Current Courses

LHSP 140.001 Art in Public Spaces/FestiFools
Fridays: 2:30pm-5:30pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker

In this creative course students from all disciplines will be designing and producing their own large-scale animated sculptures, or “puppets,” which will be featured in our 14th-annual FestiFools extravaganza to be held on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor on April 5th, 2020. As the originators of this artistic spectacle, students in this class will design, organize, and develop FestiFools in conjunction with local community, civic, and business partners.

This will be a full “hands-on” experience which will challenge students’ aesthetic assumptions while exploring techniques and tools for the making of large-scale theatrical scenery and sculptural elements for the creation of large-scale public spectacles. Although this course does not require any previous art experience, due to the public nature of the projects, it will be expected that the student already possess an excellent work ethic, great attitude, and the ability to grasp and apply aesthetic principles quickly, in a physically demanding, team-oriented, community-minded environment.

In lieu of exams and papers, studio/lab work outside of course will be required and tailored to students’ schedules (TBD first day of class). Course Fee: $150

LHSP 140.002 From Kansas to Munchkinland: Drawing and Painting
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 6:00-8:00pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker

Close your eyes and imagine that you were born completely without sight. Now imagine that your sight was miraculously restored. What would you “see”? Look at your hand and wiggle your fingers. Is this what you expected your hand to look like?  Would you be able to comprehend the world around you or would everything be such a confusing mass of shapes, lines, colors, textures, spaces, shadows, and light that you would feel overwhelmed by the complexity of it all? 

In this course, we will demystify the art of seeing. Learning to draw and paint requires you to look at the world more closely and to record what you see more accurately. Learning to see, not what you “think” you see, but what you actually see, is the key that can unlock the door to your inner vision. Once you can access visual phenomenon through drawing and painting you will find out how much there is to see and how beautiful things really are. 

One half of the course will be in black and white, drawing the human body; something simultaneously intimate and yet completely foreign. The second half of the course will concentrate on seeing the world in color through painting.

No previous experience necessary, however due to the rigorous nature of the course, students will be expected to possess a positive, open attitude, and strong work ethic. 

Note: There is a $150 lab fee, which covers the hiring of the nude model(s) and all art supplies. Mandatory attendance and active class participation required. Expect extensive outside work on homework assignments. Museum trips (TBA) may be required.

LHSP 230.001 The Playwright and the Dramaturg
Tuesdays & Thursdays 10:00-11:30am
Instructor: Shelley Manis
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2012

This course is a deep-dive into collaborative processes of playwriting and dramaturgy. Playwrights tend to get what limited glory there is around critically and/or popularly celebrated plays, but what many people outside the world of theater (and increasingly TV and film as well) don’t know is that dramaturgs often play as crucial a role in the development of new work as playwrights/screenwriters themselves. Successful dramaturgs and playwrights alike develop expertise in writing, theater history and production, theatrical genres and structures, character development, and the like—and their collaboration can make all the difference between an “ok” play and a major success. In this course, I hope to pair students interested in playwriting with students interested in dramaturgy to create and produce a 10-minute play festival by the end of term. We’ll try to figure out what makes an excellent play work, as well as what makes an excellent playwright and/or an excellent dramaturg. We’ll spend the first third of the course on an overview of the arts of dramaturgy and playwriting through reading and discussing instructional texts by experts, reverse-engineering playtexts and recorded performances, and talking with working playwrights and dramaturgs. We’ll shift focus in the 2nd third of the class to developing and, ultimately, producing a small festival of our own new work. (As you might guess, then, there will be requirements outside of class time to make this happen.)  

This course will include active learning and discussion in-class, experimentation with different kinds of writing (analyses, proposals, annotated bibliographies, audience outreach materials such as program notes and websites, and of course, play texts) and long-term collaboration. Students will read theoretical texts, instructional texts, and plays (short and full-length), and they’ll have the opportunity to watch live and recorded performance as well as discuss playwrighting and dramaturgy with working professionals. Everyone will be provided extensive feedback both from me and from peers and will have reasonable/appropriate artistic freedom. The course grading scheme is labor-based.  

LHSP 230.002 Poetry, Magic, & Science
Mondays & Wednesdays 10:00-11:30am
Instructor: Scott Beal
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2012

Can a poem lift a curse or turn lead into gold? Can it illuminate cell biology or mimic a fractal? Poetry has a rich history of association with both magic and science. We may describe a poem as “experimental” or say it has “transformed” us. However, we commonly see science and magic in opposition. (Consider Arthur Weasley's bewilderment over muggle technology as one illustration.) This course will invite students to question how these seemingly opposing forces operate within poetry, and to practice their own scientific verbal magic. To develop our thinking we will read critical essays, magical and scientific treatises, and a large variety of poems with an emphasis on contemporary poets. Writing assignments will include critical reflections and close readings as well as a hefty dose of creative writing, building toward a final portfolio of poems that enacts each student's vision for how science and magic collide. No expertise with poetry, science, or witchcraft required. We will use in-class exercises to play with concepts and construction of poems, and both skeptics and avid poets should leave the course with a richer understanding and enjoyment of poetry. 

LHSP 230.003 The Children’s Story: Re-thinking Children’s Literature
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 1pm-2:30pm
Instructor: Carol Tell
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2060

“… I don’t write children’s books… I write, and somebody says: that’s for children.”
--Maurice Sendak

The best children’s books and films stay with us; they grow and deepen as we ourselves mature. Rather than label these pieces of artwork as “childish,” in this class we will embrace their artistry, sophistication, humanity, and courageous themes. We will examine the complex ways that children (and animals) are depicted, and consider how children’s books portray different social identities and traumas. We’ll be reading diverse genres of children’s literature: storybooks (The Cat and the Hat, Eloise, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Snowy Day), fairy tales (the Brother’s Grimm), children’s poetry (Shel Silverstein), novels (from Charlotte’s Web to Harry Potter); we’ll also watch some films (The Lion King). But the emphasis will be on your own creative work. For your culminating project, each of you will write and illustrate your own children’s book.  

LHSP 230.004 Event Zero: Writing Into Mystery
Tuesdays & Thursdays 4:00-5:30pm
Instructor: Ray McDaniel
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2012

Every major event leaves impressions on the culture that receives it. Those events influence the art and narratives we produce, but we also understand those events through and because those works of art. But what happens—what COULD happen—if we only had the art and no direct knowledge of the event? What if the event never happened?

In this section of LHSP 230, we will combine creative work and scholarship to investigate and also practice the relationship between social and civic events and popular art and media. In essence, we will create the trace evidence and residual arts in reference to an event that never occurred—we will essentially engineer fantasy or sf or speculative fiction for the purposes of understanding what culture can do. The class will determine as a group the details of the hypothetical event, and then individuals and teams will produce the arts and writing that obliquely refer to or reflect that event, depending on their artistic skills, habits, and interests. The class will culminate in a collection of artifacts that could only exist in a world in which Event Zero—whatever it is—transpired. 

LHSP 230.005 Writing in Motion: Composing with Bodies, Words, and other Media
Mondays & Wednesdays 9:30-11:00am
Instructor: Naomi Silver
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall Dance Studio

This class will explore the ways we can make arguments, tell stories, and test ideas through movement in space as well as through words written on a page or spoken aloud. We will enter this process through the thematic frame of how arts—and movement arts, such as dance, in particular—engage with and enact social justice. To that end, we will read texts in a variety of genres and media that consider this relationship, including films, reviews, literary works, photographs, and more. As a class, we will attend two UMS performances that engage questions of identity, community, and social justice in unique ways. Our writing this semester will consist of reflections, interpretations, analyses, and arguments created both in words and in movement (and possibly other media, depending on students’ interest). We will be moving almost every class, in short improvised and composed responses to prompts of various kinds, and we will create longer compositions to share at the end of the semester. The class will meet in the Alice Lloyd Hall dance studio. No prior dance experience is necessary to succeed in this class—just a willingness to move and to experiment with new compositional modes and media! 

ENG 223.003 Creative Writing
Mondays & Wednesdays 2:30-4pm
Instructor: Hannah Webster
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2060

Note: Though this course is offered by the English Department, it does fulfill your LSWA/LHSP course requirement for the winter semester. The class is capped at twenty students, and ten seats have been reserved specifically for Lloyd Scholars. Only one  section of this course fulfills the LSWA/LHSP course requirement. 

