COOK FAMILY WRITING PROGRAM

From the mythic landscapes of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to the cosmic confederations of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish novels, speculative worlds often capture and dazzle our imaginations. But what exactly makes a particular world compelling? Why do writers build their own worlds and settings? What histories do they draw on, and what futures do they imagine? In this course, we'll examine various examples of worldbuilding, worldmaking—or, as Octavia Butler terms it, worldweaving. We'll analyze how writers evoke a sense of "world" across multiple scales through the ecologies, atmospheres, characters, politics, and languages that they craft. In the first few weeks of the course, we will discuss worldmaking through historical lenses, from creation myths and origin stories to medieval maps and early modern utopian fiction. Then, we will move onto more contemporary texts such as Tillie Walden's On A Sunbeam and Cathy Park Hong's Dance Dance Revolution, investigating how writers weave speculative worlds with lived experiences and discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability. By the end of the course, we will look to other mediums, such as video games and tabletop role-playing, to consider the immersive potential of worldmaking practices. This course is primarily a writing course. Writing comes into being not only through recording your thoughts on paper, but also through reading, analyzing, and engaging with the world around you. Through short analytical assignments building up to a longer research paper, we will reflect on the ways in which our own practices of writing bring us closer to the worlds we wish to inhabit and the worlds we wish to make.

When the rappers of Migos say their girl is "bad and boujee," what exactly do they mean? For those uninitiated in the world of African American vernacular (AAV) , being bad is not always good thing. Yet, as many Black women know, being called "bad" is a compliment that speaks to not only appearance but a general aura that transcends language. The term boujee, a shortened version of bourgeois, is an insult for women who are seen as too high maintenance or demanding of the finer things in life. Yet, boujee can also be a desirable trait highlighting a woman's aspirational status. In this class, we will look at the multiple meanings of these terms in both their positive and negative connotations to critically engage the intersections between class, race, and gender in Black women's writing. Reading across a range of sources, including poetry, prose fiction, music and film, produced from 1900 to today, we will look at women who are imagined outside of the norms of Black American sociality: "fast" girls in New York City who were arrested for being too "wayward," queer femmes who attempted to build relationships with each other rather than their husbands, and girls abandoned by their mothers that have to learn how to be bad all by themselves. Ultimately, we will assess the promise and peril that characterize Black women as bad and boujee. Texts for this class may include:, Toni Morrison's short story "Recitatif" (1983), Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider (1984), Bridgett Davis' Naked Acts (1997), and Claudia Rankine's Citizen (2014), Jazmin Sullivan's Heaux Tales (2021).

Prepare to delve into the hidden realms of ancient myths, mystical traditions, and historical narratives, where goddesses and heroines shaped the course of human history. Discover the captivating stories of women who have been obscured by time. In this course, we'll peel back the layers of history to uncover forgotten wisdom and examine heroic journeys, thus exploring the rich tapestry of the human experience. From forgotten figures of wisdom and empowerment like Inanna to modern historical leaders like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, our seminar will illuminate the multifaceted roles of women in shaping culture, spirituality, and societal norms across continents and eras. We'll interrogate ancient myths, best-selling books and blockbuster movies, exploring themes of empowerment and resilience in both mythical and contemporary contexts. Along the way, we'll develop skills essential to academic writing, reading, and success.

In this seminar, we will explore the question of what is and what might be the relationship between human and nonhuman animals. To guide us in that exploration, we'll read, discuss, and write about short stories, essays, and poems. These literary works powerfully dramatize the many ways in which we experience animals: as companions and as sources of food, in zoos and in nature, as objects of scientific study and as reflections of ourselves. The readings will offer us the opportunity to reflect on such questions as: Is it possible to know what an animal is thinking and feeling? Why are our pets so important to us? Are we justified in using animals for food and in laboratory experiments? Through class discussion and varied writing assignments, you'll articulate your answers to those and other questions to your colleagues in the seminar.

Scholars of language and writing argue that language and its varieties, genres, modes, and rhetorical strategies are always shifting, flexible, and contested. Thus, sociolinguistic diversity—differences across and within languages and dialects—is inevitable. This seminar will explore how language difference is situated in current US and global discourses, considering language in written, spoken, and signed forms. We will disrupt monolingual ideologies that infiltrate those discourses, focusing on language diversity as an asset to individuals, cultures, and institutions. The course will consider college as one of those institutions and will explore language diversity and linguistic social justice as part of your first-year experience at Northwestern. Using scholarly readings from sociolinguistics and writing pedagogy along with popular non-fiction, the course will consider how we can sustain sociolinguistic diversity, how we can foster equity, access, and inclusion around language difference, and how our sociolinguistic diversity sustains us. You will formulate and explore your own questions about language diversity and linguistic justice in papers, presentations, and class discussions.

We are all familiar with public discourse about environmental concerns: Descriptions of a future where familiar landscapes have been transformed into alien vistas, newly dangerous and hostile to human life. Recent eco-fiction, however, challenges that familiar narrative, proposing ways that we humans may find ourselves transfigured along with the world around us. In this class we will engage with accounts of such human metamorphosis, considering the children's stories of Dr. Seuss, the hyper-empathy of Octavia Butler, the "new weird" landscapes of Jeff Vandermeer's Area X and a selection of other short works. Film viewings will include Pixar's 2008 Wall-E and other films (TBA). Course readings/viewing will include brief readings from literary criticism. We will also consider practical topics such as how University library resources and experts can help students locate and evaluate key sources and develop authoritative arguments. This course will use a traditional grading structure. Content warning: Some readings and viewings include references to sexual violence, self-harm, torture, and suicide.

While print novel and magazine readership may be down, podcast listening is hugely popular. Podcasts are now where many people encounter news, pop culture, and stories. Good podcast creators—of both fiction and nonfiction podcasts—engage in the art of storytelling, making carefully crafted plots, characters, settings, and themes. This course will expose students to narrative theory and storytelling tools and then teach them to apply these concepts to podcasts. Just as they do with written texts in other courses, students in this course will learn to consider podcasts using close-"reading" techniques, rhetorical argumentation, and character, plot, and setting analyses. In addition to these more classical academic analyses of podcasts as literature, the course will also ask students to consider the serial and documentary genres. Furthermore, students will consider how technology affects storytelling. In the first half of the course, students will analyze existing podcasts and write academic papers on the podcasts of their choosing. In the second half of the class, students will make 2 podcasts themselves. One of the podcasts will be an original podcast of their choosing. The other podcast will be a class project wherein students make a podcast that gives other students tips and tricks to improve their writing processes.

Recent controversies about "fake news" and disinformation would appear to suggest that contemporary mass media is newly unreliable. This course will explore how the distinction between truth and fiction in all media technologies has always been muddy. To do so, we will examine fiction that pretends to be true from 17th-19th century literature and philosophy to documentary-styled novels, films, and radio programs that span the 20th century. We will study the predominance of "found footage" films and digital media in the current millennium that parallel the rise of reality television, YouTube, and the smart phone. We will begin and end the quarter with considerations of "fake news," from founding father Benjamin Franklin's fabricated newspaper propaganda to contemporary digital media. We will also read selections from philosophy and critical theory that question the concept of truth and the construction of reality through media technologies.

The goal of this course is to develop your ability to write clearly, persuasively, and interestingly for a variety of audiences. Students will learn techniques for writing effective informative, reflective, persuasive, and research essays. These techniques include the effective use of specific details; methods of organizing ideas clearly; strategies for editing sentences for clarity and conciseness; and ways to give your writing a distinctive voice. Students will submit drafts and revisions of essays.