Writing, Literature & Publishing :: Undergraduate: Minors

Minors

Writing Minor

At least 16 credit hours in a sequence of related writing courses approved by the department. This sequence must include four courses from the following:

Course Code	Course Information
WP211	Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction 4.00 Credits These courses focus on the basic vocabulary, techniques, and traditions in the chosen genre. All courses will include the discussion of published work. Students will practice their writing craft through exercises and other assignments, many of which will be shared with the class in an introductory workshop setting. These courses may be repeated once for credit.
WP212	Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry 4.00 Credits These courses focus on the basic vocabulary, techniques, and traditions in the chosen genre. All courses will include the discussion of published work. Students will practice their writing craft through exercises and other assignments, many of which will be shared with the class in an introductory workshop setting. These courses may be repeated once for credit.
WP216	Introduction to Creative Writing:Nonfiction 4.00 Credits These courses focus on the basic vocabulary, techniques, and traditions in the chosen genre. All courses will include the discussion of published work. Students will practice their writing craft through exercises and other assignments, many of which will be shared with the class in an introductory workshop setting. These courses may be repeated once for credit.
WP217	Introduction to Creative Writing: Mixed Genres 4.00 Credits An introductory course in creative writing, designed to teach techniques, conventions, and vocabulary of two literary genres, and to give students practice in writing in these genres. All sections of WP217 cover two of the following: fiction, poetry, dramatic writing, and nonfiction. Students explore the process of writing and the fundamentals of the two genres through reading, discussion, and writing. In class, students practice writing and discuss both their own essays and texts by published writers. Genres vary from section to section.
WP311	Advanced Creative Writing:Fiction 4.00 Credits 4 credits Original essays, poems, plays, and short stories are written and presented in class for criticism and discussion. Students will also read and discuss published work in the genre. Prerequisite: See below. These courses may be repeated once for credit.
WP312	Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry 4.00 Credits Original essays, poems, plays, and short stories are written and presented in class for criticism and discussion. Students will also read and discuss published work in the genre. Prerequisite: See below. These courses may be repeated once for credit. Prerequisite: WP 212 or WP 217.
WP313	Advanced Creative Writing: Drama 4.00 Credits Original essays, poems, plays, and short stories are written and presented in class for criticism and discussion. Students will also read and discuss published work in the genre. Prerequisite: See below. These courses may be repeated once for credit. Prerequisite: WP 211 or WP 217.
WP314	Advanced Creative Writing: Children's 4.00 Credits Original essays, poems, plays, and short stories are written and presented in class for criticism and discussion. Students will also read and discuss published work in the genre. Prerequisite: See below. These courses may be repeated once for credit. Prerequisite: WP 211 or WP 217.
WP315	Advanced Creative Writing: Comedy 4.00 Credits Original essays, poems, plays, and short stories are written and presented in class for criticism and discussion. Students will also read and discuss published work in the genre. Prerequisite: See below. These courses may be repeated once for credit. Prerequisite: WP211 or WP 217.
WP316	Advanced Creative Writing: Nonfiction 4.00 Credits Original essays, poems, plays, and short stories are written and presented in class for criticism and discussion. Students will also read and discuss published work in the genre. Prerequisite: See below. These courses may be repeated once for credit. Prerequisite: WP 216.
WP405	Seminar Workshop in Poetry 4.00 Credits For students already seriously engaged in writing poetry. In-class discussion of original poems. As the course pays special attention to getting published, students are encouraged to send their work out to magazines. This course may be repeated once with the instructor's permission. Prerequisite: junior or senior standing and completion of a 300-level writing course in poetry.
WP407	Seminar Workshop in Fiction Writing 4.00 Credits Extensive fiction writing, short stories and/or novels coupled with in-class reading for criticism and suggestions. This course may be repeated once with the instructor's permission. Prerequisite: junior or senior standing and completion of a 300-level writing course in fiction.
WP415	Seminar Workshop in Nonfiction 4.00 Credits An advanced writing workshop in various nonfiction forms, such as memoir, travel writing, literary journalism, or other narrative nonfiction writing. Students will already have completed at least one nonfiction workshop, have a project in development, and be capable of discussing such techniques as characterization, point of view, and narrative structure as they appear in literary nonfiction forms. Prerequisite: junior or senior standing and completion of a 300-level writing course in non-fiction.
WP416	Topic: Writing for Stand-Up Comedy 4.00 Credits In this class students will learn how to generate and refine stand-up comedy material, work on developing a five minute routine, and perform that routine at a comedy club. This course is suitable for first-time performers, as well as established performers.
WP440	Screenwriting Workshop 4.00 Credits Primarily focused on works-in-progress, this course also includes study/discussion of scripts produced for film and television, as well as exercises in different kinds of dramatic structure and dialogue. Goal: the completion of a first-draft, full-length script for film or TV, or revision/polish of a work-in-progress. Prerequisite: Prerequisite: junior or senior standing and completion of a 300-level writing course in fiction. This course may be repeated once for credit. (This course may count toward the Media Arts major or toward the WLP major.)

