Inscribing the Body: Embodiment and the Performance of Gender in Creative Writing


Winter 2015 quarter

Taught by

creative writing, poetics, aesthetics, media/performing arts

In what ways is writing necessarily gendered? This class will take up "the body" as a site of radical cultural production as expansively as possible within the short time we have, considering some of the ways in which bodies are othered through language, including through discourses of disability, gender performance, and other zones of social dislocation. Each week we'll read texts by contemporary writers that we will use as models for build our own writing portfolios.

Though this is primarily a creative writing class, our writing will push itself outside its usual modes of operation. Emphasis will be put on experiments in breaking genre and mixing media, collaborating on pieces as well as making individual works, and developing a poetics in relation to the social-political. We will explore texts anthologized in the recent collection Troubling the Line , discuss and critique the rich tradition of "somatic" practices in the world of performance and live art, including the work of artists such as Marina Abramovic, and we will familiarize ourselves with important recent experiments in poetry and prose by authors such as kari edwards, Hannah Weiner, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and CA Conrad. Our end goal will be to curate a show and live reading that allows us to test out some of our textual experiments.

Fields of Study

Preparatory for studies or careers in

Writing, activism, education.

Location and Schedule

Campus location

Olympia

Schedule

Offered during: Evening and Weekend

Books

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Online Learning

Enhanced Online Learning

More information about online learning.

Registration Information

Credits: 4 (Winter)

Class standing: Freshmen–Senior; 25% of the seats are reserved for freshmen

Maximum enrollment: 25

Winter

Course Reference Number not yet available.

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