LHSP 125.001 Writing and Seeing
Mondays & Wednesdays 9:30am-11am
Instructor: Scott Beal
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2012

When William Blake wrote in 1799, “As the Eye is formed such are its Powers,” he noted what we see is shaped by who we are and what we believe. Almost 200 years later, Alice Fulton wrote “let my glance be passional / toward the universe and you,” calling for vision as an active approach to the world, a form of attention that clarifies truths and embraces hidden possibilities. In this course we will use writing to explore our visions of ourselves and each other, of our natures and cultures. We will investigate art and artifacts—some we know well, and some we will discover on field trips to museums and other spots of interest—to question how they both embody and challenge our ways of seeing. Writing is often (as John Berger has pointed out) “an attempt to explain how, either metaphorically or literally, ‘you see things.’” Our course will engage with all aspects of the writing process, from brainstorming and research to collaboration and revision—to make our glances more passional, to see our subjects more sharply and deeply, and to communicate our ways of seeing most effectively to audiences.

LHSP 125.002 Creative Obsessions and Writing
Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:30am-1pm
Instructor: Carol Tell
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2012

What are your obsessions? Are they quirky and unique (and maybe embarrassing) (a schlocky song, a character from a book, your family recipe for meatloaf), or more mainstream but no less haunting (a love interest, a social identity, a sports team, the number of likes you get on Instagram)? From childhood crushes to white whales, our obsessions can be self-defining and often drive us to write/create beautiful things. But as much as they define us, they can occasionally delude or even destroy us.

This introductory writing class will allow you to explore—and write about—intellectual, aesthetic, and personal obsessions—both your own and those of writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians. We’ll read texts (from such writers as Claudia Rankine, David Foster Wallace, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Maurice Sendak), watch a film (Brokeback Mountain), and listen to and create a podcast, all of which will explore obsessive love, work, and creativity. But most of all, you’ll be figuring out how to write effectively for college—how to parse a writing prompt, what words like “argument” and “revision” really mean, and how to move (quickly) beyond the five-paragraph essay to create complex and challenging essays.

LHSP 125.003 Genre Wonderland
Mondays & Wednesdays 4:00pm-5:30pm
Instructor: Raymond McDaniel
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2012

Noir, fantasy, romantic comedy, thriller, horror: we take categories like these for granted when we talk about film or literature, but what (if anything) do they have to do with how we imagine and narrate out own lives? In this section of LHSP 125, we will examine: what it means, why it has to exist, whether anything exists outside of it, how we use it to construct experience and knowledge as consumers, scholars and people just trying to makes sense of it all. Texts will include both literature and multimedia references both high and low, common and obscure, and skills will be developed in analysis, argument, narrative, and writing into and across academic curricula. Tolerance for stylistic excess encouraged but not required.

LHSP 125.004 Monsters and Beasts
Tuesdays & Thursdays 10:00am-11:30am
Instructor: Angela Berkley
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2012

Zombies, vampires, werewolves, cyborgs, yetis, witches, ghosts, demons and countless others—they stalk us relentlessly from the pages of our favorite novels and stories. Their creepy images haunt us from movie and TV screens—and we love every minute of it, however frightened we might be. Why do we fear these beastly monsters, and why do we love them? What's behind our enduring urge to create and consume narratives of these inhuman imaginary beings? Are they as inhuman as they seem—or is what captivates us about monsters the unsettling suggestions and foreboding images they offer us about who and what we really are?

All good writing starts with good questions, and in our course, we will explore a range of texts (novels, stories, comics, photos, paintings, TV shows and movies) that raise questions and make arguments about the cultural and political meaning of the monsters we create. You will read and write in response to these questions and arguments, through essays, images, sounds, and stories. You will engage with each other as you explore these questions as readers and writers, using the experiences of your peers to develop your insights and conclusions about what it means to be a monster lover in 2019. You will practice readerly and writerly skills together—skills that you can readily apply to the writing that awaits you beyond this course. 

LHSP 125.005 The Hidden Lives of Ordinary Things
Mondays & Wednesdays 10:30am-12:00pm
Instructor: Cat Cassel
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2060

In this writing-intensive course, we will explore the personal, cultural, historical, and philosophical significance of the material objects that surround us in our everyday lives, and develop original insights and arguments in a series of writing assignments designed to introduce you to personal narrative, analytic writing, argumentative writing, and multimodal composition. Good arguments stem from good questions, and academic essays allow writers to write their way toward answers, toward figuring out what they think. Using things as an anchor for our inquiry, we will focus on the creation of complex, analytic, well-supported arguments addressing questions that matter in academic contexts. The course also hones your critical thinking and reading skills with readings from a variety of genres, which will serve as models or prompts for your writing assignments. Working closely with your peers and myself, you will develop your essays through peer review workshops and extensive revision and editing. The specific questions that you pursue in your essays will be guided by your own interests. 

LHSP 125.006 Our TV, Our Selves
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:30pm-4:00pm
Instructor: Shelley Manis
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2060

How many times have you heard someone say (or have you said), “It’s just TV!” In this class, those, as they say, are “fightin’ words.” Television—from high drama like Breaking Bad to goofy animation like Bob’s Burgers—makes meaning, makes arguments. Television both reflects and creates current attitudes about public issues; and it can and should inspire important, sometimes difficult, conversations. I’ve designed this course around one major question that should be important to those of us who love TV (or who hate it!), who live for the next episode of Riverdale or the next season of Queer Eye, or who would rather eat glass than watch Game of Thrones: How does TV make meaning? How does it contribute to our senses of self—as individuals, as citizens or residents of the U.S. and/or other home nations, as [you-fill-in-the-blank]?

The content that we study will be television; the end result of our study will be an intimate relationship with rigorous thinking, writing, and revising processes.

We will practice strategies of close reading, thick description, research, analysis, reflection, revision, and responding in writing to a variety of texts: television episodes and series (some chosen by me, some by you), academic articles, podcasts, and mainstream publications. We will engage in the kinds of tasks you will be asked to do often as a college student: blogging, social media writing, informal writing, planning and conducting research, review writing, analytical essay writing, etc. We will argue about the virtues and shortcomings of the shows we watch. We will disagree (respectfully but enthusiastically) about all manner of things. We will “live every week like it’s shark week.”

This will all help you look anew at something you likely know well (tv) as you practice making dynamic, savvy, even artistic academic arguments. And we’ll hopefully have a lot of fun doing it.

“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”

LHSP 151.001 What Matters Most?: Big Questions, Fabulous Failures, and Creative Genres in Writing and the Arts

Tuesdays 4-5pm
Instructor: Carol Tell
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2060

You see how I try
To reach with words
What matters most
And how I fail.
- Czesław Miłosz, “A Photograph”

College is a time not just to pursue a major or profession, but to ask big questions of ourselves and our world: Who are we? What do we want? How shall we live in the world? One essential way of understanding such questions is through writing and the arts. In this discussion-based seminar, we will explore how different writers and artists interpret such topics as identity, purpose, community, and aesthetics. We’ll think about labels like “success” and “failure,” and what it means to take an aesthetic risk. Yes, these are hefty subjects for a mini-course--but we’ll discuss and respond to them in concrete ways through specific pieces of writing and artwork. Each week we’ll examine a different genre--tv and film (Black Mirror to Black Swan), poetry and fiction (Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro), and music (Bob Dylan to Beyonce) and the visual arts. We’ll visit an art museum, attend a University performance, and explore the role of social media in writing and the arts. Along with short assignments and weekly blogging, students will produce their own creative, semester-long project in the genre of their choice.

LHSP 230.001 Literary Journal Publishing & Editing  (ended up being canceled this semester)
Thursdays 11am-2pm
Instructor: Alexander Weinstein
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2060

In this class you will learn the necessary techniques to critically discuss poetry, fiction, non-fiction, art, and music in order to become successful editors. We will examine a wide variety of leading national and international literary magazines and small press journals, focusing our attention on the creative work of contemporary writers. Much of this class will focus on gaining experience in literary editing and publishing in order to produce your own literary and art journals and online magazines. During the semester the class will take field trips to the Duederstadt center, Hatcher Library, and Hollanders to become familiarized with the resources available to you on campus and in the community. You will learn to use Adobe Creative Suite programs (including Photoshop and InDesign) in order to gain the experience and confidence needed to produce your own journals.  These workshops will lead to you creating your own posters (to advertise the LHSP Arts and Literary Journal), your own artistic/literary websites, and your own print journal.  The class culminates with you designing and publishing you own printed literary journals. 

LHSP 230.002 Creative Communities
Fridays 10:00am-2:00pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker

Students in this class will co-design a creative community within the Lloyd Scholars Program for Writing and the Arts while collaborating and building community connections with students at Ypsilanti Community High School. Through inventive planning, organization, logistics, and implementation, students will have the opportunity to work together with other communities to experience first-hand what it takes to create their own relevant public arts exhibitions/performances/installations. Additionally, students will attend artist talks and performances and will disseminate these varied creative experiences via dynamic group discussions and written reflections.

