Prague at night, over the Vltava river

Charles Bridge

Critical Reading and Writing: Contemporary European Masterpiece Authors 55-4208-01 (undergrads) or 55-5208-01 (grads) – 4 credits undergrads; 3 credits – grads. This course researches the writing processes of contemporary European Writers, including the ways in which writers’ readings and responses to reading play influential roles in the overall fiction writing process. Journals and other writings will be used as examples of how writers develop dimensions of their own fiction and see their work in relation to other writers. The course involves study of the development of diverse techniques and voices of some of the most prominent contemporary European Authors, the so-called “postwar” generation, in such countries as Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Spain, Poland, Scandinavia, and Russia. Instructor: Russian writer Mark Davidov. Prerequisite or concurrent enrollment: Fiction Writing I.

Critical Reading and Writing: 19th Century Russian Authors 55-4207-01 (undergrads) or 55-5207-01 (grads) – 4 credits undergrads; 3 credits – grads. Students research the reading and writing processes behind selected novels and short stories by Russian masterpiece authors, and give their own oral and written responses as writers to the material they are reading. Research examines the personal and social contexts in which masterpiece works were written, as well as the ways in which writers read, respond to what they read, and incorporate their reading and responses to reading dynamically to their own fiction writing processes. Drawing upon authors’ journals, notebooks, and letters, as well as upon more “public” writing and interviews, students explore the writing processes of Russian masterpiece authors and the ways in which students’ own responses may nourish and heighten the development of their fiction. Prerequisite or concurrent enrollment: Fiction Writing I. Instructor: Mark Davidov.

Critical Reading and Writing: Contemporary Russian Authors 55-4209-01 (undergrads) or 55-5209-01 (grads) – 4 credits undergrads; 3 credits – grads. Students work individually and in small groups researching the reading and writing processes behind selected novels and short stories by the principal Russian masterpiece authors of the contemporary period from 1920 to the present, such as Bulgakov, Babel, Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, Platonov, and Nabokov. Drawing upon authors’ journals, notebooks, and letters, as well as upon more “public” writing and interviews, students examine the personal and social contexts in which writers read and respond to the way they read. Students give their own oral and written responses as writers to the material they are reading, and examine the ways in which students’ own responses may nourish and heighten the development of their own fiction. Prerequisite or concurrent enrollment: Fiction Writing I. Instructor: Mark Davidov.

Dreams and Fiction Writing 55-4303-01 (undergrads) or 55-5303-01 (grads) – 4 credits undergrads; 3 credits – grads. This course helps writers relate the rich, various, and powerful world of dreams to the needs and delights of imaginative prose fiction. Students keep journals of their dreams, read and write dream stories, and study how dreams relate to their fiction writing, including researching the ways in which dreams have influenced the work of well-known writers. Prerequisite or concurrent enrollment: Fiction Writing I.