Note: All spring courses will be online and meet synchronously via Zoom from 6:30-9:15 p.m. one evening per week.

ENG 673: Screenwriting Workshop (3 credits)

Monday Night – 6:30 – 9:15 p.m.

Professor Tom Coyne

CRN: 10500

In this class, we will learn how to present story in a specific, challenging, and rewarding format that may be unknown to you, but the fundamentals of good screenwriting are the same as all good creative writing — detail, dialogue, character, voice, precision, and imagination. We will develop and locate our most cinema-ready narratives, and learn how to tell them via camera and microphone. We will read screenplays, write screenplays, and discuss the craft and conventions of professional screenwriting. We will study three-act structure and the fundamentals of dramatic storytelling, and we will look at a number of professional screenplays to guide our discussion of form and craft. Each member of the workshop will develop his or her own screen project from an initial concept/pitch to a full-length, feature screenplay. The class will also look at the business of screenwriting and discuss the overall development of screen projects. No screenwriting experience required. (Area III)

ENG 641: Special Topics: Writing as Activism: Race, Class, Gender (3 credits)

Tuesday Night – 6:30 – 9:15 p.m.

Dr. Ann E. Green

CRN: 10507

 We wouldn’t have to have Black Lives Matter if we hadn’t had 300 years of Black Lives Don’t Matter.—Unknown Source

There are people who can give chunks of information, perhaps, but that was not what I was about.  The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.  And then, just possibly hopefully, it goes home, or on.— Audre Lorde

Most of all, I have tried to understand the politics of they, why human beings fear and stigmatize the different while secretly dreading that they might be one of the different themselves.  Class, race, sexuality, gender—and all of the other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other—need to be excavated from the inside.—Dorothy Allison.

We will write, read, and talk about writing as a form of activism and explore how race, class, gender, sexuality, and dis/ability affect the writer. We will read widely and wildly, you will write a great deal, and learning will hopefully be incited, like a riot. Learning about this material at this moment, in light of Black Lives Matter and transformative efforts by BIPOC to transform systemic racism, is important and powerful.  What we read and write about in this course will extend beyond the classroom, and this can sometimes shift the lens of your thinking in compelling ways.  As we look at the categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality as Dorothy Allison suggests, and unpack them from the inside, you may find your worldview changing, expanding or exploding.  This is all part of the process.

We will begin by exploring how writers use intersectionality in their writings by doing a close reading of When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and thinking about the rhetorical strategies she employs when telling a complex memoir about Black Lives Matter. We will then consider other writers’ influences on Khan-Cullors, in particular James Baldwin and Audre Lorde.  We will write creative responses to the texts we read, and we will share and workshop these in class and consider how race, class, gender, sexuality, and dis/ability have shaped our own stories or the fictional stories we tell.

For the final project, students will write a piece of memoir, a long profile piece or interview, an essay, a short story, a series of poems, a play, a podcast, or a multimodal experiment, or a piece of a novel and then write a critical reflection of their work in light of the other readings in the course and their literary foremothers. Students will also consider how different genres can be used in activist work and how different audiences respond to different kinds of writing. (Area II)

ENG 550 The Practice of Writing (3 credits)

Wednesday night – 6:30 – 9:15 p.m.

Professor Tenaya Darlington

 CRN: 10511

This course is designed as an Introduction to the Writing Studies Program, and it allows students to explore a variety of genres while they explore career options within the writing/publishing world. Students will literally “walk in the shoes” of different writers, playing the role of columnist, reporter, editor, poet, and fiction writer. At the end of the course, students will reflect on these different roles and begin brainstorming a possible thesis project in one area. (Core Course)

ENG 680 Writing the Grant Proposal / Writing for Nonprofits (3 credits)

Thursday nights – 6:30 – 9:15 p.m.

Professor Maureen Saraco

CRN: 10514

This course will teach you the basics of how to write for a nonprofit organization, and how to tailor your message and style to various audiences. Focusing primarily on grant writing, you will learn the basics of how to ask for money from organizations in writing and how to navigate the grant-making process from the initial research to the submission of the final proposal. You will also practice writing other important pieces for any nonprofit, like appeal letters, blog posts, social media outreach, performance reports, and more. Through hands-on practice with real Philadelphia-area nonprofits, you’ll learn how to write for the different audiences a nonprofit organization needs to reach. While this course is geared towards the writing skills suited to nonprofit organizations, many of these skills are also transferrable to writing at other kinds of professional organizations. (Area III)