Note: LHSP 230.002 is limited to sophomore student leaders in the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program.

LHSP 140.001 Art in Public Spaces/Festifools
Fridays: 2:30pm-5:30pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker

In this creative course students from all disciplines will be designing and producing their own large-scale animated sculptures, or “puppets”, which will be featured in our 13th-annual FestiFools extravaganza to be held on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor on April 7th, 2019. (See: WonderFoolProductions.org) As the originators of this artistic spectacle, students in this class will design, organize, and develop FestiFools in conjunction with local community, civic, and business partners.This will be a full ‘hands-on’ experience which will challenge students’ aesthetic assumptions while exploring techniques and tools for the making of large-scale theatrical scenery and sculptural elements for the creation of large-scale public spectacles.

Although this course does not require any previous art experience, due to the public nature of the projects, it will be expected that the student already possess an excellent work ethic, great attitude, and the ability to grasp and apply aesthetic principles quickly, in a physically demanding, team oriented, community-minded environment.

In lieu of exams and papers, studio/lab work outside of course will be required and tailored to students’ schedules (TBD first day of class).Course Fee:
$150

LHSP 140.002 From Kansas to Munchkinland: Drawing and Painting
Mondays & Wednesdays: 6:00-8:00pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker

Close your eyes and imagine that you were born completely without sight. Now imagine that your sight was miraculously restored. What would you “see”? Look at your hand and wiggle your fingers. Is this what you expected your hand to look like?  Would you be able to comprehend the world around you or would everything be such a confusing mass of shapes, lines, colors, textures, spaces, shadows and light that you would feel overwhelmed by the complexity of it all?  

In this course we will demystify the art of seeing. Learning to draw and paint requires you to look at the world more closely and to record what you see more accurately. Learning to see, not what you “think” you see, but what you actually see, is the key that can unlock the door to your inner vision. Once you can access visual phenomenon through drawing and painting you will find out how much there is to see and how beautiful things really are. One half of the course will be in black and white, drawing the human body; something simultaneously intimate and yet completely foreign. The second half of the course will concentrate on seeing the world in color through painting. 

No previous experience necessary, however due to the rigorous nature of the course, students will be expected to possess a positive, open attitude and strong work ethic.Note: There is a $150 lab fee, which covers the hiring of the nude model(s) and all art supplies.

Mandatory attendance and active class participation required. Expect extensive outside work on homework assignments. Museum trips (TBA) may be required.

LHSP 228.001 Telling Stories: The Rhetoric and Representation of Race and Ethnicity
Mondays & Wednesdays: 9:30am-11am
Instructor: Scott Beal

In Storytelling for Social Justice, Lee Anne Bell writes, “The diverse groups that make up the United States provide a rich source of stories to draw upon, but in a deeply racialized society stained by structural racism, not all stories are equally acknowledged, valued, or affirmed…Some stories are supported by the power structure, while others must fight tenaciously to be heard.” Bell's words imply two meanings of “telling stories”: by telling and being open to many different stories we can expand our understanding of what it means to live in this country; but also, stories themselves “tell” or reveal a deeper understanding of how power shapes narratives around race.

In this course on writing and rhetoric you will examine an array of stories that shed light on race and ethnicity, applying a set of critical perspectives to look beyond the surface of the stories apparent in all sorts of texts, including film, television, speeches, fiction, poetry, photographs, art, comedy, and music. Writing for this class includes a personal journal in which you track your responses and the development of your ideas, an end of semester reflection, and three papers examining the ways different stories “tell” us something about which “stories are supported,” and why and how others “must fight tenaciously to be heard.” 

Note: Fulfills LSA’s Race and Ethnicity distribution requirement

LHSP 230.001 Hamilsations: How a Concept Album-Turned Mega-Musical Challenges Everything We Thought We Knew about U.S. History
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 11am-12:30pm
Instructor: Shelley Manis

Hamilton is everywhere. It’s a show that wasn’t originally meant to be a show, and it has seemingly outgrown the limits of the musical, even of the mega-musical. It’s a show about who the U.S. as a nation want(ed) to be and how we got here--what arguments and debates have shaped us. It’s a show that’s generated lots of arguments and debates about who we are and what we represent. It’s a show that participates in public arguments and debates. It’s a show about history, yes, and representation, yes. But it’s really a show about writing. It cracks writing wide open, as it does everything else it touches (hearts, minds, genres), and it’s a show that generates lots of writing. 

Our purpose in this course will be to explore these arguments in and about the show--how it crafts them, who it speaks to, what it invites--in order to craft our own, so that we can join conversations it raises. We’ll do this by engaging with scholarly work in theater and history, reading some of the same source material Miranda used and analyzing how he translated that knowledge to the stage, reading original historical documents, and closely, meticulously analyzing the music, lyrics, staging, and critical and fan reception of the show. 

We’ll use our engagement with Hamilton and its material to think about how conversations of consequence happen, how artistic arguments work, how to figure out who we’re talking to when we join a conversation, and how best to reach them. We’ll use it to figure out how to write and why we should! If you catch Hamilaria in the process (or if you already have it!), I’m ok with that. Even if you decide you care not one bit for Hamilton, I’m ok with that, too. Either way, we’ll “write [our] way out” of the classroom, into the conversation(s), and alongside each other as artists, citizens, and scholars. And hopefully enjoy each other along the way and come out the other end better for it. The end result of our work will be our own piece of public writing.

Special note: If you're tempted to enroll in this course only because you want to see Hamilton, think twice. This is an intellectually and artistically rigorous course requiring extensive engagement with scholarly work, historical documents, multimodal research, and a lot of writing."

LHSP 230.003 The Children’s Story: Re-thinking Children’s Literature
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 1pm-2:30pm
Instructor: Carol Tell

“… I don’t write children’s books… I write, and somebody says: that’s for children.” --Maurice Sendak

The best children’s books and films stay with us; they grow and deepen as we ourselves mature. Rather than label these pieces of artwork as “childish,” in this class we will embrace their artistry, sophistication, humanity, and courageous themes. We will examine the complex ways that children (and animals) are depicted, and consider how children’s books portray different social identities and traumas.We’ll be reading diverse genres of children’s literature: storybooks (The Cat and the Hat, Eloise, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Snowy Day), fairy tales (from the Brother’s Grimm to Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke), children’s poetry (Shel Silverstein), novels (from Charlotte’s Web to Harry Potter); we’ll also watch some films (The Lion King, Beasts of the Southern Wild). But the emphasis will be on your own creative work. For your culminating project, each of you will write and illustrate your own children’s book.

LHSP 230.005 Writing in Motion: Composing with Bodies, Words, and other Media
Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:30am-11:00am
Instructor: Naomi Silver

This class will explore the ways we can make arguments, tell stories, and test ideas through movement in space as well as  through words written on a page or spoken aloud. We will enter this process through the thematic frame of how arts—and movement arts, such as dance, in particular—engage with and enact social justice. To that end, we will read texts in a variety of genres and media that consider this relationship, including films, reviews, literary works, photographs, and more. As a class, we will attend two UMS performances at the Power Center—by Camille A. Brown & Dancers and by the multimedia artist Carrie Mae Weems—that engage questions of identity, community, and social justice in unique ways. Our writing this semester will consist of reflections, interpretations, analyses, and arguments created both in words and in movement (and possibly other media, depending on students’ interest). We will be moving almost every class, in short improvised and composed responses to prompts of various kinds, and we will create longer compositions to share at the end of the semester. The class will meet in the Lloyd Hall dance studio. No prior dance experience is necessary to succeed in this class— just a willingness to move and to experiment with new compositional modes and media!

LHSP 125.001 Writing and Seeing
Mondays & Wednesdays 9:30am-11am
Instructor: Scott Beal

When William Blake wrote in 1799, “As the Eye is formed such are its Powers,” he noted what we see is shaped by who we are and what we believe. Almost 200 years later, Alice Fulton wrote “let my glance be passional / toward the universe and you,” calling for vision as an active approach to the world, a form of attention that clarifies truths and embraces hidden possibilities. In this course we will use writing to explore our visions of ourselves and each other, of our natures and cultures. We will investigate art and artifacts — some we know well, and some we will discover on field trips to museums and other spots of interest — to question how they both embody and challenge our ways of seeing. Writing is often (as John Berger has pointed out) “an attempt to explain how, either metaphorically or literally, ‘you see things.’” Our course will engage with all aspects of the writing process, from brainstorming and research to collaboration and revision — to make our glances more passional, to see our subjects more sharply and deeply, and to communicate our ways of seeing most effectively to audiences.

