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Course Descriptions
Core Courses
490.652 – Contemporary American Writers
This course surveys issues and trends in recent fiction and poetry, with emphasis on the diverse work and methods of American writers publishing today. Students read and discuss contemporary writing and hear lectures from Writing Seminars faculty or other accomplished writers. This core course is required for all fiction and poetry students and usually must be taken before fiction students enroll in a workshop.
490.653 – Contemporary Nonfiction
This course provides an overview of current nonfiction forms. Students analyze the work of modern authors whose writing encompasses feature article, essay, review, commentary, travel, memoir, humor, science-medical writing, or other forms. Students gain practical experience by writing short articles and essays in the various forms. Lectures and reading help students appreciate contemporary writing, the history of nonfiction, professional ethics, and the writing workshop process. This core course is required for all degree candidates in nonfiction and science-medical writing and must be taken before enrolling in any workshop. Nonfiction and science-medical writing students are encouraged to take 490.656 Nonfiction Techniques before enrolling in this course.
490.654 – Fiction Techniques
Students examine the technical elements of fiction, including point of view, plot, character development, and the form of short stories and the novel. The course also introduces students to the writing process, the techniques of reading as a writer, and the workshop process. Readings usually include short stories, one or more novels, and books or articles on craft. Writing assignments may involve exercises, response writings, and one complete piece, either an original short story or novel chapter. Revisions also may be required. This core course is required for all incoming fiction students as a prerequisite to any workshop. Others may take it as an elective, as space allows.
490.655 – Poetry Techniques
This course offers an introduction to prosody and the technical elements of poetry with an emphasis on structural principles, metrical and syntactical rhythm, sound and rhyme, formal and stanzaic organization, and the use of figurative language. Students read and write poems exploring lyrical, narrative, and dramatic subjects. Writing assignments include exercises, imitations, responses, and original work. Students develop critical reading skills and familiarity with the workshop process. This core course is required for all incoming poetry students, although some students may receive Techniques credit for completing 490.741 Advanced Poetry Form and Meter instead. Students outside poetry should consider this course if they want to learn more about poetry.
490.656 – Nonfiction Techniques
The intensive reading and writing exercises of this course help students gather information and transform it into clear, creative prose. Reporting techniques include interviewing, personal observation, and examining documents. Writing techniques include quotation, detail, word choice, organization, transition, and attribution. This core course is required for all incoming nonfiction and science-medical writing students prior to enrolling in a workshop. Students are encouraged to take this course before enrolling in 490.653 Contemporary Nonfiction. Students in fiction or poetry may consider this course as an elective.
490.658 – Techniques of Science-Medical Writing
This new foundation course develops and hones the reporting, creative, and explanatory skills demonstrated by the best science-medical writing. In addition to writing assignments and exercises in journalistic and literary writing, students will complete field trips and other real-world experiences. The course covers interviewing, ethics, and the use of scientific journals and databases. In some cases, students may be able to choose from a range of writing topics, including nature, technology, health, space, biology, medicine, or other technical or scientific issue. Science-Medical Writing students should complete this course before enrolling in a writing workshop. Enrollment is encouraged by other students interested in this growing professional and creative field.
490.703 – Principles of Journalism
(Also listed as optional core course in Nonfiction and Science-Medical Writing)Many of today's finest creative writers have backgrounds in journalism, with its emphasis on research, accuracy, clarity, and public responsibility. This craft course features intensive study and exercises in these and other elements, including news writing, interviewing, objectivity, deadlines, and competition. Students in nonfiction and science-medical writing without a background in journalism are urged to consider this course as an additional foundation for their broader creative writing goals. The course includes frequent writing assignments, lectures from practitioners, and exercises in-class and off-site, with analysis of newspapers, newsmagazines, news broadcasts, and online reports. Some nonfiction and science-medical writing applicants or degree students may be urged to take this course to improve their writing samples or to help prepare for core courses or writing workshops. Fiction writers and poets may consider this elective with an adviser's permission.
Workshops
490.660 – Fiction Workshop
Fiction workshops concentrate on intensive writing and revision, with some required reading. As members of a general workshop, students submit short stories to their instructor and to their peers for regular critiques. Typically, two or three stories are written during a semester; revisions are required. Workshop participants also must submit detailed critiques of their fellow students' writing. In most cases, students need to submit short stories in at least one general workshop before progressing to novel chapters in a later course.
