Eye of the Story
Revised Last Updated: 05/05/2009
Fall and Winter quarters
Faculty: Sam Schrager American studies, folklore, Steven Hendricks creative writing
Academic web site: academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/eyeofthestory/
Faculty Signature Required: Open to freshmen without signature. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors should visit the program website to obtain an application (http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/eyeofthestory/). Applications will be accepted until the program fills.
Major areas of study include writing, literature, anthropology, cultural and community studies.
Class Standing: This all-level program accepts up to 33% freshmen as well as supporting and encouraging those ready for advanced work.
Accepts Winter Enrollment: This program will accept new enrollment, with signature. Admission will be based upon a written response to a prompt and interview with faculty to evaluate strong reading and writing skills.
Prerequisites: Strong writing and reading skills.
We think with stories. We tell stories to give shape to experience, to find words for things that in the absence of stories about them often remain too complex, troubling, or elusive to grasp. This program will explore storytelling in two of its most highly polished forms: fiction (novels and short stories) and documentary literature (ethnographies and journalistic works). Our purpose is to study the power of both kinds of narrative art to take fresh looks at the world and to use this knowledge to become adept practitioners of the writer's craft.
Readings fall and winter will include outstanding twentieth-century fictional and non-fictional works from the United States and Europe. We will examine these texts closely and comparatively, with attention to the full palette of resources the authors employ to create compelling effects: plot, language, dialogue, style, point of view, social codes, genre conventions, and the like. The program will also feature instruction and practice of fieldwork methods: ways of listening, looking, and recording evidence to make truthful stories. In fall quarter, students will compose short pieces of essay, ethnographic, and imaginative writing. In winter, they will undertake a major writing project, supported by field research or additional background reading, in a genre and on a subject of their choice.
Questions about the value of fictional and documentary literature will be at the heart of this inquiry. What strengths, for example, do these stories possess as a means of seeing human existence? How do they deal with social and political realities of their time and place? Can they change cultural outlooks? What might be the future for the classics and for contemporary writing, given the visually-oriented, media-and-technology-saturating direction of the globe?
Throughout the program, dialogue among students and faculty about our common and individual work will be prized. By writing intensively in modes they choose, informed by challenging literary study, students will develop their distinctive ways of telling: their own eyes.
Credits: 16 per quarter
Enrollment: 48
Special Expenses: Approximately $125 for fall program field trip.
Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in humanities, writing, journalism, media, law, education and community work.
Planning Units: Culture, Text and Language, Programs for Freshmen
Program Revisions
| Date | Revision |
|---|---|
| March 4th, 2009 | Visitor removed from teaching team. |
| April 27th, 2009 | Steven Hendricks added to team; description revised; signature requirement for non-freshmen added. |
| April 29th, 2009 | URL added. |
| May 5th, 2009 | Winter enrollment details added. |