LHSP 125.002 Creative Obsessions and Writing
Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:30am-1pm
Instructor: Carol Tell

What are your obsessions? Are they quirky and unique (and maybe embarrassing) (a schlocky song, a character from a book, your family recipe for meatloaf), or more mainstream but no less haunting (a love interest, a social identity, a sports team, the number of likes you get on Instagram)? From childhood crushes to white whales, our obsessions can be self-defining and often drive us to write/create beautiful things. But as much as they define us, they can occasionally delude or even destroy us. This introductory writing class will allow you to explore—and write about—intellectual, aesthetic, and personal obsessions—both your own and those of writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians. We’ll read texts (from such writers as Claudia Rankine, David Foster Wallace, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Maurice Sendak), watch a film (Brokeback Mountain), and listen to and create a podcast, all of which will explore obsessive love, work, and creativity. But most of all, you’ll be figuring out how to write effectively for college—how to parse a writing prompt, what words like “argument” and “revision” really mean, and how to move (quickly) beyond the five-paragraph essay to create complex and challenging essays.

LHSP 125.003 Genre Wonderland
Mondays & Wednesdays 2:30pm-4:00pm
Instructor: Raymond McDaniel

Noir, fantasy, romantic comedy, thriller, horror: we take categories like these for granted when we talk about film or literature, but what (if anything) do they have to do with how we imagine and narrate out own lives?

In this section of LHSP 125, we will examine: what it means, why it has to exist, whether anything exists outside of it, how we use it to construct experience and knowledge as consumers, scholars and people just trying to makes sense of it all. Texts will include both literature and multimedia references both high and low, common and obscure, and skills will be developed in analysis, argument, narrative, and writing into and across academic curricula. Tolerance for stylistic excess encouraged but not required.

LHSP 125.004 Monsters and Beasts
Tuesdays & Thursdays 10:00am-11:30am
Instructor: Angela Berkley

Zombies, vampires, werewolves, cyborgs, yetis, witches, ghosts, demons and countless others--they stalk us relentlessly from the pages of our favorite novels and stories. Their creepy images haunt us from movie and TV screens--and we love every minute of it, however frightened we might be. Why do we fear these beastly monsters, and why do we love them? What's behind our enduring urge to create and consume narratives of these inhuman imaginary beings? Are they as inhuman as they seem--or is what captivates us about monsters the unsettling suggestions and foreboding images they offer us about who and what we really are?

All good writing starts with good questions, and in our course, we will explore a range of texts (novels, stories, comics, photos, paintings, TV shows and movies) that raise questions about the cultural and political values and meanings of the monsters we create. You will read and write in response to these questions, generating a series of polished essays and developing a useful set of reading and writing skills that you can apply to the writing that awaits you beyond this course.

LHSP 125.006 Our TV, Our Selves
Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:00-2:30pm
Instructor: Shelley Manis

How many times have you heard someone say (or have you said), “It’s just TV!” In this class, those, as they say, are “fightin’ words.” Television—from high drama like Breaking Bad to goofy animation like Bob’s Burgers—makes meaning, makes arguments. Television both reflects and creates current attitudes about public issues; and it can and should inspire important, sometimes difficult, conversations. I’ve designed this course around one major question that should be important to those of us who love TV (or who hate it!), who live for the next episode of Scandal or the next season of Daredevil, or who can. not. even. with Game of Thrones: How does TV make meaning? How does it contribute to our sense of self—as individuals, as a nation, as [you-fill-in-the-blank-based-on-your-interests]? The content that we study will be television; the end result of our study will be an intimate relationship with rigorous thinking, writing, and revising processes.

We will practice strategies of close reading, thick description, research, analysis, reflection, revision, and responding in writing to a variety of texts: television episodes and series (some chosen by me, some by you), academic articles, podcasts, and mainstream publications. We will engage in the kinds of tasks you will be asked to do often as a college student: blogging, social media writing, informal writing, planning and conducting research, review writing, analytical essay writing, etc. We will argue about the virtues and shortcomings of the shows we watch. We will disagree (respectfully but enthusiastically) about all manner of things. We will “live every week like it’s shark week.” This will all help you look anew at something you likely know well (tv) as you practice making dynamic, savvy, even artistic academic arguments. And we’ll hopefully have a lot of fun doing it.

“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”

LHSP 230.001 Literary Journal Publishing & Editing
Mondays 11am-2pm
Instructor: Alexander Weinstein

In this class you will learn the necessary techniques to critically discuss poetry, fiction, non-fiction, art, and music in order to become successful editors. We will examine a wide variety of leading national and international literary magazines and small press journals, focusing our attention on the creative work of contemporary writers. Much of this class will focus on gaining experience in literary editing and publishing in order to produce your own literary and art journals and online magazines. During the semester the class will take field trips to the Duederstadt center, Hatcher Library, and Hollanders to become familiarized with the resources available to you on campus and in the community. You will learn to use Adobe Creative Suite programs (including Photoshop and InDesign) in order to gain the experience and confidence needed to produce your own journals.  These workshops will lead to you creating your own posters (to advertise the LHSP Arts and Literary Journal), your own artistic/literary websites, and your own print journal.  The class culminates with you designing and publishing you own printed literary journals. 

LHSP 230.002 Creative Communities
Tuesdays & Thursdays 5:00pm-7:00pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker

Students in this class will co-design a creative community which will help initiate and produce public artwork for ArtPrize, (Grand Rapids, Michigan), The U-M Bicentennial and YES - Ypsilanti Experimental Space (Ypsilanti, Michigan). Through inventive planning, organization, logistics and implementation students will have the opportunity to work together with other communities to experience first-hand what it takes to create their own relevant public arts exhibitions/performances/installations. Additionally, students will attend artist talks and performances and will disseminate these varied creative experiences via dynamic group discussions and written reflections.

WRT 302.001 Global Communication: Rhetorical Approaches to Multilingual Conversation
Wednesdays 3:00-4:00pm
Instructor: Carol Tell

This course prepares students to lead conversation groups with multilingual undergraduates. Among the topics to be considered are seeking clarification, planning for a conversation, taking a position, celebrating successes and overcoming nervousness, approaching different communicative contexts, engaging in casual conversation, and using social media. Students in this course lead weekly conversation groups beginning in the second week of the semester. Students also observe one other conversation group and develop a creative outreach project that builds upon bi-weekly blog posts.

LHSP 140.001 Art in Public Spaces/Festifools
Fridays: 2:30pm-5:30pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker

In this creative course students from all disciplines will be designing and producing their own large-scale animated sculptures, or “puppets,” which will be featured in our twelfth-annual FestiFools extravaganza to be held on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor on April 8th, 2017. (See: WonderFoolProductions.org) As the originators of this artistic spectacle, students in this class will design, organize, and develop FestiFools in conjunction with local community, civic, and business partners.

This will be a full ‘hands-on’ experience which will challenge students’ aesthetic assumptions while exploring techniques and tools for the making of large-scale theatrical scenery and sculptural elements for the creation of large-scale public spectacles. Although this course does not require any previous art experience, due to the public nature of the projects, it will be expected that the student already possess an excellent work ethic, great attitude, and the ability to grasp and apply aesthetic principles quickly, in a physically demanding, team oriented, community-minded environment.

In lieu of exams and papers, studio/lab work outside of course will be required and individually tailored to students’ schedules (TBD first day of class). 

LHSP 140.002 From Kansas to Munchkinland: Drawing and Painting
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall Art Studio

Close your eyes and imagine that you were born completely without sight. Now imagine that your sight was miraculously restored. What would you “see”? Look at your hand and wiggle your fingers. Is this what you expected your hand to look like? Would you be able to comprehend the world around you or would everything be such a confusing mass of shapes, lines, colors, textures, spaces, shadows and light that you would feel overwhelmed by the complexity of it all?

In this course we will demystify the art of seeing. Learning to draw and paint requires you to look at the world more closely and to record what you see more accurately.

Learning to see, not what you “think” you see, but what you actually see, is the key that can unlock the door to your inner vision. Once you can access visual phenomenon through drawing and painting you will find out how much there is to see and how beautiful things really are.

One half of this course will be in black and white, drawing the human body; something simultaneously intimate and yet completely foreign. The second half of the course will concentrate on seeing the world in color through painting.

No previous experience necessary, however due to the rigorous nature of the course, students will be expected to possess a positive, open attitude and strong work ethic.

