The Syllabus That Gave Birth to ‘The Annex’

Adventures in Creative Non-Fiction

As part of UC Berkeley’s new Art of Writing curriculum, I was able to teach — with English graduate student Ismail Muhammad — a creative non-fiction workshop on the theme of ‘Covering Culture’.

For every assignment of the class, we hosted a visitor whose work provided a source of inspiration; the visitors were Lili Loofbourow (The Week), film historian David Thomson, Hua Hsu (The New Yorker), art journalist Sarah Thornton, and Sarah Burke (then managing editor and writer for the East Bay Express). Below you can see the students, on the day that Sarah Burke visited, and glean what you will about the vibe of the class.

Due to the ongoing renovation of Wheeler Hall, the English Department’s customary home, we met in a seminar room surrounded by cubicle-like offices in the somewhat faceless, low-slung Building C of Hearst Field Annex — thus the name of this site. The syllabus is below.

Creative Non-Fiction: Covering Culture

English 143N (Fall 2016)

You write from what you know, but you write into what you don’t know.

— Grace Paley

There was a child went forth every day;

And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;

And that object became part of him for the day,

or a certain part of the day,

or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

— Walt Whitman

Course Overview

This course is a nonfiction workshop in which you’ll learn to write about many different types of art and culture, from TV and music to theater and visual art — in other words, the genres discussed in the culture-and-arts pages of major newspapers and magazines. By the end of the class, you should come away with a working knowledge of how to write reviews, profiles, “think pieces,” and essays of cultural criticism.

Our semester will be guided by a few basic questions: what can we demand from culture? What does it mean to love or hate a song, TV show, or work of art? How are we changed by our encounters with specific works of art? And how do our arguments about a particular piece of “culture” connect to broader dreams about politics, freedom, community, and our sense of the possible?

Three special features of the course bear specific mention.

First, on five separate occasions, we will be honored to host a visit with an esteemed writer, whose work will be featured in the class. There will also be public events with our visiting writers.

Second, the class will at times take us out of the classroom and have us engage with artists and the public. For one assignment in particular, you will be connecting with local artists and will be publishing some of your work in digital form so as to shape ongoing cultural conversations in the Bay Area and at large.

Third, this course will be co-taught by Professor Saul and English graduate student Ismail Muhammad. The extra “labor power” of the two-person teaching team will be leveraged to help you better conceptualize, write, and rewrite your pieces. We will be, in effect, your ‘editors’ for this course as much as your ‘teachers’ for it — with the goal being to help you rise to a new level in your writing.

Schedule of Readings

Week 1 (Aug. 25): course introduction

Part One: Writing about TV

Week 2 (Aug. 30, Sept. 1): getting our critical bearings — culture, taste, ideology, pleasure

• Carl Wilson, Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (2007), selections, plus responses by Ann Powers (“If the Girls Were All Transported”) and Daphne Brooks (“Let’s Talk About Diana Ross”)

• Jonathan Lethem, “The Beards” (2005)

Week 3 (Sept. 6, 8): fresh angles on fresh TV

• Lili Loofbourow, “Jessica Jones” (The Guardian) (2015), “TV’s New Girls Club” (New York Times) (2015), “The Many Faces of Tatiana Maslany” (New York Times Magazine) (2015), “Why the real winner in the Game of Thrones finale was the music” and “Why Orange is the New Black has the best dialogue on TV”(The Week) (2016)

* * * Lili Loofbourow visits class, Thursday, Sept. 8 * * *

Week 4 (Sept. 13, 15): writing about TV, genres, the larger culture

• Ariel Levy, “Dolls and Feelings: Jill Soloway’s Post-Patriarchal Television” (on Transparent, 2015)

• Emily Nussbaum, “Inside Out” (2016), “Little Boxes” (2015), “Difficult Women” (2013)

• Carlo Rotella, “The Case Against Kojak Liberalism,” from The Wire: Race, Class, and Genre (2012)

Assignment #1 due Sept. 16: a TV-focused ‘taste biography’

Part Two: Writing about Performance

Week 5 (Sept. 20, 22): the actor and the critic (I)

• Dave Hickey, “Mitchum Gets Out of Jail”; Geoffrey O’Brien, “Dana Andrews, or the Male Mask”; John Updike, “Suzie Creamcheese Speaks”; David Hadju, “Elmer Fudd Speaks”; Malu Halasa, “Robert Carlyle”; Jacqueline Carey, “Margaret Dumont,” from OK You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors (1999)

• THURSDAY WORKSHOP

Week 6 (Sept. 27, 29): the actor and the critic (II)

• David Thomson, Why Acting Matters (2015), selections

• Kenneth Tynan, “Laurence Olivier” (1966)

* * * David Thomson visits class, Thurs., Sept. 29 * * *

* * * Lili Loofbourow and David Thomson in conversation * * *

* * * Sept. 29, 5 p.m, Geballe Room, Townsend Center * * *

Week 7 (Oct. 4, 6): the self as performance, the self in solitude

• Rachel Syme, “Selfie: The Revolutionary Potential of Your Own Face” (2015)

• Caity Weaver, GQ profile of Kim Kardashian (2016)

• Ann Powers, “How to Be Alone: Musicians Confront Solitude” (2015)

• THURSDAY WORKSHOP

Assignment #2 due Oct. 7: essay on an actor

Part Three: Writing about Music

Week 8A (Oct. 11): writing about “the album”

• Jonathan Lethem, Fear of Music (2012), selections

Week 8B/9 (Oct. 13, 18, 20): writing about musicians, genres, and the act of listening today