490.661 – Fiction Workshop
Fiction workshops concentrate on intensive writing and revision, with some required reading. As members of a general workshop, students submit short stories to their instructor and to their peers for regular critiques. Typically, two or three stories are written during a semester; revisions are required. Workshop participants also must submit detailed critiques of their fellow students' writing. In most cases, students need to submit short stories in at least one general workshop before progressing to novel chapters in a later course.
490.662 – Fiction Workshop
Fiction workshops concentrate on intensive writing and revision, with some required reading. As members of a general workshop, students submit short stories to their instructor and to their peers for regular critiques. Typically, two or three stories are written during a semester; revisions are required. Workshop participants also must submit detailed critiques of their fellow students' writing. In most cases, students need to submit short stories in at least one general workshop before progressing to novel chapters in a later course.
490.663 – Poetry Workshop
These general workshops provide an intensive writing experience in conjunction with appropriate reading. As members of a seminar, students submit poems to their instructor and to their peers for weekly critique sessions. Students are expected to spend their time generating new poems and revising others.
490.664 – Poetry Workshop
These general workshops provide an intensive writing experience in conjunction with appropriate reading. As members of a seminar, students submit poems to their instructor and to their peers for weekly critique sessions. Students are expected to spend their time generating new poems and revising others.
490.665 – Poetry Workshop
These general workshops provide an intensive writing experience in conjunction with appropriate reading. As members of a seminar, students submit poems to their instructor and to their peers for weekly critique sessions. Students are expected to spend their time generating new poems and revising others.
490.669 – Combined Workshop in Nonfiction and Science-Medical Writing
This course allows students in nonfiction and science-medical writing to earn a workshop credit in the same class. Students in both concentrations are urged to enroll. With the instructor's permission, students in one concentration may submit writing in the other concentration. For more information about the type of writing required for this course, see the descriptions for 490.670 Nonfiction Workshop and 490.673 Science-Medical Writing Workshop below.
490.670 – Nonfiction Workshop
These general workshops give students extensive experience in writing and revising their nonfiction work, regardless of topic or form. Submissions are critiqued by peers as well as by the instructor. Students typically submit two to four essays, articles, or book chapters; revisions are required. Reading and writing exercises also may be required.
490.671 – Nonfiction Workshop
These general workshops give students extensive experience in writing and revising their nonfiction work, regardless of topic or form. Submissions are critiqued by peers as well as by the instructor. Students typically submit two to four essays, articles, or book chapters; revisions are required. Reading and writing exercises also may be required.
490.672 – Nonfiction Workshop
These general workshops give students extensive experience in writing and revising their nonfiction work, regardless of topic or form. Submissions are critiqued by peers as well as by the instructor. Students typically submit two to four essays, articles, or book chapters; revisions are required. Reading and writing exercises also may be required.
490.673 – Science-Medical Writing Workshop
In these general workshops, students receive professional guidance in translating complex scientific or medical knowledge and research into graceful, lucid prose. Directed to the general reader, science writing emphasizes clear, accurate writing about a broad range of scientific or technical subjects. Students may submit individual essays or articles, or parts of a larger work in progress. Writing submissions are critiqued by peers as well as by the instructor. To offer diverse writing opportunities, science-medical writing workshops may be combined with nonfiction workshops; see 490.669 above. This course also counts toward the workshop requirements for nonfiction students.
490.674 – Science-Medical Writing Workshop
In these general workshops, students receive professional guidance in translating complex scientific or medical knowledge and research into graceful, lucid prose. Directed to the general reader, science writing emphasizes clear, accurate writing about a broad range of scientific or technical subjects. Students may submit individual essays or articles, or parts of a larger work in progress. Writing submissions are critiqued by peers as well as by the instructor. To offer diverse writing opportunities, science-medical writing workshops may be combined with nonfiction workshops; see 490.669 above. This course also counts toward the workshop requirements for nonfiction students.