LHSP 230.001 Tony Kushner and his Antecedents
Tuesdays and Thursdays: 11:00am-12:30pm
Instructor: Shelley Manis
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2060

You probably know Tony Kushner for his Oscar-Nominated screenplays of 2012’s Lincoln. Or you may be familiar with 2005’s Munich (about terrorists who kidnapped and killed several Israeli athletes during the 1977 Olympics). Both were directed by Steven Spielberg. Also in 2005, HBO produced his self-adapted screenplay of his Pulitzer Prize-Winning Angels in America (starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and a long list of other ridiculously amazing actors).

In this class we’ll read/watch these films as well as some of his other drama to think about how plays/movies in general “work” and how his kind of work argues for a complicated idea of “justice” in a complicated world. We’ll also read supplementary material (articles, poems, op-eds, etc.) that help us put Kushner’s work into perspective, culminating in a class-produced staged reading of “Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy” as the semester-long project.

In a 1994 essay for Newsweek, “American Things,” Kushner refers repeatedly to the notion of “justice” without ever fully, explicitly, defining it. For him, justice in America is linked to democracy (with a lower-case “d”), as well as to a sense of collective responsibility to the past and to the future, to progress, to exploring the tensions “between the margin and the center, the many and the few, the individual and society, the dispossessed and the possessors.” In this class we’ll ask, among other things: What is justice? Do his plays/screenplays help advance it? If so, how?In this course, we will read and write about Kushner’s plays and screenplays as dramaturgs (who have an artistic role lying somewhere between director and playwright) do:
·By looking closely at the dramatic structure, language, content, and themes of the plays (that is, by analyzing their internal dramaturgy);
·By becoming conversant in the historical and artistic moments in which his plays appear (that is, by analyzing their contexts);
·By considering what implicit or explicit arguments his plays make or questions they ask;
·By creating analytical production and outreach materials of different genres for a variety of audiences; and ultimately
·By conceptualizing and mounting a staged reading of one of Kushner’s shorter plays

As we read and write about Kushner’s work, we’ll be analyzing, reverse-engineering, and practicing genres like script analysis and annotation, staging techniques, dramatic criticism, performance reviews, program notes, publicity posters, websites, etc. All of this will provide practice for planning and producing our own production, and will build to help us achieve the ultimate course goals of:

Course Goals
·Establishing Genre Knowledge and Facility: Exploring and analyzing a genre (or genres) or writing/art that integrates another art form, such as music, the visual arts, film, dance, or theater.
·Practicing Reverse-Engineering & Analysis: Analyzing models in that genre and writing both formal and informal essays and critiques.
·Sustaining Long-Term Focus & Production: Creating and turning in a semester-long project. These projects are the centerpiece of the course, but the focus should be not only on the project itself but also on the process. Instructors will integrate (or “scaffold”) aspects of that process into the course—students will therefore create storyboards, write proposals, develop blogs, or pitch/promote projects to the class for critique.
·Engaging in peer critiques: Practicing effective peer review methods on short- and long-term projects.
·Cultivating Reflective Processes: Reflecting on the experience of creating a long-term creative project.

LHSP 230.003 The Children's Story: Re-envisioning Children's Literature
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 9:30am-11:00am
Instructor: Carol Tell
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2012

“…I don’t write children’s books…I write, and somebody says: that’s for children.”
–Maurice Sendak

The best children’s books and films stay with us.  They grow and deepen as we ourselves mature.  Rather than label these pieces of artwork as merely for “children,” in this class we will embrace their artistry, sophistication, humanity, complexity, and use of images to heighten our experience of words.  We will examine different genres of children’s literature: storybooks, fairy tales, children’s poetry (from Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience to Shel Silverstein), and two young adult novels (including Harry Potter, we’ll vote on which one).  We will also view a film adaption (The Wizard of Oz).  But the emphasis will be on your own creative work.  For your culminating project, each of you will write and illustrate your own children’s book.

LHSP 230.005 Writing in Motion: Composing with Bodies, Words, and other Media
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 1:00-2:30pm
Instructor: Naomi Silver
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall Dance Studio and Classroom 2060

This class will explore the ways we can make arguments, tell stories, and test ideas through movement in space as well as through words written on a page or spoken aloud. We will enter this process through the thematic frame of how arts and movement arts, such as dance, in particular—engage with and enact social justice. To that end, we will read texts in a variety of genres and media that consider this relationship; we will attend two UMS dance performances at the Power Center by the Urban Bush Women and Company Wang Ramirez, both of which engage social issues in unique ways; and we will be joined in the first part of the semester by Detroit based dancer and dance-maker Jennifer Harge—whose work takes on themes of race, gender, memory, and loss—as artist-in-residence and co-teacher of the course. Our writing this semester will consist of reflections, interpretations, analyses, and arguments created both in words and in movement. We will be moving almost every class, in short improvised and composed responses to prompts of various kinds, and we will create longer compositions to share at the end of the semester.The class will meet both in a Lloyd Hall classroom and in the Lloyd Hall dance studio. No prior dance experience is necessary to succeed in this class—just a willingness to move and to experiment with new compositional modes and media!

LHSP 228.001 Telling Stories: The Rhetoric and Representation of Race and Ethnicity
Mondays & Wednesdays 10:00am-11:30am
Instructor: Scott Beal
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2012

In Storytelling for Social Justice, Lee Anne Bell writes, “The diverse groups that make up the United States provide a rich source of stories to draw upon, but in a deeply racialized society stained by structural racism, not all stories are equally acknowledged, valued, or  affirmed…Some stories are supported by the power structure, while others must fight tenaciously to be heard.” Bell's words imply two meanings of “telling stories”: by telling and being open to many different stories we can expand our understanding of what it means to live in this country; but also, stories themselves “tell” or revealing a deeper understanding of how powe shapes narratives around race. In this course on writing and rhetoric you will examine an array of stories that shed light on race and ethnicity, applying a set of critical perspectives to look beyond the surface of the stories apparent in all sorts of texts, including film, television, speeches, fiction, poetry, photographs, art, comedy, and music. Writing for this class includes a personal journal in which you track your responses and the development of your ideas, an end of semester reflection, and three papers examining the ways different stories “tell” us something about which “stories are supported,” and why and how others “must fight tenaciously to be heard.”

LHSP 130.001 Writing in the Arts

Tuesdays & Thursdays: 2:30pm-4:00pm
Instructor: Dave Karczynski
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2012

This section of Writing in the Arts will require students to attend a wide variet of readings, performances and exhibitions.  The writing we’ll do over the course of the term (poetry, critical review, fiction and non-fiction) will be a response to those encounters with art. There is a strong workshop component in this class: that is, your writing will be regularly workshopped by your peers.  The class itself will culminate in a retrospective performance project in which you will discover a creative way to share your body of work with the class.  

LHSP 125.001 Writing and Seeing
Mondays & Wednesdays: 9:30-11:00am
Instructor: Scott Beal
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, 2012

When William Blak wrote in 1799, "As the Eye is formed such are its Powers," he noted what se see is shaped by who we are and what we believe. Almost 200 years later, Alice Fulton wrote "let my glance be passional / toward the universe and you," calling for vision as an active approach to the world, a form of attention that clarifies truths and embraces hidden possibilities.  In this course we will use writing to explore our visions of ourselves and each other, of our natures and cultures.  We will investigate art and artifacts - some we know well, and some we will discover how they both embody and challenge our ways of seeing.  Writing is often (as John Berger has pointed out) "an attempt to explain how, either metaphorically or literally, 'you see things'."  Our course will engage with all aspects of the writing process, from brainstorming and research to collaboration and revision - to make our glanecs more passional, to see our subjects more sharply and deeply, and to communicate our ways of seeing most effectively to audiences.

LHSP 125. 002 Creative Obsessions and Writing
Mondays & Wednesdays: 10:00am-11:30am
Instructor: Carol Tell
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2060

What are your obsessions?  Are they quirky and unique (and maybe embarrassing) (a schlocky song, a character from a book, your family recipe for meatloaf), or more mainstream but no less haunting ( a love interest, a sports team, the number of likes you get on Instagram)?  From childhood crushes to white whales, our obsessions can be self-defining and often drive us to write/create beautiful things.  But as much as they define us, they can occasionally delude or even destroy us.This introductory writing class will allow you to explore -- and write about -- intellectual, aesthetic, and personal obsessions -- both your own and those of writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians.  We'll read texts (from such writers as Helen MacDonald, David Foster Wallace, James Baldwin, JK Rowling, Jon Krakauer), and watch films (possibly "Brokeback Mountain," "Rear Window," others), and listen to podcasts (Serial and others), all of which explore obsessive love, work, and creativity.  But most of all, you'll be figuring out how to write effectively for college -- how to parse a writing prompt, what words like "argument" and "revision" really mean, and how to move (quickly) beyond the five-paragraph essay.

