Kashyap, Aruni
R 3 :55 PM
Park Hall 251
Writers and Social Responsibility
This course is both for graduate creative writers and literary scholars who are interested in looking at literature from the point of view of a practitioner and are interested in writing fiction and essays.
Can writing promote justice? Should writers protest a repressive regime, provide a voice to those who have been silenced and erased? What are the different ways in which a writer's political, social, and moral commitments inspire or impede their artistic aspirations? Does literary work lose their value when they carry the burden of political responsibility?
These are the guiding questions of this course and to understand these further, we will read a range of writers from the United States and abroad, placing them not only in dialogue with their specific socio-political environments, but also literary tradition, style, aesthetics. I hope, in the process, we will be able to find answers to many questions we ask ourselves as contemporary writers as we see democratic values eroded around us: how do we create work that is enduring and relevant? How do we create work that begins new, thoughtful conversations, and create a more equal society? On many days, we will spend admiring the wonderful craft of these canonical as well as contemporary writers who have managed to achieve this in enviable ways through a unique blend of beauty and politics. The authors included in this course are celebrated not only as some of the best craftspersons but also as literary artists who use their storytelling abilities to invite humanitarian intervention in their respective countries. Eventually, their work serves a greater cause, is written with an added responsibility.
Major assignments
1) The midterm submission is a creative nonfiction essay (such as a personal essay) or a short story, or the opening section of a novel that you are working on, written with these guiding questions in mind. We will workshop this in class.
2) There will be a final essay or creative assignment. A prompt will be provided.