Course Template
The following information should be available to students as a part of all syllabi for this course.
Course Information
Number: ENGL 4210
Section:
Catalog Name: Advanced Creative
Writing
Instructor sub-title (optional)
Instructor Information
Instructor's name:
Office Location:
Office hours:
Phone/email:
Required texts and other readings/materials
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Individual instructors may assemble a group of texts that will allow them to meet the objectives
and specifications. No particular anthology or editions of the required texts are specified.
Course description
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An intensive writing experience in one of the following genres: fiction, poetry, creative-nonfiction,
screenwriting, or playwriting.
A continuation of the genre-specific workshop.
Prerequisites: ENGL 3200
A further specific description pertaining to this section of the course may be added.
Course Goals
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Students will achieve enhanced fluency in writing within a particular genre and become
conversant with issues of technique in that genre.
Students will focus on concentrated elements within their specific genre by modeling their work
on publishing professionals.
Students will offer and receive constructive criticism at a highly articulate level in a public forum.
Students will be able to articulate clearly the defining characteristics of the specific genre studied.
Students will learn to offer and receive constructive criticism in a public forum.
Students will demonstrate an understanding of how individual creative work necessarily exists in
dialogue with other writers, both creative and critical, through assignments that consciously
create intertextual relationships with precursors.
Students will balance creative endeavors with critical work that exhibits their growing knowledge
of the chosen genre.
Students will apply critical understanding of theories of creativity and imaginative writing in at
least four (4) creative works, in weekly peer critiques within a workshop setting, and in at least
two (2) written critiques of peer work.
Students will be able to write an argumentative preface to their creative writing that situates their
work within broader literary an cultural contexts.
Students will collaboratively edit and compile a course anthology to demonstrate editorial skills
specific to literary writing and their own emerging aesthetic philosophies.
Program Goals
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Oral and written communication will be characterized by clarity, critical analysis, logic, coherence,
persuasion, precision, and rhetorical awareness (Core Curriculum learning outcomes I).
Cultural and Social Perspectives: Cultural and social perspective will be characterized by cultural
awareness and an understanding of the complexity and dynamic nature of
social/political/economic systems; human and institutional behavior, values, and belief systems;
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historical and spatial relationship; and, flexibility, open-mindedness, and tolerance. (Core
Curriculum learning outcomes III).
Aesthetic Perspective: Aesthetic perspective will be characterized by critical appreciation of and
ability to make informed aesthetic judgments about the arts of various cultures as media for
human expression (Core Curriculum learning outcomes V).
This course fulfills one of the departmental requirements for the completion of the English major.
This course fulfills one of the departmental requirements for the completion of the creative writing
minor.
This course broadens students’ desire and ability to take pleasure in their encounters with
literature.
General topics and assignments appropriate to those topics
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A detailed calendar of events is required.
The course will offer a wide array of cultural perspectives by examining work from a diverse pool
of publishing authors.
The course will focus on one particular literary genre (for example, poetry, fiction, creativenonfiction, screenwriting, etc.).
Assessment activities
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May include various combinations of instruments ranging from reading quizzes, response papers,
daily calisthenics, journaling, and creative work.
All sections must include at least (10) ten pages of writing in order to meet departmental
expectations.
Other policies
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Departmental plagiarism policies
Other policy statements specific to this class should be included on the syllabus.
Dates for completion of all assignments should be provided.
Students should be expected to come to class, prepared and able to participate
MLA style should be emphasized and required on out of class essays.