LHSP 125.003 Genre Wonderland
Mondays and Wednesdays: 2:30pm-4:00pm
Instructor: Ray McDaniel
Loccation: Alice Lloyd Hall 2060

Noir, fantasy, romantic comedy, thriller, horror: we take categoreis like these for granted when we talk about film or literature, but what (if anything) do thye have to do with how we imagine and narrate our own lives?  In this section of LHSP 125, we will examine: what it means, why it has to exists, whether anything exists outside of it, how we use it to construct experience and knowledge as consumers, scholars, and people just trying to make sense of it all.  Texts will include both literature and multimedia references both high and low, common and obscure, and skills will be developed in analysis, argument, narrative, and writing into and across academic curricula.  Tolerance for stylistic excess encouraged byt not required.

LHSP 125.005 Writing and Photography
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 10:00am-11:30am
Instructor: Angela Berkley
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2012

Photographs matter: we cherish photos of our friends and loved ones, whether in material or digital form, and we rely on photos to show us evidence of horrors or wonders we might not otherwise believe.  I hereby claim the following: images get under our skin, they prove things, and thye make things happen.  Throughout the course of this semester, we will be reading, talking -- and most of all, writing -- to interrogate these claims about the power of the photographic image.  The best essays start with genuine interrogations, and in this class, photographs amd photography will the by the stimulus we use to spark our curious questions.  You will look long and hard at photographs, and you will write about what you see and what it means.  You will read, discuss, summarize, and analyse important theories and ideas about photography, as well as contemporary debates about how photographs signify and function in our world today.  You will enter into these debates and conversations, writing essays that consider and respond cogently and argue persuasively for a particular way of seeing and understanding photographs.The old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words is a cliche we will not stoop to use in our own critical appraisals of photographs.  Let us, instead, use this tiersome old claim in the age old competition between image and word as an invigorating challenge: let us search for what it is that makes photographs seem to say so much, and let us read, write, revise and write again toward essays as potent as any thousand-word photograph.

LHSP 125.006 Your Best Version: Writing and Representation
Tuesdays & Thursdasy: 1:00pm-2:30pm
Instructor: Julia Babcock
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2060

Instagram.  Twitter.  Snapchat.  Finnstagram.  There are more opportunities to create and curate versions of ourselves than ever before.  These opportunities have also led to skepticism about truth and authenticity.  If everything is a version, then what are the criteria that makes once version better, more accurate, or more necessary than another?In this course, we will be exploring multiple versions of the same stories in order to explore answers to this question.  In the process, you will practice and increase your ability to analyse, to argue, and to connect to communities that share similar passions and concerns.  Writing will include a course blog, a narrative essay, an analytic essay, and a researched project where you get to choose a text and create your own new, best version.Texts will include short stories, essays, film, music, journalism, histories, and art that connect to a wide range of civil rights issues.  Get ready to watch Zorro movies, reimagine some fairy tales, listen to some Coltrane and hang out with Congressman John Lewis!

LHSP 125.007 Our TV, Our Selves: The Rhetoric of Televison
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 9:30am-11:00am
Instructor: Shelley Manis
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall 2012

How many times have you heard someone say (or have you said), "It's just TV!"  In this class, those, as they say, are "fightin' words."  Television -- from high drama like Breaking Bad to goofy animation like Bob's Burgers -- makes meaning, makes arguments.  Television both reflects and creates current attitudes about public issues; and it can and should inspire important, sometimes difficult , conversations.  I've designed this course around one major question that should be imporant to those of us who love TV (or who hate it!), who live for the next episode of Scandal or the next season of Daredevil, or who can. not. even. with Game of Throes:  How does TV make meaning?  How does it contribute to our senses of self -- as individuals, as citizens or residents of the U.S. and/or other home nations, as [you-fill-in-the-blank-based-on-your-interests]?  The content that we study will be television; the end result of our study will be an intimate relationship with rigorous thinking, writing, and revising processes.We will practice strategies of close reading, thick discription, research, analysis, reflection, revision, and responding in writing to a variety of texts: television episodes and series (some chosen by me, some by you), academic articles, podcasts, and mainstream publications.  We will engage in the kinds of tasks you will be asked to do often as a college student: blogging, social media writing, informal writing, planning and conduction research, review writing, analytical essay writing, etc.  We will argue about the virutes and shortcomings of the shows we watch.  We will disagree (respectfully but enthusiastically) about all manner of things.  We will "live every week like it's shark week."  This will all help you look anew at something you likely know well (tv) as you practice making dynamic, savvy, even artistic academic arguments.  And we'll hopefully have a lot of fun doing it.  "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose."

LHSP 230.001
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 2:30pm-4:00pm
Instructor: Micheline Maynard
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall

"We didn't go into journalism to be popular," said the legendary White House Reporter Helen Thomas.  "It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers."Journalism as a craft has immovable underpinnings.  Journalism as a profession has never been under more pressure.In this course, students will take part in theoretical and practical discussions about journalism, the news, and what constitutes fake news.  They will learn how to research a story, how to interview a subject, and how to tell the difference between objective journalism and opinionated stories.Followng in the footsteps of journalists turned writers, such as Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, and Joan Didion, students will become informed readers, listeners and viewers of all types of coverage, from world affairs and politics to local news, business and sports.  They will compare and contrast the approach taken by news organizations such as the New York Times and Washington Post, the BBS and NPR, and CNN and Fox News.Students also will write their own news stories and create a class website where they decide which stories are the most important and choose how to illustrate them.  Even if you have no interest in becoming a journalist, this class will help you understand the role of journalism in society, how journalism tools can help improve any type of writing, and why reporting objectively is much harder than it looks.

LHSP 230.002 Creative Communities
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 5:00pm-7:00pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Art Studio

Students in this class will co-design a creative community which will help initiate and produce public artwork for ArtPrize (Grand Rapids, Michigan), The U-M Bicentennial, and YES - Ypsilanti Experimental Space (Ypsilanti, Michigan).  Through inventive planning, organization, logistics and implementation students will have the opportunity to work together with other communities to experience first-hang what it takes to create their own relevant public arts exhibitions/performances/installations.  Additionally, students will atend artist talks and performances and will disseminate these varied creative experiences via dynamic group discussions and written reflections.

This course is limited to sophomore student leaders in the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program.

LHSP 140

LHSP 140.001 From Kansas to Munchkinland
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Art Studio

Close your eyes and imagine that you were born completely without sight. Now imagine that your sight was miraculously restored. What would you “see”? Look at your hand and wiggle your fingers. Is this what you expected your hand to look like? Would you be able to comprehend the world around you or would everything be such a confusing mass of shapes, lines, colors, textures, spaces, shadows and light that you would feel overwhelmed by the complexity of it all?

In this course we will demystify the art of seeing. Learning to draw and paint requires you to look at the world more closely and to record what you see more accurately. Learning to see, not what you “think” you see, but what you actually see, is the key that can unlock the door to your inner vision. Once you can access visual phenomenon through drawing and painting you will find out how much there is to see and how beautiful things really are.

One half of the course will be in black and white, drawing the human body; something simultaneously intimate and yet completely foreign. The second half of the course will concentrate on seeing the world in color through painting.

No previous experience necessary, however due to the rigorous nature of the course, students will be expected to possess a positive, open attitude and strong work ethic.

Note: There is a $150 lab fee, which covers the hiring of the model(s) and all art supplies. Mandatory attendance and active class participation required. Expect extensive outside work on homework assignments. Museum trips (TBA) may be required.

LHSP 140.002 Art in Public Spaces/Festifools
Fridays: 2:30pm-5:30pm
Instructor: Mark Tucker
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Art Studio

In this creative course students from all disciplines will be designing and producing their own large-scale animated sculptures, or “puppets” which will be featured in our 11th annual FestiFools extravaganza to be held on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor on April 9th, 2017. (See: FestiFools.org) As the originators of this artistic spectacle, students in this class will design, organize, and develop FestiFools in conjunction with local community, civic, and business partners.

This will be a full ‘hands-on’ experience which will explore techniques and tools for the making of large-scale theatrical and sculptural elements for the creation of large-scale public spectacles. Although this course does not require any previous art experience, due to the public nature of the projects, it will be expected that the student already possess an excellent work ethic, great attitude, and the ability to grasp and apply aesthetic principles quickly, in a team oriented, community-minded environment.

Studio/lab work outside of course will be individually tailored to students’ schedules (TBD on first day of class).