Publishing Minor

At least 16 credit hours in a sequence of publishing courses that must include four courses from the following:

Course Code	Course Information
WP207	Introduction to Magazine Writing 4.00 Credits An introduction to writing for commercial markets. Students will develop, research and write nonfiction articles and learn where to market them. This course may be repeated once for credit.
WP302	Copyediting 4.00 Credits A practical course that covers the process of editing and preparing manuscripts for publication. Together with hands-on assignments, the course considers the relation of editor to author, the nature of copyediting in various publishing environments, and other topics.
WP307	Advanced Magazine Writing 4.00 Credits A course designed to give students the opportunity to research and write a magazine feature or article. The techniques used are designed to help improve both writing and critical thinking. Students will learn terms, concepts, and techniques that should help improve their writing. Prerequisite: completion of WP 207. This course may be repeated once for credit.
WP380	Magazine Publishing Overview 4.00 Credits A course designed to give students an understanding of the magazine field from the perspective of writers and editors. The course will look at the similarities and differences between general interest magazines and more focused magazines, and how magazines compete with each other and with other media for audiences and revenues. Topics such as how magazines carve out niches and the relationship between the business and editorial departments will be discussed. Editorial operations of magazines, focusing on such topics as editorial mix and magazine geography will be examined. The course will also look at the history of the magazine industry. Junior or senior standing required.
WP383	Book Publishing Overview 4.00 Credits The course examines the acquisition and editing of the manuscript, its progress into design and production, and the final strategies of promotion and distribution of a finished book. Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing.
WP395	Introduction to Desktop Publishing 4.00 Credits Introduction to graphic design software for publishing and the basics of design and illustration. This course covers QuarkXpress, the publishing software used by a majority of professionals in the industry. Through assigned exercises and a final project, students learn the ins and outs of the software. In addition, the course reviews related design, illustration, and image-editing software; image sourcing and acquisition, including scanning; and the predecessors to computer-based graphic design, typography, and production. This course assumes the student has basic PC skills.
WP482	Magazine Design and Production 4.00 Credits This course covers magazine design fundamentals; typography; image research and assignment; prepress and manufacturing; and traditional and computer-based tools and equipment. Each student produces a sample magazine through a workshop process of presentations and revisions. This is not a computer lab course. Prerequisite: WP395 (may be taken concurrently) or permission of the instructor.
WP491	Topic: Book Marketing and Sales 4.00 Credits Book Publishing Sales and Marketing is designed as an extension of Emerson's Book Publishing Overview course for students who want to further explore the sales and marketing sides of the business. It starts with where marketing and sales fit into the life of a book, the differences between the two areas, and the distinct effect that each, done well or badly, has on a book's success. It then tracks the marketing and sales process through a book's publication with specific assignments at each stage based on real-world publishing tasksfrom sales forecasting to planning and budgeting for marketing campaigns, writing catalog copy and title information sheets, conceiving and writing promotional materials, sales conference preparation and planning, sales calls, and the retailers' buying processes.

Literature Minor

At least 16 credits in literature courses. No more than one course (4 credits) may be at the 200 level. The remaining 12 credits must be in courses numbered 300 or above. These courses should have a planned coherence; they may focus, for example, on a genre, a tradition or a period.

Poetry Minor

At least 16 credits, including both literature and writing courses, devoted to poetry. The literature courses must be numbered 300 or above and selected from one of the following:

