In this course, we’ll generate new work and continue with existing projects as we consider/frame/trouble/deploy the child as a literary persona, speaker or character—be it as an innocent, scapegoat, decoy, prophet, or demon. With our own writing always in mind, we will generate definitions of the child to help form categories of its function for creative writers.

Left to my own devices, artists we look to as we consider the child/childhood might include Cameron Awkward-Rich, Lucie Brock-Broido, Lewis Carroll, Harry Crews, Rivkah Galchen, Henry James, Jamaica Kincaid, Randall Jarrell, Li-Young Lee, Sally Mann, Amélie Nothomb, Helen Oyeyemi, Maurice Sendek, Justin Torres, and/or Tarjei Vesaas; we also might confer with theorists and critics like Gaston Bachelard, Louise Chawla, Kenneth Kidd, Golan Y. Moskowitz, Susan Stewart, and Kathryn Bond Stockton.

HOWEVER, all seminar participants will take part in the curation of our final reading/viewing list.