THIS COURSE DESCRIPTION REPLACES THE DESCRIPTION FOR THIS SECTION
PRINTED IN THE SPRING 1996-97 COURSE DESCRIPTION BOOKLET

Topic: Imagining Creativity: Models of Creativity
1:00P-2:15 TR (25) 3 cr

ABOVE SECTION COAS INTENSIVE WRITING

Prerequisite: W131 or equivalent

In this course, students will explore models of creativity and voice from modern and postmodern
critical perspectives, including those offered by poets, novelists, essayists, literary and social
critics, teachers, and researchers in the field of socio- and cognitive linguistics.

In the first part of the course, we will examine the metaphors that various writers use to describe
creativity (writing is like remembering / discovering / dancing, etc), and how writing is limited or
enabled by these metaphors. In addition, we will read and discuss self-referential texts about the
act of writing, such as Italo Calvino's book IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER. How
do self-referential texts (that is, texts that point to themselves as artifice) challenge notions of
stable authorship, narration and point of view? What view of creativity do such approaches
engender?

The second half of the course will begin by looking at the question of influence, and how writers
and theorists account for influence in their models of creativity. Is all writing a kind of rewriting
of previous texts? How does this view of writing challenge notions of originality, authentic
voice, and intentionality? We will consider how these issues and questions are approached by
teachers of writing and what strategies teacher-writers have developed to address such concerns.
Finally, we will examine the institutionalization of creativity as it is currently comprised by
writing workshop programs across the country. How do prevailing models of creativity act to
privilege certain kinds of writing over others? How do these models reflect the political milieu in
which they gained ascendancy?

Required work: four or five critical essays of 5-7 pages each, weekly in- and out-of class short
writings, a few exercises in poetry and fiction.

Texts (tentative): a course pack including selections from the following books: METAPHORS
WE LIVE BY by Lakoff and Johnson, ACTUAL MINDS, POSSIBLE WORLDS by Jerome
Bruner, CREATIVE WRITING IN AMERICA: THEORY AND PEDAGOGY, edited by Joseph
Moxley; IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER by Italo Calvino; also essays by Adrienne
Rich, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf; stories by Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez;
poems by William Carlos Williams, Leslie Marmon Silko, and David Ignatow.