English 209 The Writer's Craft                                                                                      Root

Course Reference # 51210 MW 5:30-6:50 p.m.                    
Anspach 253 Office: Anspach 243 774-3103
Office Hours: MW 12:00-1:50 p.m. & By Appointment                          
E-mail: Robert.Root@cmich.edu

Course Description

The Writer's Craft is a course exploring the ways in which working writers create literary works, with a particular focus on the strategies and techniques of their craft and with particular attention to a specific genre or theme. This semester the course will investigate the use of nonfiction content in fiction and the use of fiction devices in nonfiction. Nonfiction is usually regarded as the literary genre of actual persons, real events, and reported narrative; fiction is usually regarded as the literary genre of invented characters, invented events, and imagined narrative. To highlight the way the "real world," "the historical" and "the social," ostensibly the subject matter of nonfiction, are used as the basis of fiction, we will read three novels which draw on historical characters, events, and locations: the historical novel Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow, the contemporary novel After Hannibal by Barry Unsworth, and the suspense novel Vaporetto 13 by Robert Giraldi. To highlight the way the devices of fiction, the establishment of character and the description of dramatic events, are used in nonfiction, we will read three nonfiction works: the memoir The Liar's Club by Mary Karr, the historical narrative The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, and the memoir of place The Meadow by James Galvin. To help us get at the meaning and method of the readings, students will be asked to keep a journal and come prepared to discuss assigned books in class, perhaps drawing on the material of journal entries if necessary. The journal entries will provide a place to record analytical and interpretive responses to the course texts. But students will also be asked to use the strategies they uncover in their reading in their own writing by producing two papers which will be workshopped in class.

The course, then, requires, in addition to reading six books and contributing to class discussion throughout the semester, the following graded assignments:

• A journal of at least twenty entries completed during the course in concert with assignments in reading and writing; additional self-generated entries may also be handed in with the twenty assigned entries, but no late journals will be accepted since the purpose of the journal is to write thorough and thoughtful entries in response to course assignments and should have been incrementally completed by the end of the semester;
• A creative paper in which students use historical characters or events as part of a fictional story or section of a longer work, to be workshopped in class and revised before handing in;
• A nonfiction paper in which students use fictional strategies and techniques to report on historical or contemporary figures and/or events, to be workshopped in class and revised before handing in; and,
• A final examination in which students draw upon their experience as readers and writers and journalkeepers to respond to issues involving the use of fiction in nonfiction and the use of nonfiction in fiction.

Excessive non-attendance will be grounds for refusing to accept student work and for receiving a failing or deficient grade in the course.

Please Note: The course information will be posted and updated on the Internet throughout the semester. The address is: http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/Robert_Root/Eng209/Course.htm.

• Doctorow, E. L. Ragtime (Plume)

• Galvin, James. The Meadow (Henry Holt)

• Giraldi, Robert. Vaporetto 13 (Bantam)

• Karr, Mary. The Liar's Club (Penguin)

• Unsworth, Barry. After Hannibal (Norton)

• Winchester, Simon. The Professor and the Madman (Harper)

Link to Journal Entries
Link to Fiction Assignment
Link to Nonfiction Assignment
Link to Impromptus
Link to Course Outline
Link to Personal Home Page