seminar is to use the skills that you’ve gained as an English major to interrogate and complicate what seems facile. We will read literature, creative texts, and professional work and consider them with our own unique knowledge and skills in literary analysis, craft analysis, and rhetorical analysis.
Class Mission Statement: This class operates under the foundational principle that food is a neutral good, absent any moral or ethical value. There is no such thing as bad food. We also agree that food and access to food is a basic, fundamental human right. We acknowledge that food is fuel for our bodies and our reading and writing of the body is a neutral good. Furthermore, this class operates under the belief that our bodies are a neutral good and the function of our bodies (which includes sex and pleasure) is a neutral good, absent of moral or ethical judgments.
Required Materials:
- A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman
- Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink, ed. David Remnick
- Bet Me, Jennifer Crusie
- Other readings, podcasts, etc., as assigned.
Fall 2021: Eng 3780
Literary Editing and publishing
Literary Editing and publishing
Literary Editing and Publishing
English 3780r
English 3780r
Class Description:
Welcome to Literary Editing and Publishing! Our goal in this class is to explore the ecosystem of publishing, to discuss the relationship of writers, readers, and editors in the production and distribution of texts. We’ll talk to experts in the field and apply their wisdom to our work this semester of putting together UTC’s literary journal, Sequoya Review.
Required Materials:
Welcome to Literary Editing and Publishing! Our goal in this class is to explore the ecosystem of publishing, to discuss the relationship of writers, readers, and editors in the production and distribution of texts. We’ll talk to experts in the field and apply their wisdom to our work this semester of putting together UTC’s literary journal, Sequoya Review.
Required Materials:
- Wayne Miller, Kevin Prufer, and Travis Kurowski, eds., Literary Editing in the 21st Century
Fall 2020: Eng 4910/5950
Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Flash Nonfiction
Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Flash Nonfiction
Writing Flash Nonfiction
English 4910/5950
English 4910/5950
Class Description:
Welcome to Writing Flash Nonfiction! In this course, we will be looking at all aspects of short nonfiction, from process to craft to criticism, and is an advanced course in creative nonfiction. English 4910/5950 is a writing course, so I expect you to take your writing (and the writing of your peers) seriously. I expect you to be open to honest and critical discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of your work and that of your classmates. I expect you to be willing to experiment with your writing—get out of your comfort zone—and try out some of the ideas brought up in class. All writing is creative. But this is also a reading course—writers read. It’s how we learn. We will not only read various texts to demonstrate various concepts, we will read each others’ work with compassionate, critical eyes with a goal of helping each other improve our craft.
Our course will be delivered in a hybrid format, that is, with the virtual component occupying 30-79% of our time; 21% of our time in person. I have designed this class to be incredibly flexible, especially if we are required to go online on short notice. This semester is going to be a challenge for all of us and I will make every effort to communicate clearly with you. My overarching objective is for us to be as safe as possible and to end our semester in November having achieved our course goals.
Required Materials:
Welcome to Writing Flash Nonfiction! In this course, we will be looking at all aspects of short nonfiction, from process to craft to criticism, and is an advanced course in creative nonfiction. English 4910/5950 is a writing course, so I expect you to take your writing (and the writing of your peers) seriously. I expect you to be open to honest and critical discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of your work and that of your classmates. I expect you to be willing to experiment with your writing—get out of your comfort zone—and try out some of the ideas brought up in class. All writing is creative. But this is also a reading course—writers read. It’s how we learn. We will not only read various texts to demonstrate various concepts, we will read each others’ work with compassionate, critical eyes with a goal of helping each other improve our craft.
Our course will be delivered in a hybrid format, that is, with the virtual component occupying 30-79% of our time; 21% of our time in person. I have designed this class to be incredibly flexible, especially if we are required to go online on short notice. This semester is going to be a challenge for all of us and I will make every effort to communicate clearly with you. My overarching objective is for us to be as safe as possible and to end our semester in November having achieved our course goals.
Required Materials:
- Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction
- Dinty W. Moore, The Rose Metal Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction
Workshop Modes
The purpose of a workshop is to get a write from one draft to the next, nothing more. It is not the position of a workshop to produce publishable work. That may be the effect of where a writer is in their drafting process, but it is not the goal.
Click here for my workshop philosophy.
These workshops are designed for a 75 minute class. Everything is always a work in progress. References to shape are references to Jerome Stern's Making Shapely Fiction.
Click here for my workshop philosophy.
These workshops are designed for a 75 minute class. Everything is always a work in progress. References to shape are references to Jerome Stern's Making Shapely Fiction.
The Helium Workshop
The Lightning Workshop
The Shape Workshop
The Punctum & Studium Workshop
The Pivot Workshop
The Oscar Workshop
The Interview Workshop: Narrative
Hotspotting WOrkshop
Revision Stations Workshop: Quotidian Essay
Workshop Responses
I have been moving away from the Silent Author workshop model for some years now, but changing student feedback instincts has been more difficult. To that end, I have been putting together different workshop responses that are aimed to create opportunities for both the writer and their peers to ask deeper questions of the work in front of us.
Interview Workshop Responses
Priorities in Revision Responses
