ENGL 2090/4390/4390G - Scottish Literature and Culture lecture series

Instructor: Staff

About this course: This special series features lectures on Scottish literature, art, history, film, and more. The series offers students the opportunity to use the field trips, lectures, and excursions offered in the general program for credit. The course can be adjusted to meet lower level, upper level, or graduate requirements. Note that the lecture series is open to all participants; enrollment is only required to obtain academic credit for participation.

Students wishing to take this course for credit will be required to read a minimum number of books from the lists below, attend all the lectures, excursions, and readings, and keep a journal of the readings, lectures and activities. A paper on a topic selected in consultation with the faculty is also required.

Graduate students are required to read a total of at least six books, and at least one from each column. Graduate students will be required to keep a jounral of all the films, readings, lectures, and excursions and other activities during the program. Graduate students will also be required to produce a paper of 10-15 pages in length, due in late July.

Undergraduates are required to read one book per column, and also to keep a journal of all the readings, lectures, excursions, and other activities. Undergraduates will produce a paper of 5-8 pages in length, due in late July.

 

Scottish Literature and Culture Lecture Series Reading Lists

(Grad students must read 6 books, at least one from each column; undergrads must read 4 books, one book from each column.)

 

Poetry	History	Prose	Literature: More Modern and Contemporary
The Makars: The Poems of Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas Burns, Robert. Selected Poems Henryson, Robert. The Testament of Cresseid and Fables MacDiarmid, Hugh. Selected Poetry: Hugh MacDiarmid Macpherson, James. The Poems of Ossian Morgan, Edwin. Selected Poems Scott, Walter and Kelly, Stuart. The Highland Widow Scott Sir Walter. The Lady of the Lake.	Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney Ascherson, Neal. Stone Voices Buchan, James. Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind Crawford, Robert. Scotland’s Books Devine, Tom. The Scottish Nation 1700-2007 Finlay, Richard. Modern Scotland: 1914-2000 Fry, Michael. Edinburgh: A History of the City Graham, Roderick. An Accidental Tragedy: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots Goring, Rosemary. Scotland: The Autobiography. Herman, Arthur. How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It Kelly, Stuart. Scott-Land: The Man Who Invented a Nation Magnusson, Magnus. The Story of a Nation. McCormick, John. The Flag In The Wind Reid, Harry. Reformation Richards, Eric. The Highland Clearances	Barrie, JM. Farewell Miss Julie Logan. Brown, George Douglas. The House With The Green Shutters Brown, Geore Makay. Greenvoe Buchan, John. The 39 Steps. Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Stevenson, Robert Louis. Kidnapped! Scott, Sir Walter. The Waverley Novels	Crumey, Andrew. Sputnik Caledonia Galloway, Janice. This is Not About Me. Gibbon, Lewis Grassic. A Scots Quair: Sunset Song / Cloud Howe / Grey Granite Gray, Alisdair. Lanark Kelman, James.The Bus Conductor Hines Kennedy, A.L. Paradise. Ritchie, Harry. Acid Plaid: New Scottish Writing. Robertson, James. The Testament of Gideon Mack. Smith, Ali. Other Stories and Other Stories Spark, Muriel. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. O'Rourke, Donny. The New Scottish Poets Mina, Denise. Garnethill Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting.

Search for books online.

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Writing Classes

In addition to the excellent faculty listed, writing classes will be visited by special guests, new ones each week, who will participate in the discussions and also in the Monday night reading series. Students in the writing classes will also be asked to participate in the student reading series, every Tuesday night.

 

Poetry Writing | Fiction Writing | Nonfiction Writing| Screenwriting

 

ENGL 6173 - Intensive Poetry Writing

Instructor: Kay Murphy teaches poetry in the UNO Creative Writing Workshop, and is the author of two books, The Autopsy (Spoon River Poetry Press, 1985) and Belief Blues (Portals Press, 1999). In his introduction to Belief Blues, poet W.D. Snodgrass writes, "Maybe you don't really want to read these poems. Are you sure you want to know about the lives of those at the low end of the scale -- those that World War Two gave the free time to grow dissatisfied and hate-filled, left without a real body of beliefs to enfold them in a stable, protected society?" Murphy's latest project is a book of formal poems. Her poetry has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Spoon River Poetry Quarterly, College English, New Orleans Review, and has been anthologized in From a Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets. Murphy is also a poetry critic; her work appears regularly in Chelsea and other literary journals.

