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(Printable version of this syllabus here.) |
Writing Seminar: Imagining the Past Gloria Biamonte Monday and Wednesday, 1130 - 12:50, D42 E-mail: gbiamont@marlboro.edu
Much fiction takes as its starting point a particular historical moment, and from there evolves into an imaginative re-creation/retrieval of the past. In doing so, authors create dialogues with the past—dialogues that transgress the boundaries of time. In this writing seminar, we will be reading novels that highlight this intersection of history and fiction, memory and imagination, fact and invention: Geoff Ryman's Was (a meditation on the lives of several characters touched by The Wizard of Oz , both the novel and the film); Marcie Hershman's Tales of the Master Race (an exploration of an imaginary German town during the crucial years of the Third Reich); Thomas Mallon's Aurora 7 (an imaginative rendering of May 24, 1962, the day Scott Carpenter orbited the earth); Sindiwe Magona's Mother to Mother (based upon the 1993 murder of Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl in Guguletu, South Africa); and Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry (a fusing of history, fairy tale and metafiction that explores the power of the imagination to link past, present and future). In our discussions, we will consider how each author creates, retrieves, invents the past—a past that inevitably weaves itself into the present. We will explore, in particular, the intersection of history and fiction, memory and imagination, fact and invention—as each author attempts to engage in a meaningful relationship with the past.
And, of course, . . .we will write. During this semester, we will explore writing as an activity that we learn by doing, with some coaching. For this reason, our class time will be spent generally doing, not listening to lectures about writing. The way we will work toward our goal is through lots of practice in writing, critiquing, and rewriting. A long distance runner improves her or his times by running faster, more frequently, and through good coaching. A painter spends long hours in the studio, reworking line and color—getting it just right. This class will be your writing studio. You will work on your craft, rewriting, revising, rethinking, polishing; and I will be your coach, your advisor, and your supporter, but not the only coach. All of your writing will be read by other students, and each of you will become a coach. We will take seriously the opening line of Patricia Hampl's book, I Could Tell You Stories : “A writer is, first and last, a reader.”
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