Welcome to the “[Em]Powering the Self Workshop.” This gender and diversity narrative project takes its title from Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman but it does not stop at gender. This workshop is open to all forms: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and hybrid. It is open to all genders, identities and backgrounds. In this course we will explore how progressive experiences with cultures, both our own and others, inform our voice in both the artistic expression of voice and the voice we give to self. It is our intention to give power over self, not others. Following Wollstonecraft’s example:
I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves. —Mary Wollstonecraft
We will excavate self, explore self and then express self through narratological study: how our understanding of themes, conventions and symbols can siphon as well as invigorate voice. Focal criticisms will be feminism, postmodernism, Marxism, Jungian theory, gender studies/queer theory and a bit of neoformalism. Affiliate study as part of American University LIT-643 Feminism and Fiction (Professor Rubenstein) and LIT-700 Advanced Fiction Workshop (Professor Perkins-Valdez).
[Em]Powering the Self Workshop Description
In this workshop, we’ll add additional “writing the other” resources to our writers’ toolboxes. We’ll consider our authentic voices and how these voices affect not only narrative perspective, but also our characters’/subjects’ arcs and origins. Finally, we will consider how your own origins and social evolutions can serve our voices in extraordinary and honest ways, while also, and let us not forget, considering and respecting the issues of cultural appropriation within art forms. In this writing workshop, our intention is to support self and others more deeply so to create stronger voices and narrative conversations with our readers and our communities.
[Em]Powering the Self Writing Goals
This workshop is a collaborative work between several Eckleburg faculty and authors with the intention of helping you explore your literary strengths and needs with an eye on organic voice. The specific goals of this workshop are:
- To identify and read exemplary works as a foundational study so to define both your organic voice and writing beyond self;
- To foster regular writing habits so to exercise and strengthen your organic voice;
- To generate new drafts of work that encompass your artistic and human foundations;
- To read and revise your work with a critical eye so you can revise and make it as strong as it can be;
- To help you further strengthen your knowledge of form and to provide you with the environment to better understand your individual voice so you can apply this to future works;
- To help you learn and improve on the techniques of writing, self-editing and writing beyond self so that you are aware of your preferred forms and boundaries and be able to consider how you might push your preferred forms into your best craft.
[Em]Powering the Self Materials
- Aciman, Andre. “Shadow Cities.”
- Adam Zagajewski. “Self-Portrait.”
- Apollinaire, Guillaume. (trans. by Donald Revell) “Zone.”
- Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, Vintage Books, 2009.
- Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley, Vintage Books, 1989.
- Blake Shelton. “Boys ‘Round Here.” Based on a True Story…, Ten Point Productions, Inc., 2013, YouTube, youtube.com/embed/JXAgv665J14.
- Cairns, Scott. “Homeland of the Foreign Tongue.”
- Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society: Fifth Edition. Thames & Hudson. 2012.
- Cruz, Victor Hernández (for Joe Bataan). “Latin & Soul.”
- Darwish, Mahmoud. “Who Am I, Without Exile?“
- De Pizan, Christine. The Book of the City of Ladies. 1405.
- Didion, Joan. “On Self-Respect: Its Source, Its Power.”
- Dixie Chicks. “Goodbye Earl.” Fly, Sony Music Entertainment Inc., 1999. YouTube, youtube.com/embed/Gw7gNf_9njs.
- Gilman, Richard. “The Man Behind the Feminist Bible.” The New York Times, 22 May 1988, nytimes.com/1988/05/22/books/the-man-behind-the-feminist-bible.html. Accessed 4 Sept. 2017.
- Greenberg, Arielle and Rachel Zucker. “On My Poetry Mentors.”
- Hikmet, Nazim. “On Living.”
- Ibsen, Henrik. A Dolls’ House. 1879.
- Kafka, Franz. “Metamorphosis.”
- Kearney, Meg. “Creed.”
- Kincaid, Jamaica. “Girl.”
- Koppelman, Susan. Women in the Trees. Beacon Press. 1996.
- Koppelman, Susan and Alix Kates Shulman. Women in the Trees: U. S. Women’s Short Stories About Battering and Resistance, 1839-2000 (American Women’s Stories Project). 2004.
- Levine, Phillip. “What Work Is.”
- Márquez, Gabriel García. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.”
- Masson, André. Le génie de l’espèce (The Genius of the Species). 1942, drypoint and engraving, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
- Menand, Louis. “Stand by Your Man: The Strange Liaison Between Sartre and Beauvoir.” The New Yorker, 26 Sept. 2005, newyorker.com/magazine/2005/09/26/stand-by-your-man. Accessed 2 Sept. 2017.
- Morrison, Toni. Beloved.
- Neruda, Pablo. (trans. by Robert Bly) “Walking Around.”
- Nye, Naomi Shihab. “Blood.“
- Ralph Waldo Emerson. “On Self-Reliance.”
- Šalamun, Tomaž. (trans. by Brian Henry) “Ships.”
- Shawl, Nisi and Cynthia Ward. Writing the Other.
- Shelly, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus. 1818. Norton Critical Addition. 2012.
- Shelton, Blake. Boys ‘Round Here.”
- Simic, Charles (for Octavio Paz). “In the Library.”
- Simic, Charles. “Cameo Apparence.”
- “Simone de Beauvoir: Journalist, Women’s Rights Activist, Academic, Activist, Philosopher (1908–1986).” Biography, 28 Apr. 2017, biography.com/people/simone-de-beauvoir-9269063. Accessed 2 Sept. 2017.
- Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW). 2000.
- Toyen. Dívčí sen II (A Girl Dream II). 1932. zincography and aquarelle, The ART Gallery, Chrudim.
- Trethewey, Natasha. “Elegy.”
- Williams, Diane. “The Dog.”
- Williams, Diane. “The Man.”
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1792.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman. 1798.
- Woolf, Virginia. Orlando.
- Young, Kevin. “After Loss, Turning To Poetry For Grief And Healing.”
[Em]Powering the Self Contributors
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