SPRING 2025 ELECTIVES
WR-611-01 Multilingualisms: Translation
Prof. Silvina López Medin
Tuesdays, 11:00-1:50pm
The practice and theory of literary translation are subject to and addressed by diverse methods and ideologies, many of which have come to influence the work of contemporary writers both mono- and multi-lingual. In this theory/practice course, we will shift the focus from unidirectional translation—“source” language to “target” language—to the rich territories of multilingual texts that make visible their own translatory methods, and we will explore how many of these methods might influence and benefit our own writing practices.
Along the way we will be asking ourselves: What does it mean (in varying cultural and political contexts) to write multilingually? What special challenges are posed by the translation of multilingual texts? What possibilities do multilingual compositional methods offer to contemporary writers, regardless of linguistic knowledge and background? Compositional modes that involve multiple languages but do not necessarily result in multilingual texts (such as self-translation) will also be considered.
We will read and discuss works by writers who move in-between/across/through languages, such as: Susana Thénon, who incorporated English, Latin, and other languages in the poems she wrote in Spanish; Wilson Bueno, who wrote in Portunhol (a Spanish and Portuguese mix) and Guarani; Enriqueta Lunez, who writes both in Spanish and the Indigenous language Tsotsil, Miguelángel Meza who writes in Spanish and Guarani, Jennifer Tamayo, who interweaves English and Spanish, and Korean-American poet and translator Don Mee Choi. We will observe the formal elements of each writer’s work, and translate those aspects into our own pieces of creative writing, which we’ll discuss in a generative workshop context. Guest authors who are invested in multilingualism will visit the class.
Students do not need to speak a second language to enroll. This course welcomes people with any linguistic backgrounds with the desire to engage the course’s focus and goals. [And perhaps include the quote: As Edouard Glissant says “We write in the presence of all the world’s languages, even if we know none of them.” ]
FALL 2024 ELECTIVES
WR-610S-01 Special Topics in Writing: Autofiction
Prof. Claire Donato
Tuesdays, 4:00-6:50pm
Coined in 1977 by French writer Serge Doubrovsky, the term autofiction describes writing that combines the autobiographical and the fictional—or “Fiction, d’événements et de faits strictement reels; si l’on veut autofiction” (“Fiction, of strictly real events and facts; autofiction, if you like.”). The term burgeoned via Doubrovsky’s experiences in psychoanalysis, and from the existential suffering entwined with trying to explore and articulate the self.
Though the term originates in French letters, autofiction has, over the past decade, gained traction in the United States—think of Sheila Heti, Teju Cole, Ocean Vuong, and Ben Lerner. It is debated and discussed, celebrated and maligned as a mauvais genre (bad genre), and has provoked many questions about literary self-representation from the modern to the digital age. This course will focus on autofiction as it relates to its historical and global contexts, and to the present-day Publishing Industrial Complex. We will consider autofiction’s intersection with the rise of cringe culture, psychoanalysis, the Internet, ethics and more. Is autofiction a new genre, or is it simply an age-old process of trying to fictionalize—and liberate—the self?
WR610S-03: Animal Encounters: Writing with and About Our Nonhuman Kin
Prof. Megan Milks
Thursdays, 10:00am-12:50pm
What do our encounters with nonhuman animals – both real and imagined – open up for our writing? What does writing with and about animals open up for our understanding of the world? This course wants to know not just what animals may tell us about humanness — but what they may tell us beyond-human experience, while recognizing that (1) we, too, are animals and (2) all writing is mediated by the human. With this in mind, we’ll look at how writers and other artists have explored the lived experiences and inner lives of animals: including a famous polar bear, as imagined by Yoko Tawada; Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ sacred marine mammals; and, via Virginia Woolf, a beloved cocker spaniel named Flush. We will examine how philosophers and scholars such as Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, and Sunaura Taylor have theorized humanness and animality with and against each other—and in relation to social categories such as race, disability, and gender. Students can expect a significant reading load as well as substantial in-class and out-of-class writing, both critical and creative. Students will have the option to produce either several short projects or one longer project, which may be academic or creative in nature.
WR-593-01 Ecopoetics
Prof. Laura Elrick
Thursdays, 10:00am-12:50pm
Human language use is an inherently ecological practice in that it participates in forming the way we think, write, and act in regards to the world we share with other living things. As such, language can be used as a force for imagining and establishing new ways of living together, but it must also be scrutinized for the ways in which our past and presents linguistic concepts and strategies have contributed to a history of unsustainable attitudes and practices. In this course, we will read across a broad spectrum of poetry, philosophy, and history-as well as looking at a number of works in other media (film, video, image, and earthworks)-in order to contextualize contemporary ecolinguistic practices. We will also write: in the spirit of experiment and serious play, our poems and essays will test some of the ideas, concepts and orientations we discover along the way.