I’m taking three classes this spring for my MA in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The prognosis? Lots of work, but the prognosis is good. Actually, I should add emphasis: lots of work, but the prognosis is really good. Here’s what I’m taking:

Native American Humor
Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia
Narrative Craft and Theory: Magic and Wonder

All the classes meet once a week for two hours and forty minutes. Read on if you’re interested in the reading list and course work for these classes.

Native American Humor
When I’ve mentioned this class to people everyone says the same thing: Native American humor exists? The answer is yes, and the point of the course is to look at native humor in a variety of media: books, audio programming, movies, plays, etc. The course syllabus begins with a provocative quote by Carter Revard: “Comedy is worth more than tragedy any time where survival is at stake.”

The reading list is:
Custer Died for Your Sins by Vine Deloria, Jr.
Walking the Nez Road by Jim Northrup
One Good Story, That One by Thomas King
Me Funny edited by Drew Hayden Taylor
Heirs of Columbus by Gerald Vizenor
Course Reader & one more text to be named

Additional requirements include one in-class presentation and a final paper or project. The professor is very serious about the mixed media portion of the course and encouraged us to take the final project in whatever direction we choose, whether that’s an audio recording, a play, a short story, illustrations, whatever. The course is only programmed out to the spring break because the publisher of a native humor anthology pushed back the publication date six months, and that was supposed to take up a lot of time so we’ll be adjusting the syllabus on the fly.

The class is small and amiable and the professor is very warm, as one might expect. The only potential problem is that humor is tough to talk about. Try explaining why a joke is funny and the humor drains right out. But right off the bat, the humor in Deloria’s book is very dry, sharp, and sarcastic which of course means I love it. The chapter entitled “Anthropologists and Other Friends” was laugh out loud funny. I’ll probably dedicate a separate post to this book as I’ve found it to be great. I’m looking forward to seeing where this class goes.

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Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia
From the syllabus: “We will address definitional questions: what is science fiction? utopian fiction? does one subsume the other?; genre questions: is X literature? why or why not?; and interpretive methods suitable for genre fiction and film.”

I’ve posted the reading list but it wasn’t complete before. Here’s the final deal:

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake
Delany, Samuel R. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Dick, Philip K. The Divine Invasion
—. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
—. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
—. Valis
Disch, Thomas M. Camp Concentration
Ford, Jeffrey. The Physiognomy
Le Guin, Ursula. The Dispossessed
Mieville, China. Perdido Street Station
Piercy, Marge. He, She, and It
Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Wild Shore: Three Californias

Critical Theory and Science Fiction by Carl Freedman
Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions by Fredric Jameson
and a Course Reader

This works out to be a book a week. Some books, like the Disch, are a couple hundred pages; some books, like the Mieville, are over 700 pages. Most weeks have some sci-fi criticism as well, and it’s not pat criticism; yesterday’s discussion revolved around Delany’s structuralist criticism of science fiction and Derrida’s deconstructionism. We did close readings on both Clarke’s “Dial F for Frankenstein” and Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” based on two essays by Delany (one of which would be quite familiar to my Clarion chums, as Nancy Kress used Delany’s “About Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty Words” as her guide when she did the whole the red sun is high, the blue low lecture.)

We have to present one week’s readings (I got Dick’s Divine Invasion) and write either a 15-20 page research paper, or a more highly focused 8-10 page conference paper. The professor said either is fine, but encouraged us to write something we could present and that’s certainly the route I’m going to take.

On first glance, this class appears to be the most rigorous of the three but rigor isn’t always a bad thing, especially if you enjoy what you’re working on. The class has a good mix of creative writers, literary studies, modern studies, and even non-English people. Lots of reading here, but c’mon, that’s what I’m in school for. Besides, they’re only eyes. They’re meant to be burned out.

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Narrative Craft and Theory: Magic and Wonder
The reading in this course will be primarily of my peers but we do have a few pro works we’re reading as well:
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Fortress of Solitude by Johnathan Lethem
Short Course Reader that includes Garrison Keillor, Woody Allen, and some dude named Borges; later in the semester we’ll also be reading some as-of-yet-unnamed sci-fi and fantasy
24 critiques of my peers’ stories (12 classmates, 2 stories each)

The course is based on “the New Fabulists” or “the new fantastic” literary mainstream movement that the professor, by his own admission, is very suspicious about the alleged “newness” of it all. He’s definitely coming to this course from the mainstream side of things but I’ve been talking to him about this from the genre side of things, and sent him the introductions from both Feeling Very Strange and ParaSpheres for him to look at.

In short, this course is so up my alley that it hurts to sit down. I really enjoyed this professor’s workshop last semester, and this class is about as close to my proposed academic/professional writing area that I can hope for in the graduate setting. It’s going to be really interesting to see what people bring to the plate when we get down to critiques. Students aren’t required to write “fabulist” fiction but they are encouraged to experiment. This could be a recipe for disaster (one creative writing professor bans speculative fiction from his undergrad workshops because the stories are so god-awful) but it could also be a lot of fun.

Class dynamics will also be interesting because we have a number of strong personalities. I know half of the students from the prior workshop and we all get along swimmingly, so that’s a definite plus. My suspicion is that this could be a more volatile environment but that’s not necessarily bad.

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Overall, I’m really looking forward to this semester. The sci-fi class and the writing workshop are everything I hoped and dreamed for when applying for school—in fact, it’s almost too bad they’re in the same semester as they’re both first-time offerings for grad students—and I’m sure I’ll like the native humor class as well. Right off the bat I can see this is a much higher workload than last semester but again, it’s not like I’m not interested in what I’m learning.

Current Mood: Looking at Piles of Books |
Currently Listening To – Mississippi Fred McDowell – “Shake ‘Em On Down”