490.675 – Science-Medical Writing Workshop
In these general workshops, students receive professional guidance in translating complex scientific or medical knowledge and research into graceful, lucid prose. Directed to the general reader, science writing emphasizes clear, accurate writing about a broad range of scientific or technical subjects. Students may submit individual essays or articles, or parts of a larger work in progress. Writing submissions are critiqued by peers as well as by the instructor. To offer diverse writing opportunities, science-medical writing workshops may be combined with nonfiction workshops; see 490.669 above. This course also counts toward the workshop requirements for nonfiction students.
490.679 – Experimental Fiction Workshop
This specialized workshop introduces students to innovative forms by comparing and analyzing two directions for American fiction in recent decades—traditional and experimental. Assignments challenge students to experiment with styles that differ from their previous work; extensive reading assignments come from the latest collections. The course follows a format similar to that of 490.660 Fiction Workshop above. The course is open to fiction students who have completed or waived the fiction core courses.
490.682 – Writing The Novel Workshop
This specialized workshop is designed for students who are writing a novel. Students must submit a total of 40-75 pages of a novel in progress, plus a synopsis. Revisions also may be required. Included are readings and discussions on the particular demands of longer fiction.
490.690 – Literary Travel Writing Workshop
The best travel writers weave a rich "sense of place"—an attribute also crucial to literary fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction. The telling detail, apt metaphor, historical reference, cultural connection, and vivid character sketch, coupled with reflections that link these observations to broader themes, can elevate travel writing beyond the guidebook. In this specialized workshop, students complete exercises, hear guest speakers, and analyze the works of acclaimed writers such as Jan Morris, Barry Lopez, Ian Frazier, and Jonathan Raban. Students may visit an assigned nearby location to prepare writing. This workshop is intended for nonfiction and science-medical writing students and counts as a writing workshop. (Enrollees must have completed or waived nonfiction core courses.) Students in fiction or poetry may enroll with the permission of the associate program chair.
490.692 – Profile & Biography Workshop
Articles or books about people are a central component of contemporary nonfiction and science-medical writing. In this specialized workshop, students examine methods used in profile articles, biographies, and, to a lesser extent, fictionalized biographical accounts. Students usually write two or three profiles or biography chapters in this course, plus revisions. This course is open to nonfiction and science-medical writing students who have completed or waived both core courses in their concentrations.
490.693 – Writing Memoir & Personal Essay Workshop
Writers have long enjoyed a major impact on contemporary thought by producing compelling essays about personal experiences, feelings, or ideas. In this specialized workshop, students experiment with memoir and the personal essay as distinct forms and as an exploration of the self. Seminal essays are read to clarify students' thoughts and to help them develop their own voice and style in personal nonfiction. This course is open to nonfiction and science-medical writing students who have completed or waived both core courses in their concentrations.
490.695 – Viewpoint Journalism Workshop
This specialized workshop in nonfiction and science-medical writing combines extensive reading and writing in the area of opinion. Students explore the conventions governing effective editorials, personal columns, first-person writing, and other kinds of commentary. Specialists from different areas discuss their craft in guest lectures. This workshop is open to students who have completed or waived the nonfiction and science-medical writing core courses.
490.698 – Writing the Review Workshop
This specialized workshop focuses on writing reviews. Students learn that reviews and criticism require special writing skills and detailed knowledge. Students read and write reviews of various entertainment and art, including books, films, plays, television, and music. Students might be asked to attend films, concerts, and plays, or to critique certain books and recordings. This course is not focused on literary criticism. It is designed for nonfiction and science-medical writing students who have completed or waived core requirements; fiction or poetry students may enroll with the permission of the associate program chair.
490.701 – Advanced Workshop
An advanced workshop is offered occasionally to select students, depending on enrollment and available faculty. The course may focus on a special form or topic, or it may be led by a visiting writer, special instructor, or other experienced faculty member. The concentration in which this course is offered varies. In most cases, enrollment will be competitive, and new writing samples may be required. This workshop counts as one of the three required for the degree. Interested students should discuss this course with their adviser or the associate program chair. Application information and other details for each Advanced Workshop will be presented in the appropriate term's Course Schedule.
