डॉ. बी. आर. अम्बेडकर विश्वविद्यालय दिल्ली 
| Course Type | Course Code | No. Of Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation Core | SCC2L 103 | 4 |
Semester and Year Offered: Monsoon, 2019
Course Coordinator: Belinder Dhanoa
Email of course coordinator: belinder[at]aud[dot]ac[dot]in
Pre-requisites: The course is open to the MA Literary Art students.
Course Objectives/Description: Concept Development and Experimentation is a 12credit course to be covered in 3 Semesters (1st, 2nd and 3rd). Students will be encouraged to explore how ideas are developed and transformed through critical thinking and creative expression. The course is an integral and defining part of the Creative Writing Programme as it aims to give the student a strong foundation in writing. It will involve a study of historical perspectives within literary creative practice, and students will begin the process of their own writing within this context. The course will also provide the foundation for critical analysis of writing, and examine the need to reflect on critical cultural issues.
CD & E 1 is concerned with the development and expression of ideas through writing. The development of skills pertaining to conceptualization, development of plot, themes, character, styles of writing and narrative devices are the primary components of this course.
The main objectives of the course include the development of strong foundations in writing within fiction and narrative nonfiction; learning to reflect on and acquire key writer’s disciplines, such as reading as a writer, keeping journals and notebooks, redrafting, using research in writing and maintaining reading and process logs. In CD & E 1, the student will engage with the challenges of writing through an exploration of form and structure in fiction and narrative non-fiction; and look at a range of textual sources.
This course will be conducted through writing workshops, lectures, and individual work with the tutor.
This course shares AUD’s larger concern regarding engaged scholarship, and works towards more historically and politically informed critical and creative practices.
Course Outcomes:
On completion of the course, it is expected that the student will have:
developed a foundation in historical perspectives within literary creative practice, and have begun the process of their own writing within this context.
developed an understanding of Characterization, Point of View, Setting and Plotting, Narrative Structures, Voice and dialogue through a focus on process and training.
initiated the practice of review and critique of peer writing.
learned to engage with questions of framing their own work within the larger contexts of literary production.
developed a disciplined practice in writing.
Brief description of modules/ Main modules:
Overall structure: This course requires a substantial amount of reading and writing. Each week we will read and respond to students' Weekly Writing Exercises and address some specific issues about the mechanics of writing. The activities for each week will include three important steps:
1. Assigned Reading
2. Weekly Writing Exercise
3. Class Discussions and Critique of Assigned Reading and Student Writing.
Module 1: Writing Contexts 1 - This unit will be a foundation in reflective practice. This unit will have a historical inflection to demonstrate how writers have experimented through time, so that students can understand writing in terms of form, content and practice.
Module 2: Writing 1 - Students will generate, shape and edit their own creative writings and develop workshop skills. The unit will explore the elements of writing, word and image, editing and revision.
Module 3: Writing Skills
This unit will equip students with skills they will use throughout the progamme in journals and notebooks, research, and reading as a writer. It will cover topics including how a writer uses journals, how a writer uses research skills, and how to read as a writer.
Assessment details:
Class Participation: 30%. This is an important component of the seminar/workshop course to assess critical reading skills.
Weekly writing assignments: 40%.
Final submission with process journal: 30%. The final submission consists of self-edited writing done throughout the semester, as well as the students’ journal in which the process of writing and developing ideas and concepts is recorded.
Reading List:
Readings through the semester are supplemented by suggestions to individual students directed to their interests with regard to genre, themes, and ideas. Students are also encouraged to suggest texts for discussion.
- Selections from: E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, Rosetta Books, 2010, originally published 1927
- Milan Kundera, Dialogue on the Art of the Novel, and Somewhere Behind from The Art of the Novel, Faber & Faber, 2005
- L. Rust Hills, Writing in General: and the Short Story in Particular, Mariner Books, 2000
- Eudora Welty, The Collected Short Stories, Barnes and Noble Modern Classics, 2001
- Hoffman, Michael & Patrick Murphy, Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, Duke University Press, 1988
- Henry James, The Art of Fiction, Pantianos Classics, 2018
- David Lodge, The Art of Fiction, Penguin Books, 1994
- Stephen King, On Writing, Hodder Paperbacks, 2012
- O'Connor, Flannery, The Habit of Being, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1988
- Writers on Writing, The New York Times series
- Henry Miller: The Books in my Life, New Directions, 1969
- Francine Prose: Reading Like a Writer, Union Books (May 31, 2012)
- George Orwell, Why I Write, Penguin Books
- Terry Eagleton, Literature and History and Form and Content from Marxism and Literary Criticism, University of California Press, 1976
- Susan Sontag: At the Same Time – The Novelist and Moral Reasoning, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007
- Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior, Picador Classics, 2015
- Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition, 1999
- Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose, Mariner Books; Reprint edition, 2014
- Various writers The Writers at Work Series, in The Paris Review
- Ellen Gilchrist, Falling Through Space, Journals, Diversion Books, 2018
- Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, Mariner Books, 2003
- Joan Didion, South and West: From a Notebook, Vintage International, 2018
- Franz Kafka, Diaries 1910-1923, Schocken, 1988
- Virginia Woolf, A Passionate Apprenticeship: The Early Journals 1897-1909, Harcourt, edition 1991