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from the catalog :

Fiction Laboratory

Spring Quarter

Faculty: Steven Hendricks

Enrollment: 25

Class Standing: Sophomore and above

Prerequisites: Strong writing and reading skills

Faculty Signature: No

Special Expenses: Approximately $20 for photocopies

The vague label "experimental fiction" conceals a world of creative work and study that student writers are often advised to ignore and reject. In this program, we'll actively investigate the tradition of experimental literature by treating literary works--our own included--as creative experiments and research into the possibilities of language and narrative. The alphabet, the language, the myriad tropes and formulae for literary expression, and the archetypal patterns of narrative we will view as a vast table of elements that can be combined and synthesized into new substances: new genres, new prose forms, new syntax, new strategies for reading and making meaning, new reasons to write.

Our own creative work will provide a rigorous testing ground for ideas. Student writing will be examined by faculty and peers on a regular basis with half a mind toward developing a manuscript, the other half toward investigating the complex relationship between reader, text, and writer.

Program seminars will emphasize a lineage of exceptional exceptions: novels and short fiction of the last half century by writers who have taken careful stock of shifts in literary and cultural theory, who have learned their art in the ruptures between modernist, high modernist, and postmodernist criticism.

Students enrolled in the program should be prepared to read a range of challenging texts, to practice their art in the spirit of experimentation and play, to conduct independent research into complex questions relevant to program texts and themes, and to participate actively in program seminars, workshops, and critiques.

Total: 16 credits

Program is preparatory for further study in fiction writing, literature, and literary theory. Credit is awarded in fiction writing, literature, and literary theory.