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ENGL 6171 - Intensive Fiction Writing

Instructor:

M.O. Walsh is a fiction writer born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Epoch, and Greensboro Review.  His short stories have also been anthologized in Best NewAmerican Voices, Bar Stories, and Louisiana in Words. 

He currently teaches in the Creative Writing Workshop at The University of New Orleans.

His first book, the story collection THE PROSPECT OF MAGIC is available where fine books are sold!

 

ENGL 6174 - Intensive Nonfiction Writing

Instructor: Stuart Kelly was raised in the Scottish Borders and studied English at Balliol College Oxford, gaining a first class degree and a Master of Studies. He is the Literary Editor of Scotland on Sunday and a freelance critic and writer. Stuart Kelly is the Literary Editor of Scotland on Sunday, and is the author of "The Book of Lost Books", an alternative guide to the world's greatest books that cannot be read. He has also written introductions to John Buchan's Midwinter and Sir Walter Scott's The Highland Widow, as well as an introduction to contemporary Scottish literature for the Scottish Government as part of the European Year of Culture. He is a regular contributor to Radio Scotland's The Book Cafe and has presented documentaries on the lost gospels of the Picts and Benjamin Disraeli. His next books will be "Scottland" and "How to be Experimental: A Z-A of the Avant-Garde".

Click here to read the New York Times' review of his work The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read.

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FTCA 6257 – Intensive Screenwriting

Instructor: Henry Griffin is a screenwriter and filmmaker from New Orleans. His first screenplay Rock Scissors Paper was optioned by Fox 2000 in 1996, which began an illustrious career as a professional screenwriter and script doctor. He has worked for Fox, DreamWorks, New Regency, and New Line Cinema. He wrote, directed, produced and acted in the 1999 short film, Mutiny, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Mutiny went on to win awards at South-by-Southwest, the Seattle International Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, and the Message-to-Man Film Festival (St. Petersburg, Russia). It was also screened at the largest shorts market in the world, in Clermont-Ferrand, France. His 2004 film Tortured by Joy was featured on a DVD in the Believer Magazine. His music video for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, “Complicated Life,” has received over 60,000 hits on Youtube. Two of his forthcoming films (the feature Flip Mavens and the short The Flavor of Plaid) are the result of student production exercises at UNO. He has published essays in the anthology Movies: The Ultimate Insider's Guide, alongside Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, Milos Forman and Martin Scorsese. As an actor, he appeared in the 2000 film, The Way of the Gun. Henry Griffin currently appears as "Henry Griffin" in the HBO series, Treme.

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FTCA 6207- Intensive Playwriting

Instructor: James Winter is the Directing instructor at Southeastern Louisiana University as well as Founding member of InSideOut Productions.  Prior to those positions, he taugfht Western Drama and directing productions at Hebei Normal University in the People's Republic of China.  As a playwright, he took third prize in the Lamia Ink! International One-Page Play Contest in 2006; Lamia Ink! published three of his works.  His full-length play, Dead Flowers received a staged reading at The Actors Studio (NY).  Dead Flowers received three staged readings at The New School for Drama in New York in 2005.  Winter served as Playwright in Residence for Titan Artistic Productions in New York in 1997, and his plays have been produced by theatres and universities in New York, New Orleans, Fort Worth and Cleveland.

As an actor, Winter has performed at The Hudson Guild, The Kennedy Center, 13th Street Repertory Theatre, Madison Square Garden, Cleveland Public Theatre and Dobama Theatre, among others.

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Afternoon Classes

 

FTCA 4330/4330G - Acting Styles

Instructor: James Winter is the Directing instructor at Southeastern Louisiana University as well as Founding member of InSideOut Productions.  Prior to those positions, he taugfht Western Drama and directing productions at Hebei Normal University in the People's Republic of China.  As a playwright, he took third prize in the Lamia Ink! International One-Page Play Contest in 2006; Lamia Ink! published three of his works.  His full-length play, Dead Flowers received a staged reading at The Actors Studio (NY).  Dead Flowers received three staged readings at The New School for Drama in New York in 2005.  Winter served as Playwright in Residence for Titan Artistic Productions in New York in 1997, and his plays have been produced by theatres and universities in New York, New Orleans, Fort Worth and Cleveland.

