Course overview
Experimental and avant-garde writing has long been a driver of more mainstream literary innovation. This course will introduce students to an array of experimental techniques, including approaches that have been central to Surrealism, Modernism, and OULIPO. Together we will engage with examples of pathbreaking experimental works, including some of the most breathtakingly audacious writing being published today. Working with found texts, collage, cut-ups, manifestos, game forms, the intersection of text and image, and digital technologies including AI, students will produce a portfolio of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, screenwriting, or multiple forms. To produce their portfolios, students will make use of established techniques, as well as devising their own methods of formal constraint and literary innovation. They will be encouraged to approach the refinement of their practice and poetics as both a literary craft and an art pursued for its own ends that may stand liberated from the demands of the market.
Course learning outcomes
- Confidently interpret and respond to a range of experimental and especially poetic literary texts
- Begin to demonstrate the ability to frame experimental writing projects, produce plans for their research and execution, and fulfil these to deadlines;
- Engage rigorously and self-reflexively with selected experimental texts and the global and historical contexts of their production
- Write and revise experimental texts that demonstrate high levels of aesthetic innovation and sophistication and which approach genre as a labile space of transformation
- Critically evaluate their own and others' creative work, both orally and in writing
- Engage seriously, sensitively, and respectfully with their peers, both in person and online, to provide substantive and productive feedback on creative work.