Course Description:

How do our complexities as human beings find their way to the page? We too often rely on a “good/bad” binary to shape our characters and considerations in our stories. In this generative workshop, join poet, essayist, and cultural critic, Hanif Abdurraquib, on an exploration on empathy and the dynamics of character in popular culture. The group will use an empathy tree in which participants figure out which characters in popular culture they find empathetic or non-empathetic. Writers will be asked to write a series of short poems that place them in conversation with a figure they have no feelings toward. Over the course of the workshop, the speaker and the figure become closer and closer through the work of looking at each other through a different and more creative lens.

Duration:

3-Hour Course

Genre Type:

Poetry

Course Type:

Workshop and Generative Exercises

Course Level

Semi-Advanced

Dates and Times:

Thursday, February 21

from 12:30 PM to 3:30 PM