This advanced critical and creative reading and writing program is designed for students who want to take ten weeks to develop and deepen their theories and practices of literary study in relation to a dynamic constellation of contemporary writing. Some organizing questions for these ten weeks include: What is a text? What can we do with a text? What can a text do with us? How have these questions been asked and answered historically? What new questions should we ask --- and how might we try to answer them now?

We hypothesize that critical and creative reading and writing are mutually enabling processes. Our practice as writers will accordingly be sharpened through a practice of careful reading, and we will study an expansive range of genres, texts, styles, and modes --- from slogans and sonnets and sc-fi to novels and epics and law --- the better to enrich our repertoire of ways in the world of words. What key elements do these various forms involve? We will seek to determine this inductively as a means of theorizing our practice. All of which is to say that students can anticipate a challenging quantity of reading and writing.  

Each week will involve a mix of workshops, seminars, and lectures. Our proceedings will be punctuated by   intensive on-campus “residencies” that will allow students to develop and pursue their own specific reading and writing projects. We will participate in the Art Lecture Series and Anthropocene Lecture Series, and are looking forward to class visits and/or guest lectures by four contemporary writers: Donna Haraway, an interdisciplinary scholar of feminist studies and science and technology studies; Dean Spade, a law professor and founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project; Rob Halpern, a poet and critic (and Evergreen alum); and Amanda Davidson, who teaches at the Pratt Institute and writes experimental fiction.