Elective Courses
490.676 – Sentence Power: From Craft to Art
This craft elective is open to students of all concentrations. Through close reading and brief exercises, students learn various techniques to assemble sentences and establish syntactic relationships within paragraphs. Students imitate other writers, as well as revise, exchange, and discuss paragraphs or stanzas from their own work. Authors to be studied may include Updike, Munro, and Welty in fiction; Dillard, Maclean, and Mitchell in nonfiction; Brodsky, Hecht, and Bishop in poetry; and Thomas, McPhee, and Quammen in science and nature.
490.677 – Shakespeare: Art & Audience
This reading elective is designed primarily for fiction and poetry students, although any student may enroll with an adviser's permission. The course focuses on Shakespeare's ability to create art of the highest quality while remaining entertaining to large audiences—a goal that has proved elusive to many of today's writers. Students analyze how Shakespeare created dramatic and poetic traditions and was instrumental in shaping current prose fiction. The course involves reading, discussing, and possibly attending plays, as well as critical and creative writing options.
490.678 – Novel Form, Style, & Structure
This craft elective is meant primarily for fiction writers, especially those writing or wishing to write a novel. Others, however, might find it of interest. The course focuses on a writer's analysis of novels, expanding the study of fiction into techniques and issues relating to the longer form. Topics include structure, character arcs, style, consistency of voice, techniques of backstory, and plot management. Writing assignments are minimal in this course, but extensive reading and class participation are required. Readings usually include a number of novels, plus books or essays on novel craft.
490.680 – 20th Century World Literature
In this reading course, stories or novels from such authors as Kafka, Beckett, Waugh, Marquez, Malamud, Coetzee, and Tanizaki are used to explain how different cultures may have different literary traditions but how the mechanisms of good writing are universal. Students demonstrate their understanding of one or more pieces of the literature by an oral presentation as well as by a written story, essay, or paper.
490.681 – Devel of Poetry & Poetics I / 20th Century
This reading/craft analysis course focuses on 20th-century American poetry, primarily from the Modernists through the post—World War II era. Students may choose either creative or critical writing assignments inspired by or based on the writers studied.This course is designed to pair with 490.685 Development of Poetry and Poetics II, which covers poetry before the 20th century. Students wishing to take both do not have to take them in any order. Other students may consider either poetics course as an elective.
490.683 – Voice in Modern Fiction
In this craft elective, students examine aspects of voice in contemporary novels and short stories, considering how style, point of view, tone, structure, and culture all contribute to an author's or narrator's individual voice. In recognizing how authors use these elements, students use exercises to strengthen their own fictional voices. Readings include novels, short stories, and articles on craft. Class assignments may include response writings and original fiction as well as oral presentations.
490.684 – Heritage of Fiction I & II (Pre-20th Cent & 20th Cent)
This reading course examines the historical development of fiction craft, emphasizing the interrelationship of social and cultural development with the maturation of writing. Students learn to appreciate how contemporary authors have roots in the fiction of the past, and how they themselves might be inspired by those who came before them. The course requires extensive reading as well as creative and critical writing. Section I examines fiction before the 20th century; Section II examines the 20th century. Either section may be taken, and neither has to be taken in order.
490.686 – Identity in Contemporary Writing
This cross-concentration elective explores how personal identity is transformed into fiction, poetry, and essays. Writers studied include those whose race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability figure prominently in their work, as well as writers who ignore or dismiss such categorization. Students write short responses and an essay for discussion by the class. This course should be of interest to students of any concentration.
490.687 – The Short Story: Past & Present
This fiction reading elective begins with a brief review of the history and development of short fiction, moving to analysis of contemporary forms, trends, and practitioners. Featured authors may include Chekhov, Carver, Paley, Barthelme, Munro, and Dixon . The course focuses on intense reading, analysis, and discussion more than writing assignments. Students also may be asked to make class presentations and to review a range of literary journals.
490.688 – The Evolution of Fictional Forms
This course will examine the formative genres of fiction. Students will read examples of romance, confession, anatomy, and novel and consider contemporary fiction in terms of these historical trends. The readings will range from ancient Egyptian tales and Greek romances to typically misplaced 19th century works such as Flaubert's
The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller and Robert Louis Stevenson's
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Also included in the reading will be Colette, Camus, Julian Barnes, Stephen Dixon, and Lucy Ellmann. Students will respond to the readings with fictional pastiches reflecting the forms under study, culminating in a final hybridized project. This course counts as an elective for fiction students and others.
