This course will give new direction to students’ poetry through practical teaching methods and regular feedback. It will build students’ awareness of the form and elements of the craft. It will also require reading the poetry of prose writers and the poetry of other poets of different centuries. The course will develop a skill of self-evaluation and constructive analysis of the work of others. Finally, students will be able to develop a work in progress. The workshop method will be adopted in class to give students a hands-on introduction to poetry writing. The method of evaluation will be assignments in the form of short pieces of poems as well as writing extemporaneous poems at a sit-in examination. The course teacher will provide guidelines for such writing.
Course Catalogue
The course is meant primarily for students who have some experience of writing fiction, either in Bangla or English or both and now want to improve their craft. The course, however, will also be helpful to those who haven’t done any fiction writing but feel that they are now ready to begin. It will teach them the basics of writing a story or a novel, beginning with an outline or plot, a narrative structure, a narrative voice, characterization and dialogue, and eventually lead them to more difficult tasks such as mind mapping, conveying emotions and inner turmoil, dealing with conflicts and coincidences and arriving at a satisfactory conclusion.
Creative nonfiction is a genre of nonfiction that uses literary techniques to narrate facts. For writer Lee Gutkind, creative nonfiction is “true stories, well told.” These true stories can involve one’s personal life (i.e. memoir, biography, autobiography), travel experience (i.e. travelogue), journalistic expressions (i.e. op-eds, feature articles), lyrical essays, cultural commentary, and personal anecdotes. The versatility of CNF makes it one of the most exciting forms to be familiar with. In this course, we will explore different types of creative nonfiction genres and learn to incorporate them into our writing.
This course aims to introduce students to some of the tools and techniques involved in playwriting. The course examines the flexibility and variety of story-telling medium and will look at some of the many different approaches available to the playwright. It investigates the underlying bases of theatrical fiction and focuses on the fundamentals techniques in structuring the fiction in terms of ‘dramatic conflict’ (plot, act- structure, character development, conflict, dialogue, rhythm and format and the five-phase sandhi as discussed in the Naiyasastra. The students will be encouraged to explore their own interests and develop their own creative processes.
This course will introduce different genres and types of films: comedy, drama, action/adventure, science fiction, thriller, musical, and others, by screening the film and giving lectures. Students will then learn how to write a script for cinema or television. Exercises and feedback from the instructor and the classmates will give them a firm grounding in all the basics of screenwriting. They will also be able to visit shooting locations to understand the challenge of its practical side. The method of evaluation will be assignments in writing screenplays. The course teacher will provide guidelines for such writing. The workshop method will be adopted in class to give students a hands-on introduction to screenwriting.
Experimental writing in literature (stream of consciousness, cut-up, innovative language, anti-narrative, metafiction) is scrutinized in this course with the purpose of examining the form, the cultural significance, the history, and the racial and gender implications as seen through modernist and postmodernist fiction. By the end of the course, students will understand the relationships between texts and contexts, and what it means for 20th century fiction to be deemed modern or postmodern. In addition, the course will investigate how modern and postmodern literature explore issues of identity. The texts will also consider the connection between notions of identity and the 20th century cultural context as a postmodern phenomenon.
As technological tools and outlets for writing develop, writers must learn to adapt their writing styles to accommodate the different media. This course will guide students to create their own texts and edit those using word processors.
This course will tackle texts in translation as well as strategies for translating literary texts. Major translation theories will be discussed during the course. The course will also cover issues of copyright and publication processes. Practical work with a focus on cultural issues that emerge during the process of translation will serve to enrich the experience.
This course seeks to closely study a range of modern and contemporary fiction and non-fiction in English from South Asia from cultural, historical, religious, political, economic, social, and aesthetic points of view to come to an understanding about their place in both local, global and some Diasporic contexts. The course will examine how such writing developed and the ways in which it has evolved over the years. This will include works of fiction and non-fiction that are increasingly coming to us through translation into English.
This course seeks to closely study a range of poetry and drama in English from South Asia. Students will be able to appreciate cultural, historical, religious, political, economic, social, and aesthetic points of view. Which will allow students to come to an understanding of their place in a global context. The question of how these texts developed and the ways in which they have changed over the years will be examined. Some postcolonial theory is included in the course contents to better understand the cultural, historical, religious, political, economic, social, and aesthetic aspects of the texts.