As an actor, Winter has performed at The Hudson Guild, The Kennedy Center, 13th Street Repertory Theatre, Madison Square Garden, Cleveland Public Theatre and Dobama Theatre, among others.

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FTCA 6020 – Form & Idea in Media

Instructor: Bill Lavender has a BA in English from the University of Arkansas and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. He is the director of the Low Residency Creative Writing program and Managing Editor of UNO Press. He is adjunct Assistant Professor of English.

Mr. Lavender's most recent book of poetry is transfixion, published in 2009 by Trembling Pillow and Garret County Presses. Poems from this book have been published online in E*Ratio and Fieralingua, and in print in YAWP, Fell Swoop, and Prairie Schooner. Books also include I of the Storm (Trembling Pillow 2006), While Sleeping (Chax Press 2004), look the universe is dreaming (Potes and Poets 2002), and Guest Chain (Lavender Ink 1999). He is currently editing a volume of creative responses to Arakawa and Gins, has been a guest editor at Exquisite Corpse and Big Bridge, and has edited an anthology, Another South: Experimental Writing in the South, from University of Alabama Press (2003). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous print magazines including Praire Schooner, Jubilat, New Orleans Review, Gulf Coast Review, Skanky Possum, YAWP, and Fell Swoop, and web publications including Exquisite Corpse, E•ratio , CanWeHaveOurBallBack, Moria, Big Bridge, and Nolafugees. He has published scholarship in Poetics Today and Contemporary Literature.

Click here to read about transfixion, including comments and excerpts.
Click here to read a review of While Sleeping by John Lowther.

 

Click here to view the FTCA 6020 Form and Idea in Media syllabus from 2011 (2012 syllabus is TBA)

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ENGL 4391/4391 G - Writing for the Graphic Novel

Instructor: David Bishop is an award-winner screenwriter and prolific novelist. He writes for the BBC1 drama Doctors, scripts radio dramas, short films, graphic novels and online games. A graduate of Screen Academy Scotland, he holds an MA in Screenwriting [with Distinction]. He teaches part-time on the innovative Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University, where writing genre fiction, graphic novels and screenwriter are all embraced. David has had 20 novels published and his short film script Danny’s Toys won a first prize at the Page International Screenwriting Awards in Los Angeles. His training area is the Borders, Lanarkshire and surrounding areas.

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ENGL 7000 - Thesis Research

Instructor: Bill Lavender has a BA in English from the University of Arkansas and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. He is the director of the Low Residency Creative Writing program and Managing Editor of UNO Press. He is adjunct Assistant Professor of English.

Mr. Lavender's most recent book of poetry is transfixion, published in 2009 by Trembling Pillow and Garret County Presses. Poems from this book have been published online in E*Ratio and Fieralingua, and in print in YAWP, Fell Swoop, and Prairie Schooner. Books also include I of the Storm (Trembling Pillow 2006), While Sleeping (Chax Press 2004), look the universe is dreaming (Potes and Poets 2002), and Guest Chain (Lavender Ink 1999). He is currently editing a volume of creative responses to Arakawa and Gins, has been a guest editor at Exquisite Corpse and Big Bridge, and has edited an anthology, Another South: Experimental Writing in the South, from University of Alabama Press (2003). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous print magazines including Praire Schooner, Jubilat, New Orleans Review, Gulf Coast Review, Skanky Possum, YAWP, and Fell Swoop, and web publications including Exquisite Corpse, E•ratio , CanWeHaveOurBallBack, Moria, Big Bridge, and Nolafugees. He has published scholarship in Poetics Today and Contemporary Literature.

Click here to read about transfixion, including comments and excerpts.
Click here to read a review of While Sleeping by John Lowther.

 

To be repeated for credit until thesis is accepted. Section number will correspond with credit to be earned. This course is reserved for Low Residency MFA students in their final or semi-final semester.

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