Creative Writing, BA

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The English Department offers two concentrations in Creative Writing: Poetry and Non-Fiction.

Creative Writing: Poetry Major

The English Department’s major in Poetry helps students discover their own voices as poets and acquire the knowledge and craft necessary to write and publish poetry of power and sophistication. Graduates of the program are familiar with a wide range of models and formal strategies, as well as the history of poetry. Students acquire the skills in editing, critical writing, and professional writing necessary to find employment upon graduation. They also are prepared for entry into distinguished MFA programs such as those at Brown University, Bard College, and the University of Iowa.

The gateway courses in the major are Poetry Workshop: Beginning (52-1500 ) and Introduction to Poetry (52-1602 ). From there, students are poised to begin a sequence of poetry workshop classes, including the required two intermediate and two advanced workshops, and to begin their three-course poetry literature requirements. Poetry literature requirements are organized according to literary periods to give students a broad range in the study of history and aesthetics: students take one course in the contemporary era, one in the modernist era, and one in pre-20^th-century poetry. In addition to required poetry literature courses, students take two courses in any of the literature electives offered in the English Department. While both writing poetry and writing about literature, students build toward the required Poetics course (52-3510 ), which combine the writing of poetry with the study of theory and poetics, and the Thesis Development Seminar (52-3520 ), their capstone experience in Poetry, in which students produce a chapbook-length thesis of poems. To practice moving from the compressed form of poetry to longer prose forms, students also are required to take Creative Nonfiction Workshop Beginning (52-1900 ). As part of the English Department’s commitment to interdisciplinary writing in the major, students also take two interdisciplinary writing electives. These electives can include courses such as Reviewing the Arts (52-2816 ), Writing for Comedy (52-2814 ), Poetry Workshop: Performance (52-2510 ), Literary Magazine Editing: Columbia Poetry Review (52-4502 ), Literary Magazine Production: Columbia Poetry Review (52-4503 ), or our rotating Forms of Poetry (52-4530) and Craft Seminar (52-4531 ) courses. Examples of Forms of Poetry courses include Forms of Poetry: Multicultural Forms and Forms of Poetry: Metric, Stanzaic, Folk, and Experimental Traditions. Examples of Craft Seminar courses include Craft Seminar: Poetry Translation and Craft Seminar: Literary Collage and Collaboration.

Creative Writing: Nonfiction Major

The English Department’s major in Creative Writing: Nonfiction introduces students to a variety of forms in nonfiction and helps them explore the history of the genre and find a way of creating nonfiction that is individual and original. By graduation students will have a clear sense of how open creative nonfiction is to new modes of expression and will be well-versed in some major aspects of the history of its genres, such as the essay, memoir, autobiography, and diary. Students will also acquire the writing and editing skills that will help them to find employment when they graduate or to enter graduate programs in nonfiction at schools such as Iowa, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, or George Mason universities.

The foundation of the concentration are the Workshops in Creative Nonfiction: Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced. Students will also take courses focused on reading various genres of creative nonfiction and major nonfiction authors. Other classes will combine craft with readings in the theoretical underpinnings of nonfiction and will introduce students to a wide variety of forms such as autobiography, essay, the graphic comics, memoir, aphorism, travel writing, etc. To broaden their writing experience in the major, students will take classes in genre writing, such as Journal Writing, Memoir, Writing for New Media, Comedy Writing, or Writing for the Arts, and they will also take a Beginning Poetry Workshop. As part of Columbia College’s interdisciplinary focus, students will also take two elective classes from a range of other departments, including Journalism, Fiction, and Humanities, History, and Social Sciences. In the English Department, students will be required to take a number of literature classes. The capstone experience for students will be the creation of a portfolio representing their best work.