The M.A. in Writing Program is introducing two new courses for the Spring 2010 term. The first, Science in Action, is designed for science-medical writers, nonfiction students, and any other student with an interest in experiencing the front lines of science. The second, Trends in Narrative Poetry, targets poetry and fiction students. The course descriptions are below. If you have questions, contact your concentration advisor. For detailed questions about the Science in Action course, email David Everett at deverett@jhu.edu. For questions about the poetry course, email Ed Perlman at edperlman@jhu.edu.
490.709.05 & .56 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 uses video conference technology or digital teaching tools to link to out-of-town labs or events, to discuss research with guest scientists, and to combine students from Washington and Baltimore. The Spring 2010 instructor for this course will be Melissa Hendricks, with assistance from other instructors. Students from either Washington and Baltimore may enroll, video technology will combine students from both campuses.
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. The Spring 2010 instructor for this course will be Elizabeth Cooper. Students from either Washington and Baltimore may enroll in this course, which will combine students from both campuses using video conferencing.
For more on program courses, see the writing program course descriptions.