Expository Writing (105-0-20)
Topic
Worlds of Wordcraft
Instructors
Phoebe Liang Pan
Meeting Info
University Hall 318: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Overview of class
From the mythic landscapes of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to the cosmic confederations of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish novels, speculative worlds often capture and dazzle our imaginations. But what exactly makes a particular world compelling? Why do writers build their own worlds and settings? What histories do they draw on, and what futures do they imagine? In this course, we'll examine various examples of worldbuilding, worldmaking—or, as Octavia Butler terms it, worldweaving. We'll analyze how writers evoke a sense of "world" across multiple scales through the ecologies, atmospheres, characters, politics, and languages that they craft. In the first few weeks of the course, we will discuss worldmaking through historical lenses, from creation myths and origin stories to medieval maps and early modern utopian fiction. Then, we will move onto more contemporary texts such as Tillie Walden's On A Sunbeam and Cathy Park Hong's Dance Dance Revolution, investigating how writers weave speculative worlds with lived experiences and discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability. By the end of the course, we will look to other mediums, such as video games and tabletop role-playing, to consider the immersive potential of worldmaking practices. This course is primarily a writing course. Writing comes into being not only through recording your thoughts on paper, but also through reading, analyzing, and engaging with the world around you. Through short analytical assignments building up to a longer research paper, we will reflect on the ways in which our own practices of writing bring us closer to the worlds we wish to inhabit and the worlds we wish to make.
Class Materials (Required)
Cathy Park Hong, Dance Dance Revolution (ISBN: 978-0393333114);
Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein, They Say, I Say: Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, 4th Edition (ISBN: 978-0393631678)