Spring 2025
ENGLISH 143N 001 - LEC 001
Prose Nonfiction
Cecil S Giscombe
Class #:31175
Units: 4
Instruction Mode:
In-Person Instruction
Offered through
English
Current Enrollment
Total Open Seats:
0
Enrolled: 15
Waitlisted: 0
Capacity: 15
Waitlist Max: 5
No Reserved Seats
Hours & Workload
3 hours of instructor presentation of course materials per week, and 9 hours of outside work hours per week.
Course Catalog Description
A seminar in the writing of prose nonfiction as an art.
Class Description
Traveling / Thinking / Creative Writing.
Much of American literature has had to do with a sense of motion. Note the journeys, e.g., in the best known texts of Melville and Twain. But note also that Harlemite Langston Hughes’ autobiography, The Big Sea, begins on a boat and details his adventures in Europe and Africa; Canadian writer Gladys Hindmarch takes on Melville with her Watery Part of the World and Zora Neale Hurston travels to Haiti in Tell My Horse and through the American south in Mules and Men.
The writing vehicle for this course is the personal essay. Class members will be asked to respond in writing to prompts; micro-essays will be assigned as will longer essays. A final writing project will also be required.
The point of this course is multiple and full of inquiry.
Class Notes
To apply for this Creative Writing course, please submit your application through the following URL by the deadline of Friday November 1 2024.
Application URL: https://forms.gle/DLgNuZJtFaqE7CvdA
Applications Open Wednesday, October 9
Texts:
Michael Ondaatje’s R.. show more
Application URL: https://forms.gle/DLgNuZJtFaqE7CvdA
Applications Open Wednesday, October 9
Texts:
Michael Ondaatje’s R.. show more
To apply for this Creative Writing course, please submit your application through the following URL by the deadline of Friday November 1 2024.
Application URL: https://forms.gle/DLgNuZJtFaqE7CvdA
Applications Open Wednesday, October 9
Texts:
Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, Camille T. Dungy’s Guidebook to Relative Strangers, Basho’s Back Roads to Far Towns (Cid Corman translation, White Pine Press). Plus excerpts from Linda Niemann’s Boomer/ Railroad Memoirs and Robert Michael Pyle’s Where Bigfoot Walks and Candacy Taylor’s Overground Railroad: the Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America.
Class activities will include field trips to nearby locations via ferry and Amtrak and a walk with Camille Dungy, who will be visiting campus in February. show less
Application URL: https://forms.gle/DLgNuZJtFaqE7CvdA
Applications Open Wednesday, October 9
Texts:
Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, Camille T. Dungy’s Guidebook to Relative Strangers, Basho’s Back Roads to Far Towns (Cid Corman translation, White Pine Press). Plus excerpts from Linda Niemann’s Boomer/ Railroad Memoirs and Robert Michael Pyle’s Where Bigfoot Walks and Candacy Taylor’s Overground Railroad: the Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America.
Class activities will include field trips to nearby locations via ferry and Amtrak and a walk with Camille Dungy, who will be visiting campus in February. show less
Rules & Requirements
Repeat Rules
Requirements class fulfills
Meets Arts & Literature, L&S Breadth
Reserved Seats
Current Enrollment
No Reserved Seats
Textbooks & Materials
See class syllabus or https://calstudentstore.berkeley.edu/textbooks for the most current information.
Guide to Open, Free, & Affordable Course Materials
Associated Sections
None