In the spring of 2015, I taught 3 sections of Writing about Literature–“Writing in Tight Spaces”–for first-year students at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
In this first-year writing class, we will learn to use the inherent limitations of written forms to our advantage, and we will ask why literary genres can be tools for surviving real confinement and oppression—be it a prison cell, a detention hall, or a family home turned sinister. We will build outwards from the “nuts and bolts” of rhetorical grammar to the fundamentals of web design and digital storytelling, all with the aim of doing more (revealing, advocating, proving) with less (time, space, gimmicks). Authors will include Harriet Jacobs, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kurt Vonnegut, and others. We will also examine and create 140-character tweets, 60-second documentaries, and low-budget films.
The students are building their own websites as part of the Domain of One’s Own Program.
I made the science fiction-style image for the class using Pulp-O-Mizer, by Bradley Schenk.
