Caoimhe Harlock

In this course, students will explore the practice of making and interpreting comics. The ability to draw is not required as our focus will be on learning how comics works as a language unto itself and the things it can uniquely do as a medium over and beyond synthetically bringing together text and images. We'll spend the first half of the class developing lessons in the craft of comics based on our reading and analysis of artists like Emil Ferris, Lynda Barry, Alan Moore, Michelle Perez & Remy Boydell, Simon Hanselmann, Jaime Hernandez, or others. In the second half of the class, we'll move into a workshop structure where students will come together as an informed community, share their work with one another, and learn how to give, receive, and implement feedback, with the goal of developing a personalized and sustainable creative practice Keywords:comics, creative writing, graphic novels, workshop, sequential art

In 1993, Eve Sedgwick famously described queer reading practices as running "against the grain" of the popular understanding of literature, finding hidden within stories a "charged surplus" with which the marginalized reader might identify. In this course, we'll apply this method of reading to several canonical works of 20th century literature from authors such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, Carson McCullers, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Cheryl Dunye, excavating the queer and trans lifeblood that has always resided within canonical texts that, for some, have gained the reputation of dusty, outmoded classics. In so doing, students will build a foundation for critical analysis, including how to use literary theory and archival research to develop their own practice of literary analysis that "runs against the grain." Please note this seminar will require reading multiple full-length novels. Keywords:literature, 20th century, trans, queer, novel

This intro-level workshop is for students interested in pursuing all types of narrative/prose fiction, whether literary fiction or genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc). We'll spend some time as a community critically examining short fiction from authors such as Carmen Maria Machado, Octavia Butler, Angela Carter, Ursula K. LeGuin, and others, in order to understand how they make use of character, form, structure, place, voice, and other fundamental tools of fiction-writing. The heart of the class, however, will be developing our own original works of fiction and then learning how to workshop, iterate, revise, and improve our creative writing in the context of a supportive community of artists. By the end of the class, students will have a small portfolio of creative work as well as a strong foundation of writing skills they can carry on into future workshops and other creative courses. Keywords:creative writing, fiction, workshop, genre fiction, literature

This intermediate level workshop is for students interested in pursuing the art of writing fiction. We'll ground our exploration of craft in the question: "what roles does imagination play in the political project of changing the world?" Beginning from the premise that one must first imagine what the world might look like before one pursues the material and social activism necessary to change it, we'll look at how marginalized authors working in science fiction, queer and trans lit, Afro-futurism, and other genres have used fiction to imagine the possibilities of political and cultural change. We'll use that knowledge to develop our own original works of fiction and then workshop, iterate, revise, and improve our creative writing in the context of a supportive community of artists. Note: this class is primarily intended for those with at least some previous experience with creative writing keywords:creative writing, fiction, literature, science fiction, fantasy

In this hybrid lit/film seminar and creative writing course, we'll explore queer monstrosity in horror film, literature, and comics, including topics such as trans horror, images of motherhood, and race in horror. Together, we'll discuss prominent works of queer horror by drawing on theorists like Susan Stryker and Toni Morrison and develop creative writing projects (prose, comics, or screenplays) that unpack what horror means to us as writers and artists. How does horror help us interrogate traditional notions of gender and embodiment? Does our love of queer monstrosity tell us something dark about our own culture or point to some kind of power lying hidden in the shadows? We'll answer these questions and more! Possible texts: The Haunting of Hill House, I Saw the TV Glow, Silence of the Lambs, Hereditary, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, The Gilda Stories, Carmilla, Get Out, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Witch, &c. Keywords:horror, creative writing, queer, comics, film

This course examines the wave of trans fiction and film created following the so-called "transgender tipping point" of 2014, from authors such as Akwaeke Emezi, Camila Sosa Villada, Imogen Binnie, Torrey Peters, and others. We'll interrogate questions central to the Time & Narrative Learning Collaborative, including the aesthetic and political implications of a literature centered on identity, how the notion of a "trans tipping point" reconciles with the rightward vectors of American politics in the last decade, and where we can locate revolutionary/liberatory potential in art and the communities surrounding it. Besides developing a community to practice close-reading and literary analysis, we'll also learn to develop research or creative projects that give a generative direction to our interests. This course will also intersect with the Race & Power requirement by foregrounding the works of non-white trans creators to help reorient our notions of transness, transmisogyny, and literary community and analysis. Keywords:Trans, literature, film, queer, cultural studies

This intro-level workshop is for students interested in pursuing all types of narrative/prose fiction, whether literary fiction or genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc). We'll spend some time as a community critically examining short fiction from authors such as Carmen Maria Machado, Octavia Butler, Lauren Groff, Anita Desai, Angela Carter, Jorge Luis Borges, and others, in order to understand how they make use of character, form, structure, place, voice, and other fundamental tools of fiction-writing. The heart of the class, however, will be developing our own original works of fiction and then learning how to workshop, iterate, revise, and improve our creative writing in the context of a supportive community of artists. By the end of the class, students will have a small portfolio of creative work as well as a strong foundation of writing skills they can carry on into future workshops and other creative courses Keywords:Creative writing, fiction, workshop, genre fiction, literary fiction