490.689 – Masters of Nonfiction
This reading elective allows students to analyze and discuss contemporary nonfiction and science-medical writing without the additional requirement of extensive writing assignments. While students write brief reviews and make a class presentation, the course largely involves reading and discussing such masters of the genre as McPhee, Wolfe, Didion, Talese, Kidder, and others. Extensive reading is required, and students should be prepared for significant class participation. This course is designed primarily for students in nonfiction and science-medical writing; fiction writers and poets also may find it of interest.
490.691 – Science Policy & Politics
This course explores how science, medicine, and technology can be affected by politics and practices within government, the private sector, and within the fields themselves. Students use the evolution of science policy as context for discussion, research, and writing about contemporary issues. Students in science-medical writing are encouraged to take this course, which requires class presentations and an essay on science policy and politics.
490.696 – The Nature of Nature
This reading course focuses on Mother Nature, human nature, and the nature of the beast. The course is recommended for science-medical and nonfiction writers, although others may find it of interest. Students analyze books, essays, and articles from writers who tell gripping, true stories about topics ranging from outdoor adventure to personal reflections on illness. Readings include authors such as Richard Selzer, Diane Ackerman, E.O. Wilson, Amy Bloom, Reynolds Price, and John McPhee.
490.697 – The Literature of Science
In this reading elective, science-medical and nonfiction students analyze current and classic books, magazine articles, and other work to discover how the best science, medical, nature, technology, and environmental writers create compelling, entertaining, factual literature. Topics include structure, pace, sources, content, and using clear, creative language to explain complex subjects and create lyrical prose. Typical assignments involve brief reviews and a team presentation of one of the course texts, which include such writers as Erik Larson, Atul Gawande, Rachel Carson, John McPhee, James Gleick, Lewis Thomas, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Jonathan Weiner. This course is open to students from all concentrations, and nonfiction students will find it of special interest.
490.699 – Magazine Style & Substance
This reading and craft elective course is designed for nonfiction and science-medical writers. To improve as writers and learn about markets, students read, study, and discuss a range of contemporary mass-market magazines and magazine writing. Students write brief reports and deliver presentations, although the course involves a minimum of writing and a maximum of reading. Students focus on magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Discover, Harper's, The New Yorker, Outside, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Salon.com, and Wired, as well as less-prominent publications. This course generally does not cover literary journals.
490.702 – International Nonfiction
This reading elective, designed primarily for nonfiction and science-medical writers, focuses on an array of prize-winning authors from around the world. Through reading and discussion of such writers as Naipaul, Rushdie, Kapuscinski, Levi, Mehta, and Soyinka, students will discover new perspectives, subjects, voices, and writing techniques that may be used to enrich their own writing. Students spend most of their time analyzing and presenting nonfiction books, memoirs, and essays, with the additional requirement of a final review, paper, essay, memoir, or piece of literary journalism.
490.703 – Principles of Journalism
(Also listed as optional core course in Nonfiction and Science-Medical Writing)Many of today's finest creative writers have backgrounds in journalism, with its emphasis on research, accuracy, clarity, and public responsibility. This craft course features intensive study and exercises in these and other elements, including news writing, interviewing, objectivity, deadlines, and competition. Students in nonfiction and science-medical writing without a background in journalism are urged to consider this course as an additional foundation for their broader creative writing goals. The course includes frequent writing assignments, lectures from practitioners, and exercises in-class and off-site, with analysis of newspapers, newsmagazines, news broadcasts, and online reports. Some nonfiction and science-medical writing applicants or degree students may be urged to take this course to improve their writing samples or to help prepare for core courses or writing workshops. Fiction writers and poets may consider this elective with an adviser's permission.
490.704 – Readings in Essay & Memoir
This reading course focuses on essay and memoir both short and long, with the goal of deeper understanding of these popular writing forms. The course is designed for nonfiction and science-medical writing students; others may consider it with an adviser's permission. Only minor writing assignments or exercises are included. Students interested in workshop-style writing of essays and memoir should consider 490.693 Writing the Memoir and Personal Essay or regular nonfiction workshops.
