WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2020-2021       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Techniques of Poetry: Hidden Histories
ENGL 216A
Spring 2021
Section: 01  

Through a series of immersive reading and writing experiments, we will work toward uncovering and preserving histories that might otherwise be forgotten. In order to do this, we will study the documentary and investigative techniques poets have employed while attempting to write about hard-to-articulate events and experiences like grief, secrecy, unrecorded events, ecological disasters, traumas, racism, gender politics, and hauntings of all kinds. We will read and record accounts that cannot be told but must be told. We will work to uncover--and possibly heal--areas of historical numbness. We will explore poetry's relationship to preservation and the dynamic bonds between representation and reparation. And we will rewire history through history, making use of archival materials, public testimony, newspaper accounts, photographs, family documents, and more.

Guided by critical and creative investigations, students will craft a cohesive, project-centered body of poems while developing an engaged daily writing practice and learning the basics of making books by hand. There will be biweekly presentations on the literature we read, as well as class discussions and workshops of one another's creative work. The class will culminate in a book arts project and a reflective essay.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: DiscussionGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (ENGL)(ENGL-Creative W)(ENGL-Literature)
Past Enrollment Probability: Less than 50%

Last Updated on APR-25-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459