Lab Fee $150

LHSP 228

LHSP 228.001 The Rhetoric and Representation of Race and Ethnicity
Mondays & Wednesdays: 10:30am-12:00pm
Instructor: Paul Barron
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2060

“The diverse groups that make up the United States provide a rich source of stories to draw upon, but in a deeply racialized society stained by structural racism, not all stories are equally, acknowledged, valued, or affirmed…Some stories are supported by the power structure, while others must fight tenaciously to be heard.”

--Lee Anne Bell, Storytelling for Social Justice

Bell's words imply two meanings of “telling stories”: by telling and being open to many different stories we can expand our understanding of what it means to live in this country; but also, stories themselves are “telling,” or revealing of, a deeper understanding of how power has worked and continues to work to shape narratives around race. In this course on writing and rhetoric you will examine an array of stories that shed light on race and ethnicity, as well as learning a set of critical perspectives to be able to look beyond the surface of the stories apparent in all sorts of texts, including film, television, speeches, images, articles, and videos. Course materials will also include fiction, poetry, photographs, art, comedy, and music. Writing for this class includes a personal journal in which you track your responses and the development of your ideas, an end of semester reflection, and three papers examining the ways in which different sorts of story “tell” us something about which “stories are supported,” and why and how others “must fight tenaciously to be heard.”

LHSP 230

LHSP 230.001 Poetry, Magic, and Science
Mondays & Wednesdays: 9:30am-11:00am
Instructor: Scott Beal
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2012

Can a poem lift a curse or turn lead into gold? Can it make sense of cell biology or mimic fractals? Poetry has a rich history of association with both magic and science. We may describe a poem as “experimental” or say it has “transformed” us. However, we commonly see science and magic in opposition. (Consider Arthur Weasley's enduring bewilderment over muggle technology as one illustration.) This course will invite students to question how these seemingly opposing forces operate within poetry, and to practice their own poetics of scientific verbal magic. To develop our thinking we will read critical essays, magical and scientific treatises, and a large variety of poems with an emphasis on contemporary poets. Writing assignments will include critical reflections and close readings as well as a hefty dose of creative writing, building toward a final portfolio of poems that enacts each student's vision for how science and magic collide. No expertise with poetry, science, or witchcraft required. We will use in-class exercises to play with concepts and construction of poems, and both skeptics and avid poets should leave the course with a richer understanding and enjoyment of poetry.

LHSP 230.002 Theater for Social Change: Resistance & Progress
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 11:00am-12:30pm
Instructor: Shelley Manis
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2060

Why does theatre matter? “The theatre, when it’s good, is always dangerous.” So Hallie Flanagan, the Director of the Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939), famously said in response to accusations that the Living Newspapers and other FTP productions were “dangerous,” potential agents of social upheaval. In large part because of the fear of what theatre could do, the FTP was shut down in 1939. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Emmy winning screenwriter Tony Kushner has argued that “art is not merely contemplation, it also action, and all action changes the world, at least a little.” In this course we will pursue answers to two questions: What makes theatre “good” (and hence, “dangerous”)?, and can theatre make change in the world? We will explore a few historical moments in world theatre, specifically considering how theater practices have imagined and enacted resistance to the status quo socially and artistically.

The content of this course will be case studies of plays written and/or performed in response to fraught issues of their times: plays about feminism and women’s issues, plays about labor, plays about war, and plays about race, among others. With each play we read, we will read and discuss one or two articles that put the plays in context and/or outline a theory useful to understanding the plays. We will also, as a class, determine a social intervention we’d like to make on our campus, select and/or create a play that enacts that intervention, and mount a performance (either a staged reading or a full production, depending on what we choose) to put our ideas into action.

While we will be creating a LOT of on-our-feet creative work, we will also be doing a number of different kinds of writing this semester. In addition to formal (one brief, one a little longer) revised essays, we will create small reading responses and other low-stakes writing assignments—such as script analysis exercises, annotations, close readings, quick applications of research, visual inspiration, etc.—designed to give you experience responding to drama and thinking about the socially significant work theater can do in a multitude of forms and modes. We’ll also do a variety of types of reflective writing.

LHSP 230.003 The Children's Story: Re-imagining Children's Literature
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 1:00pm-2:30pm
Instructor: Carol Tell
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2060

Do you have a favorite children’s book? One that seems to grow and deepen as you’ve gotten older? Have you ever wanted to write one?

The best children's books and films stay with us, and often feel mislabeled as exclusively for “children." Rather than dismiss these pieces of artwork as childish and inconsequential, in this class we will embrace their artistry, sophistication, humanity, and complexity. We will examine different genres of children's literature: storybooks (remember Cat in the Hat? Where the Wild Things Are?), fairy tales, children's poetry (Blake's Songs of Innocence, Shel Silverstein), and young adult novels. We will also watch The Wizard of Oz and one other film. But the emphasis will be on your own creative work. For your culminating big project, you will write and illustrate your own children's book.

LHSP 230.004 Photobook: The Artifact and The Project
Tuesdays & Thursdays: 2:00pm-3:30pm
Instructor: T. Hetzel
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2012

For this class, we will begin to explore the history of the photobook as we investigate our relationship to images and the stories we can tell with them. We will consider the photobook as an artistic endeavor, an artifact and a project.

We will study The Americans (1959) by Robert Frank, and, by using it as a model, you will make your first photobook titled The Wolverines. We will explore a range of photobooks including ones by Helen Levitt, Elliott Erwitt, Weegee, Daido Moriyama, and Cindy Sherman. We also will have an opportunity to see rare photobooks from the Art, Architecture & Engineering Library’s special collections, including Edward Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip and Twentysix Gasoline Stations.

By the end of the term, you will have taken many photos, created a photobook called The Wolverines, and also designed and built a photobook of your own chosen subject. We’ll experiment with the beauty and strangeness of the photobook’s possibilities. What story will you tell? What will you reveal?

English 223

English 223.002
Mondays & Wednesdays: 12:00pm-1:30pm
Instructor: Patricia Khleif
Location: Alice Lloyd Hall, Classroom 2012

This course will function as an introduction to the strategies for successfully reading and writing poetry and short fiction. Good writing starts with good reading, and this course will focus on developing strategies for close, comprehensive reading in order to advance creative writing skills. You will read and study examples of published poetry and prose in order to better understand the craft of writing in these two genres. This class will rely heavily on the workshop model, which means you will engage in the close study and critique of classmates work as well. The workshop process helps you become proficient in offering critical feedback on poetry and fiction. The workshop process also helps you to hone your own writing skills and establish successful strategies for expanding and revising their work. You will be asked to develop a number of original creative compositions and will be responsible for daily writing assignments and a revised portfolio of writing. An important aspect of this course will be revision and progression throughout the semester based on workshop feedback and individual work with the instructor. This course will challenge participants to read often, write frequently, and participate in class discussions, projects, and experiments. The final goal of this course, along with a better understanding of how to read and write poetry and fiction, is to explore individual creative writing goals and projects.

LHSP 125.001 Writing and Film
Instructor: Carol Tell
This writing course will introduce you to college-level writing through an investigation of film. Along with viewing and analyzing a variety of films, you will analyze film reviews (summary, analysis, evaluation, persuasion) and develop a movie blog. You will also collaborate with peers to select, introduce, and discuss films for our class film series. Our readings will include a range of texts and will tackle the idea of adaptation. You will also consider the rhetorical strategies of argumentation employed in films, including documentaries and political satire. But most of all, you’ll be figuring out how to write effectively for college—how to parse a writing prompt, what revision really means, and how to move (quickly) beyond the five-paragraph essay. Please note that this is not a film course, in which you learn the techniques of film production or formal analysis. Rather, we’re simply using this powerful and potent medium in order to develop our skills in critical reading and writing.  

LHSP 125.002 Writing and Seeing
Instructor: Scott Beal

When William Blake wrote in 1799, “As the Eye is formed such are its Powers,” he noted that vision is not objective; what we see is shaped by who we are and what we believe. Almost 200 years later, Alice Fulton ended her poem “Cascade Experiment” with the lines, “…let my glance be passional / toward the universe and you.” Here Fulton calls for vision as an active approach to the world, a form of attention that clarifies truths and embraces hidden possibilities. In this course we will explore through writing how our ways of seeing ourselves and each other, our natures and cultures, are shaped by artists, writers, and producers. And we will use writing to activate our ways of seeing – to let our glances be more passional, to see our subjects more sharply and more deeply. Writing is often (as John Berger has pointed out) “an attempt to explain how, either metaphorically or literally, ‘you see things.’” Our course will engage with all aspects of the writing process, from brainstorming and research to collaboration and revision, to communicate our ways of seeing most effectively to audiences. 