490.705 – Crafting Nonfiction Voice
This craft elective should be of interest primarily to nonfiction and science-medical writers. Through reading and writing exercises, students become familiar with the techniques of re-creating voices of others and of shaping a writing voice of their own. The skill to represent a person's character, mind, and feelings also is essential to ghostwriters, speechwriters, writing collaborators, feature writers, and novelists. This course focuses on the tools such writers use to craft a voice.
490.708 – Medicine in Action: Advanced Medical Writing
This exciting new course allows students to experience the world of medicine through the real-life experiences of doctors, nurses, and other practitioners at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Students will observe doctors at work in the hospital and in the Outpatient Center. Doctors will meet with students weekly to explore the complexities and uncertainties of patient care and the impact of health insurance, rising costs, and societal problems. Student experiences include spending a shift with a doctor at the hospital. Writing assignments will include a narrative essay or feature to be discussed in class; this course counts as either an elective or writing workshop. Writing Program alumni interested in health, medicine, or hospitals are invited to enroll. For more information about this course and about how alumni can enroll for half-price under the
Alumni Tuition Benefit.
490.709 – Science in Action
This new course takes students to the front lines of science, labs, and current research, with a focus on developing writing ideas, reporting skills, and the craft of explanatory writing. Depending on individual student interest, this course is designed as a companion or alternative to our Medicine in Action course at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Science in Action focuses on fields beyond medicine and health, including space, environment, energy, climate change, and other topics. While this course will meet in regular classrooms for much of the term, the course also involves four to six field trips during or outside regular class time and sometimes beyond the student's home campus – including the student’s choice of one of two available Saturday field trips. To help students plan, tentative dates for these trips will be announced weeks in advance, before the course begins. This course also uses video conference technology or digital teaching tools to link to out-of-town labs or events, to discuss research with guest scientists, or to combine students from Washington and Baltimore.
490.711 – Masterworks: Examining the Boundaries
This cross-concentration reading course, designed for students of any concentration, focuses on a writer's analysis of masterworks in fiction, nonfiction, and science-medical writing. The course involves extensive reading and discussion to study matters of technique and to investigate the changing boundaries among the genres.
490.712 – Teaching Writing: Theory, Practice & Craft
This new elective course, for students in all concentrations who now teach writing or wish to, combines practical aspects such as creating a syllabus and responding to student writing, with a discussion of the use of technology, the role of teacher as expert or facilitator, and the philosophical consideration of what matters most to you as a teacher. While teaching at different venues will be covered, the focus is the college level. Students will design two courses, one on teaching a specific concentration (fiction, poetry, nonfiction, etc.) and a second on composition or literature. The course concludes with each student teaching part of a class.
490.714 – Essence of Place: Description, Detail and Setting
This new craft elective course, designed for students from any program concentration, focuses on a wide range of writing techniques that add richness, context, and depth, including description, detail, setting, observation, metaphor and simile, allusion, contrast, and background research. Students will read and analyze travel, short fiction, memoir, science, novels, nature, poetry, creative nonfiction, and other forms. Technique will be developed through reading, analyses, and writing exercises; this is not a workshop. This course counts as an elective in nonfiction, fiction, science-medical writing, or poetry.
490.721 – Drama & Playwriting
This fiction craft elective involves intensive writing and reading to introduce students to basic elements of drama studies and playwriting. Playwriting, with its heritage of portraying events through conflict, remains one of our most active literary forms. Students write part or all of a short play for class critique and may be asked to attend one or more local productions. The course is designed primarily for fiction students who have completed Fiction Techniques. Fiction students who have not completed those courses or other students interested in this course must have the fiction adviser's permission to enroll. Enrollees should recognize the extensive creative writing challenges of this course if they decide to pair it with a workshop.
490.731 – Film & Screenwriting
Film is a central artistic medium of our age. In this intensive writing course, students are introduced to the basics of film studies and screenwriting by reading scripts, examining films from a writer's perspective, and writing one or more short screenplays. Topics include dialogue, characterization, plot, subtext, and visual storytelling. The craft elective is designed primarily for fiction students who have completed Fiction Techniques. Fiction students who have not completed those courses or other students interested in this course must have the fiction adviser's permission to enroll. Enrollees should recognize the extensive creative writing challenges of this course if they decide to pair it with a workshop.