• Hua Hsu, “The Self-Conflict Zone,” “A God Dream,” “Cruel Optimism,” “Growth Spurt,” “The Struggle,” “White Plight?” (all from The New Yorker)

• Dave Hickey, “Air Guitar” (1997)

* * * Mon., Oct. 17, 5 pm, Hua Hsu and Jeff Chang in conversation (Geballe Room) * * *

* * * Hua Hsu visits class TUESDAY, Oct. 18, * * *

• Thurs., Oct. 20: THURSDAY WORKSHOP

Week 10 (Oct. 25, 27): writing about the musician as performer

• Alex Ross, “The Wanderer” (New Yorker)

• Gary Giddins, “Bob Dylan the Singer: Who’s Gonna Throw That Minstrel Boy a Coin?” (2003)

• THURSDAY WORKSHOP

Assignment #3 due Oct. 28: music review-profile or ‘think piece’

Part Four: Writing about Art

Week 11 (Nov. 1, 3): writing about the image

• Teju Cole, “The Superhero Photographs of the Black Lives Matter Movement” (2016), “A Too-Perfect Picture” (2016), “Against Neutrality” (2016), “Perfect and Unrehearsed” (2015), “Death in the Browser Tab” (2015)

• Julian Barnes, “Géricault: Catastrophe into Art” (1989) from Keeping an Eye Open (2015)

• THURSDAY WORKSHOP

Week 12 (Nov. 8, 10): the art world and its players

• Sarah Thornton, 33 Artists in 3 Acts (2014), selections

* * * Sarah Thornton visits class, Thursday, Nov. 10 * * *

* * * Sarah Thornton in conversation with curator Natasha Boas

* * * Nov. 10 at 5 pm, Geballe Room * * *

Week 13 (Nov. 15, 17): the art world and its players, continued

• Janet Malcolm, “Forty-one False Starts” (1994)

• THURSDAY WORKSHOP

Assignment #4 due Nov. 18: studio visit

Part Five: Writing about Place and Local Culture

Week 13 (Nov. 22): cities in history, cities in experience

• Rebecca Solnit, “Tracing a Headland,” from Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2000)

• Rebecca Solnit, “Detroit Arcadia” (2007)

• Carlo Rotella, “Ghosts” (2010), “Someone Else’s Chicago” (2004)

* * * Thanksgiving Break * * *

Week 14 (Nov. 29, Dec. 1): local culture

• Michael Chabon, “Soul Pleasure” (2015)

• Sarah Burke, selections from the East Bay Express

* * * Sarah Burke visits class, Dec. 1 * * *

Assignment #5 due Dec. 2: open-ended piece about local culture

Week 15: Reading/Recitation/Review week (Dec. 6, 8)

• TUESDAY WORKSHOP

* * * Meeting with instructors about assignments #4 and/or #5 * * *

* * * Final Portfolio Due, Dec. 14 * * *

Attendance and Deadlines

For the class to work properly, students need to attend class. Every unexcused absence, up to 3, will be a negative factor in your ‘participation’ grade in the class. Every unexcused absence, after 3, will lower your grade beyond the 20% of the ‘participation’ grade. Unless granted an extension, students should submit their work by 4 p.m. on the designated date. All written work must be completed to receive a passing grade in the course.

Grading

Your four longer writing assignments are worth 80% of your final grade (20% each). Classroom participation, which includes your reading responses and responses to your peers, is worth 20% of your grade.

Main Writing Assignments (in brief)

Assignment #1 — a TV-oriented “taste biography’

Choosing a single TV show as your point of focus, describe how and why you were drawn to it or, alternatively, closed off to it at a certain stage in your life; please be specific as possible in evoking what magnetized or repelled you (e.g. a formula of conflict and resolution, a vision of what makes human beings tick, an actor’s stance toward the world). You are encouraged to reflect on the connections and/or disconnections between the world evoked in TV land and the world of your life outside of it. You can use passages from Lethem’s “The Beards” or Carl Wilson’s writing on Celine Dion as inspiration.

Assignment #2 — essay on an actor

Sketch the charm of a certain actor — e.g. the fit between their persona onstage vs. their persona offstage, the variety (or lack of variety) of the roles they tend to play, the genres they give a new kink, the sense of fun or drama or irony they impart, the qualities (of intelligence or coarseness, animatedness or languor, sensuality or coldness, etc.) they bring to their roles. You are encouraged to use the short essays from OK You Mugs as inspiration and/or models.

Assignment #3 — music review-profile or music ‘think piece’

For the music review-profile: choose a particular album or musical performance (live, music video) and reflect on the meaning, and value, of its soundscape. (You might use Hua Hsu’s shorter New Yorker pieces as models.) For the music ‘think piece’: use a conceptual peg to bring together a few pieces of music that might not be so obviously paired, and reflect on their meaning and value. (You might use Ann Powers’s “How to Be Alone” as a model.)

Assignment #4 — studio visit

Using Sarah Thornton’s 33 Artists in 3 Acts as a point of inspiration, write a profile of a visual artist (whether sculptor, painter, performance artist, cartoonist…) through the narrative of a studio visit. You might choose to organize your interview with the artist through one of the three central topics of Thornton’s book — politics, kinship, and craft. A list of suggested artists to interview, with contact information, will be provided to students.

Assignment #5 — local culture

An open-ended assignment, pegged to the culture of the East Bay, that asks you to reflect on the stories we tell through particular settings, or through particular individuals who take on the status of ‘local institutions’. The assignment might take the form of a straightforward piece of journalism (e.g. a profile of a local chef, activist, proprietor) or of an autobiographical essay centered on your own experience of a particular East Bay place (e.g. an account of some incident — a walk, a pick-up game in a park, a moment of conflict….) — or might find its own form.