Crafting Survival Stories

WRITING X 463.5E

Write the difficult truths of these times in this workshop that helps you tell the stories of how we survive.

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What you can learn.

  • Employ empathy around crises that may not directly affect you
  • Learn to approach catastrophes from a variety of disciplines and perspectives
  • Apply your learning to writing genres of all kinds
  • Explore the impact of catastrophes on individual human lives as well as communities and cultures

About this course:

Catastrophe is becoming more common an experience than Americans imagined possible. Climate change, pandemics, sex trafficking, mass shootings, or singular catastrophic events are on our minds. The result is that our society has become desensitized to the realities of catastrophic events. This workshop supports fiction and nonfiction writers completing a dystopian novel, a memoir about a personal involvement in a catastrophe, or work that delves into the dynamics of a catastrophe. We explore universal themes, truths revealed about humanity, and contributions survivors bring to a world in which mass catastrophe is becoming increasingly common. This course unpacks those truths through lenses including globalization, cross-cultural studies, biology, technology, sociology, psychology, climate change, environmentalism, writing and literature, philosophy, and history.

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Speak to a student advisor. Hours: Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm.
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