Course Code	Course Information
LI305	Modern Poetry and After 4.00 Credits Students study modern and postmodern traditions of poetry by exploring the works of such 20th-century poets as T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery and, in translation, Pablo Neruda, R.M. Rilke, Zbigniew Herbert, Shiraishi Kazuk and Marina Tsvetaeva.
LI307	The Art of Poetry 4.00 Credits Through reading and discussing a variety of poems from different historical periods, students will learn about the technical aspects of poetry (such as meter, rhyme, and structure) and how poets use these techniques to create meanings and effects. It therefore aims to give students a critical vocabulary for reading and practicing poetry. This is a course for people who want to increase their understanding of, pleasure in, and ability to discuss and write about poetry by learning the essentials of the poet's art. Prerequisite for Upper-level LI Courses: For 300-level LI courses: at least one LI course numbered below 300, or permission of instructor. For WLP majors this must include at least one of the following: LI201, 202, 203.
LI401	Top: Yeats and Heaney 4.00 Credits William Butler Yeats is widely regarded to be the greatest poet to have written in the English language in the 20th Century. Seamus Heaney is widely regarded to be the greatest Irish poet since Yeats. Between them, these two Nobel laureates span the history of poetry in English from the advent of modernism to our own time. In this class we will study the prevailing thematic and artistic obsessions of both these masters with an eye toward uncovering how each poet's work evolved. How do these poet's engage history, metaphysics, and the role of the poet in the world? How do each of these poets labor to make exemplary bodies of work and not merely individual poems? In addition to exploring these questions and others we will also observe patterns of influence that have shaped their respective poetries, as well as examine thier influence on other writers.
LI413	The Forms of Poetry: Theory and Practice 4.00 Credits Students will study the forms of poetry as used by historical and contemporary poets, and then write original poems in those forms (such as sonnet, villanelle, haiku, sestina, renga, syllabic), and genre forms (such as Surrealist poem, Expressionist poem, Anti-poem, Open Field poem, Language poem).

The student may also substitute topics courses such as LI 421 when they explicitly focus on poetry. The writing courses must be numbered 200 or above, selected from the following:

WP212	Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry 4.00 Credits These courses focus on the basic vocabulary, techniques, and traditions in the chosen genre. All courses will include the discussion of published work. Students will practice their writing craft through exercises and other assignments, many of which will be shared with the class in an introductory workshop setting. These courses may be repeated once for credit.
WP312	Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry 4.00 Credits Original essays, poems, plays, and short stories are written and presented in class for criticism and discussion. Students will also read and discuss published work in the genre. Prerequisite: See below. These courses may be repeated once for credit. Prerequisite: WP 212 or WP 217.
WP405	Seminar Workshop in Poetry 4.00 Credits For students already seriously engaged in writing poetry. In-class discussion of original poems. As the course pays special attention to getting published, students are encouraged to send their work out to magazines. This course may be repeated once with the instructor's permission. Prerequisite: junior or senior standing and completion of a 300-level writing course in poetry.

Fiction Minor

At least 16 credits, including both literature and writing courses, devoted to fiction. The literature courses must be numbered 300 or above; the writing courses must be numbered 200 or above. Selections may be made from, but are not limited to, the following:

Course Code	Course Information
LI308	The Art of Fiction 4.00 Credits Students read a broad range of fiction works in the genres of both short story and the novel by American and international authors. The course will teach students to look at fiction from the perspective of the writer's craft, and will emphasize such elements as structure, narrative, characterization, dialogue, and the differences between shorter and longer forms. Students will come away with an appreciation of the fiction writer's craft and an enhanced sense of the drama inherent in good written storytelling.
LI313	Novel into Film 4.00 Credits A study of the adaptation of novels into films, with the aim of understanding the narrative conventions that govern each medium. Texts include the works of such writers as Kesey, Burgess, Kundera, Walker, Nabokov, and Puig; films include the work of directors such as Kubrick, Forman, Spielberg, and Babenco. Prerequisite for Upper-level LI Courses: For 300-level LI courses: at least one LI course numbered below 300, or permission of instructor. For WLP majors this must include at least one of the following: LI201, 202, 203.
LI323	The American Short Story 4.00 Credits A course designed to acquaint students with the changing thematic and stylistic concerns of the American short story (including works by Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Richard Yates, Flannery O'Connor, and others) and to develop critical writing and reading skills.
LI393	American Novel I 4.00 Credits A study of representative American novels written before the 20th-century, including works by such authors as Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Twain, Chopin, Wharton, and James.
WP211	Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction 4.00 Credits These courses focus on the basic vocabulary, techniques, and traditions in the chosen genre. All courses will include the discussion of published work. Students will practice their writing craft through exercises and other assignments, many of which will be shared with the class in an introductory workshop setting. These courses may be repeated once for credit.
WP311	Advanced Creative Writing:Fiction 4.00 Credits 4 credits Original essays, poems, plays, and short stories are written and presented in class for criticism and discussion. Students will also read and discuss published work in the genre. Prerequisite: See below. These courses may be repeated once for credit.
WP407	Seminar Workshop in Fiction Writing 4.00 Credits Extensive fiction writing, short stories and/or novels coupled with in-class reading for criticism and suggestions. This course may be repeated once with the instructor's permission. Prerequisite: junior or senior standing and completion of a 300-level writing course in fiction.