490.741 – Advanced Poetry Form & Meter
(formerly Poetry Form and Techniques)This course has been revised to offer an intense investigation of meter and form. Students read, write, and critique blank verse, ballad stanzas, sonnets, villanelles, and other forms, and investigate the ways in which contemporary poets work within the critical and historical traditions of formal verse. With their adviser's permission, poetry students may receive Poetry Techniques core course credit for this course.
490.742 – Readings in Poetry
This reading elective invites students to read closely and discuss the work of recent English-language poets and others who will be experienced in translation. The class will focus on extensive reading, analysis, and discussion, with occasional opportunities to write. Poets and prose writers are equally welcome to enroll.
490.743 – Trends in Narrative Poetry
For much of the past century, lyric poetic forms were favored so much that the reading public almost forgot narrative poems existed. But a close look at poetry from Frost, Robinson, and Jeffers reveals the beginnings of modernist narrative that survives richly into the 21st Century. From older poems like Frost's "Maple" or Warren's "Audubon," to today's longer works such as Bricuth's "Just Let Me Say This About That" or Leithauser's "Darlington's Fall," readers frequently find a symbiotic combination of lyric and narrative elements so closely enjoined it is impossible to tease them apart. In this new reading course, poetry and fiction students focus on a broad selection of styles, forms, and subjects to explore narrative arc, character and scene development, dialogue, imagery, metaphor, and other elements. Poets will compose shorter narrative poems, and fiction writers will practice tight, intense narrative using poetic devices.
Thesis
490.801 – Thesis & Publication
This final course involves the submission and revision of a thesis, final program discussions about the writing process, a public reading by thesis students, and the publication of a class journal project. A creative writing thesis must be of considerable ambition and length—portions of a novel or a nonfiction or science-medical book, or a collection of poems, short stories, essays, or articles. Thesis students should select their best, most-revised work from previous program courses; not all program writing will become part of a student's thesis. Collections may be of unrelated subject matter and forms within a student's concentration, or they may have a common theme, topic, or form. Students taking this course are required to submit 1) a thesis planning form, at least a month before the term begins (to obtain a copy of the form, link online to
http://advanced.jhu.edu/academic/writing/ThesisPlanningForm.html, and 2) a full thesis draft by the second week of the semester; the author spends the term revising the thesis under the supervision of an assigned adviser. This course is required for all degree candidates and is offered only in the fall and spring terms. To provide extensive time for revision with advisors, thesis students meet as a class only for certain weeks during the term.
Please note that students who do not finish their thesis during the original term in which they enroll must register for Thesis Continuation 490.888 and pay a significant fee for each subsequent term until a final grade has been submitted.
490.888 – Thesis Continuation
This course is only for thesis students who completed 490.801 Thesis & Publication but failed to finish an approved thesis and were not approved for an Incomplete. If both conditions are met, students must register for this course for every term following Thesis & Publication until the program approves a final thesis. Individual meeting times and days will be arranged. For more information, consult your advisor. This course requires the payment of a significant fee for every term until a thesis is approved.
Non-Graduate Courses
490.010 – Graduate Writing Techniques
This non-credit course is designed for students in the Advanced Academic Programs or others who want to improve their general academic and workplace writing skills. The 20-hour course focuses on techniques that can be applied to classroom papers, reports, and theses, or to workplace projects and documents. The course features exercises in structure, language, usage, and form. Students critique each other's work in a writing workshop, and some students may be able to submit writing from courses in other programs. This course is not a creative writing workshop and is not designed for students who need help with English as a second language.
This course is designed primarily for students from outside the M.A. in Writing Program. At publication time for this directory, the program was considering changes to or the possible elimination of this course.
490.301 – Creative Writing
This introductory course is designed for fiction students who want to develop basic familiarity in the elements of the craft. Some students in this course explore their abilities in fiction writing but will not pursue a degree at this time; others want to determine whether a graduate program is an appropriate goal; others need to develop fiction samples for application as a degree candidate. Some applicants to the degree program might be asked to enroll in this course. Students write fiction of various lengths and styles, critique their colleagues' work, and read extensively in their areas of interest. This course does not cover poetry, nonfiction, or science-medical writing. This course is offered only during select semesters and only with sufficient enrollment. At publication time for this directory, the program was considering changes to or the possible elimination of this course.