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ENG 484 Writing Workshop Topics: Writing the Fantastic, the Uncanny, and the Marvelous

Dave Welch

M 6:00-9:15 (Hybrid)

“The Fantastic,” writes Tzvetan Todorov, “is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.” In this class, we’ll explore how such paths of uncertainty, along with the complimentary concepts of the Uncanny and the Marvelous, inform the worlds we create by engaging both our lived experience and imagination.

We’ll read a broad array of fiction and poetry and students will be encouraged to write and workshop without worrying about genre. Assigned readings will include writers such as Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Carmen Maria Machado, James Tate, and Deb Olin Unferth, among others.

So, what does that mean in practice? We’ll focus on writing weekly drafts of short-shorts, scenes, and poems (think: 750-words max) to practice economizing language and refining images while delighting in sentences. Each participant will workshop at least twice. We’ll do some in-class (in-Zoom, I suppose) writing. Students will also research and present in groups on the particular ways in which a selection of readings engages the concepts we’re discussing.