Learn to make facts dance. By employing the imagery of a poet, the drama of a novelist, and the content drive of a journalist, we will craft vivid and compelling and maybe even publishable narratives based on your life and the lives of others. We will study and write both longform and flash, as well as digital and oral forms of CNF. For inspiration, we will read the masters such as Nikesh Shukla, Rebecca Skloot, Jerald Walker, Leslie Jamison, Joe Wilkins, and Jesmyn Ward.  In this class you will hone your storytelling skills, which transfer well to other forms of creative and academic writing, as well as career pursuits. Prerequisite: English 501, 621, 526, 527 or permission of the instructor. 

In fall 2022 this course may be taken to satisfy the Race Requirement for English department majors. 

ENGL 650R satisfies a Post-1800 Literature requirement for English department majors. 

In this course students will explore the field of Latinx literature and culture in order to develop the ability to speak and think critically about race relations in the USA. Course readings, video, podcasts, & social media will be drawn from texts produced primarily in English by individuals of Latin American descent often with words, phrases, and/or paragraphs in Spanish. Our work will highlight the topic of Latinx immigration and past and present testimonios, a Latinx literary genre that we will compare to memoir, journalism, spoken word and other genres and modes of expression. The materials covered may ask us to consider the intersectionality of race with gender, sexual orientation, economic class and religion. Over the semester we will discuss how methodology and phenomena like third wave feminism, queer theory, and migration resist entrenched power structures and discourse. This course is discussion- and writing-intensive and cross-lists with Women’s and Gender Studies and Latin American Studies. In terms of the work students will do, we will address such questions as: What does quality research and source evaluation look like? What does excellent participation entail? What do reading discernment, inquiry,  nuance, process and multi-step problem solving, creative thinking through iterating alternatives, acknowledging difficulty and unframed assignments, and evidence have to do with good writing and expression?