Life into Art: A Reading and Writing Seminar (LIT4258.01)

Rebecca Godwin

We will read fiction and nonfiction by three writers: Eudora Welty, Virginia Woolf, and Flannery OConnor. Through this lens, students will experiment with their own forays into story and memoir, with an eye towards exploring the ways in which life may shape story. Readings include Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings and The Optimist’s Daughter; Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary and To the Lighthouse, selections from O’Connor’s A Habit of Being and Mystery and Manners, along with short fiction and essays. Intensive engagement in reading, writing, and talking is an absolute requirement.

Students are not allowed to take more than one Reading and Writing course per term.

Corequisite: Students will be required to attend Wednesday literary evenings.

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. Email creative or critical writing sample of three to five pages to rgodwin@bennington.edu no later than November 3. Class list will be posted by November 10 on the Literature bulletin board on the second floor of the Barn.
Credits: 4
W 8:20am - 12noon
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Course Frequency:
This course is categorized as All courses, Four Credit, Literature, 4000, Rebecca Godwin, and tagged literature, collaboration, practice, Compose, Create, Explore, articulate, communicate, connect, critical thinking, critique, edit, engage, inquiry, participate, read, revise, speak, think, understand, writing intensive.