art 960 writing for artists

ART 960a, Writing for Artists

This seminar is designed to help graduate students refine their writing skills and develop a greater understanding of how their use of language relates to their studio practice. In weekly workshops, students create and discuss their own writing in the form of statements, reviews, proposals, scripts, fiction, and autobiographical sketches. Limited class time is also dedicated to discussing published writings by established artists. Bring a short passage of art-writing you admire and another that you detest to the first class. Meets weekly for 3 credits.

ART 960b, Parallel Practices

his seminar is designed to help M.F.A. students refine their writing skills and develop a greater understanding of how the use of language relates to their studio practice and their development as professional artists. In this section of Parallel Practices, subtitled “Poetry as Seeing,” we will look at the poetry and prose of various poets — Elizabeth Bishop, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Edwin Denby, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, Jack Kerouac, and others — to find alternative ways of achieving precision in seeing via language, apart from those that can be gleaned from more theoretical or art historical texts. In weekly workshops, students create, distribute, read aloud, and discuss their own writing — either in the form of their own poetry or experimental prose or in responses to the readings. Limited enrollment; open to all M.F.A. students.