ENGL 489: Creative Writing In Your Communities

Course Description

This course requires students to perform direct volunteer work for at least 20 hours with 826michigan.org. 826michigan provides free creative writing workshops to Michigan students, ages 5-18. Students in this course will help students in the community brainstorm, write, revise, share, and publish their creative writing. In order to prepare students for their volunteer experience teaching creative writing, they will read literature that engages directly with social problems such as climate change, poverty, and racism, and read literature that was written using community engaged research practices. Students will also read literary theory about literature’s role in producing and resisting social power, in addition to readings that give advice on how to integrate creativity into one’s everyday life. Students will produce expository writing to connect the literature and literary theory to their volunteer experiences, they will produce creative writing to reflect on their volunteer experiences, and they will learn about the real world implications of their experiences and about how to translate their experiences into career opportunities during in-person sessions with working artists, community partners, and relevant campus offices.
This is a capstone course for the English major, but it is also open to non-majors who have an interest in literature and creative writing. Creativity is for everyone: business people, scientists, parents, students, you, your communities. Learning how to read creative works of literature, write your own creative work, and teach creative writing to others will help you to refine or to get in touch with your own capacity for creative thinking and expression. (W).