LHSP 125.003 What You See is What You Get: Exploring Image and Identity of Place and People through Street Photography
Instructor: T. Hetzel

This first-year writing course invites you to think and write about image and identity using street photography as our lens.  How do images illuminate or disguise a truth?  How can images build an argument?  Or tell a story?

As we ask these questions and more, our class will first investigate and analyze the changing image and identity of Detroit and take a class trip to the city with our notebooks and cameras (&/or phones!).  Later we will explore the work of street photographers before turning the focus on our own experiences taking photographs of people and places in Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. 

During the term, we will examine the work of photographers, writers, activists and artists including Tyree Guyton, Grace Lee Boggs, Helen Levitt, Joel Meyerowitz, and Brian Day.  We will watch and deconstruct films that may include Detropia, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, and Finding Vivian Maier.  Students will take their own original photos and produce new prose – analytical, reflective and imaginative--as we explore academic argument and the interplay of text and image. We’ll draft and revise essays, have pitch meetings and workshops, and create photo essays.  We will examine the power and potential of visual rhetoric while working toward a final photo essay project of each student's own design. 

Is what you see what you get?  What will you discover and reveal about the world?    

LHSP 125.004 Writers Writing About Writing: On Rhetoric and Voice
Instuctor: Louis Cicciarelli

In Words Like Loaded Pistols (2012), Sam Leith says that "rhetoric is language at play--language plus." His book on rhetoric will provide a backdrop to our study of writing in this first-year writing course. We will read and analyze rhetoric in academic writing, fiction, film, adaptions, current visual and cultural artifacts, and political speech to better understand the ways rhetoric and voice work.  And we'll get to play with language in our own academic and creative writing. 

Our course will center your position as the writer and raise questions about how we "play with language" and develop the range of our writing voices to reach various audiences.  Students will write three academic essays, one creative story project, and contribute regular responses to a course blog.  This class will emphasize the practice of revision in the development of good college-level writing; we will cultivate revision strategies, using both peer and whole-class workshops, to produce our best work.  Through the course, students will grow as critical readers, thinkers, and writers able to communicate in an academic community.  Ultimately, this class will improve your ability to write clear, organized, and cohesive essays -- and improve your confidence and your skills as both interpreters and communicators of ideas and information.  

LHSP 125.005 Telling True Stories
Instructor: David Karczynski

LHSP 125, Telling True Stories, will provide you with a chance to practice and hone your thinking and writing skills in ways that will serve you during your college years and beyond.  The writing we’ll do borrows from conventions of long-form investigative journalism in that we’ll be asking big questions and telling complex stories in our attempts to answer them.  Each of the four essays we write will have a different center and a different purpose.  During the course of the term you will write a personal narrative, undertake a journey, conduct a social experiment and write an in-depth profile.  In writing these essays and investigating the questions they raise, you’ll also be developing your toolkit of academic inquiry. You’ll learn how do research both while sitting at the computer and while moving through a living, breathing city. You’ll learn how to argue using evidence, how to persuade using rhetoric and how to evoke using imagistic language.  By the end of the semester, my hope is that you will have new and exciting lenses through which to perceive your world and your place in it. 

In addition to doing a lot of writing (both inside and outside of the classroom), we will also focus on strategies for reading and analyzing a variety of texts.  We will also do a lot of talking; think of this class less as a lecture than as a discussion group, one in which everyone will be expected to make meaningful contributions on a daily basis.  Last of all, this course is centered around the idea that the best writing comes from regular revision.  Through workshopping your drafts with your peers, you will obtain a better grasp on how significantly your writing can improve with each revision. Like a muscle, writing only gets stronger with use.   

LHSP 125.006 Alter Ego/Persona: Other Selves
Instructor: Paul Barron

“Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when everyone has to throw off his mask?...I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself.”—From Either/Or, by Søren Kierkegaard

What if, rather than having a singular true self, our “selves” are richer and more varied? What “masks” do we find ourselves wearing? Are they sometimes necessary, and do they change depending on our identities? Is it possible that experimenting with, trying on, and playing with identities, is also a kind of truth? Questions like these will emerge as leaping off points for thinking and discussion. But above all else, this is a writing course! You will get a thorough grounding in writing for college and will practice skills like weighing evidence, making claims, organization, and developing your writing towards increasing complexity.

You may be familiar with David Bowie’s alter ego Ziggy Stardust, or Nikki Minaj’s Roman and Barbie, etc. But what messages do these “other selves” communicate? And is there something about these messages that means they must be delivered via alter egos? A persona is a related kind of other self and refers to the ways we present and adapt ourselves purposefully, even playfully. As you write, draft, revise, and collaborate, you’ll consider, What is your voice as a writer? And how does it change depending on the subject, the audience, and genre? Do you have one true voice, or are there several types of voice you can employ depending on the circumstances?

We’ll draw from film, sports, drama, politics, fiction, poetry, and music journalism, and from a list of writers who offer rich entry points into these issues, such as: James Baldwin, Kobe Bryant, Anne Carson, Meghan Daum, Milan Kundera, Toni Morrison, Mark Landler, and Cheryl Strayed. We will also read the script for and view the UMS production of RoosevElvis, by The TEAM, a Brooklyn-based theater company. 

LHSP 125.007 Our TV, Our Selves: The Rhetoric of Television
Instructor: Shelley Manis

How many times have you heard someone say (or have you said), “It’s just TV!” In this class, those, as they say, are “fightin’ words.” Television—from high drama like Breaking Bad to goofy animation like Bob’s Burgers—makes meaning, makes arguments. Television both reflects and creates current attitudes about public issues; and it can and should inspire important, sometimes difficult, conversations. I’ve designed this course around one major question that should be important to those of us who love TV (or who hate it!), who live for the next episode of Scandal or the next season of Daredevil, or who can. not. even. with Game of Thrones: How does TV make meaning? How does it contribute to our sense of self—as individuals, as a nation, as [you-fill-in-the-blank-based-on-your-interests]? The content that we study will be television; the end result of our study will be an intimate relationship with rigorous thinking, writing, and revising processes.

We will practice strategies of close reading, thick description, research, analysis, reflection, revision, and responding in writing to a variety of texts: television episodes and series (some chosen by me, some by you), academic articles, podcasts, and mainstream publications. We will engage in the kinds of tasks you will be asked to do often as a college student: blogging, social media writing, informal writing, planning and conducting research, review writing, analytical essay writing, etc. We will argue about the virtues and shortcomings of the shows we watch. We will disagree (respectfully but enthusiastically) about all manner of things. We will “live every week like it’s shark week.” This will all help you look anew at something you likely know well (tv) as you practice making dynamic, savvy, even artistic academic arguments. And we’ll hopefully have a lot of fun doing it. “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” 

LHSP 230.001 Literary Journal Editing and Publishing
Instructor: Alexander Weinstein

In this class you will learn the necessary techniques to critically discuss poetry, fiction, non-fiction, art, and music in order to become successful editors. We will examine a wide variety of leading national and international literary magazines and small press journals, focusing our attention on the creative work of contemporary writers. Much of this class will focus on gaining experience in literary editing and publishing in order to produce your own literary and art journals and online magazines. During the semester the class will take field trips to the Duederstadt center, Hatcher Library, and Hollanders to become familiarized with the resources available to you on campus and in the community. You will learn to use Adobe Creative Suite programs (including Photoshop and InDesign) as well as audio editing tools (Quick Time and Garage Band) in order to gain the experience and confidence needed to produce your own journals.  These workshops will lead to you creating your own posters (to advertise the LHSP Arts and Literary Journal), your own artistic/literary websites, and learning bookbinding to create your own print journal.  The class culminates with you designing and publishing you own printed literary journals.  

LHSP 230.002 Creative Communities
Instructor: Mark Tucker

From visiting artists and writers to world-renowned productions sponsored by UMS, the U-M campus has a thriving arts culture, with unique opportunities for students to engage with cutting-edge works and the artists who make them. Students in this course will attend readings, artist talks, performances, and other arts-related events, and will engage in dynamic group discussions, critical writing assignments, and creative expression projects.

Simultaneously, student leaders in this class will help initiate and produce a brand new public art project/event/performance to be unveiled in the Ann Arbor community in 2015/2016. Through inventive planning, organization, logistics and implementation students will have the opportunity to work together as a team to experience first-hand what it takes to create their own large-scale arts event while becoming a part of the vibrant creative arts community in Ann Arbor.

This course is limited to student leaders in the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program. 

Writing 201.002 Audio Essay
Instructor: Carol Tell

In this course on the audio essay, students will learn how to compose and publish their own podcasts, using a mixture of narration, interviews, sound effects, and music. Students will begin by developing several short sound-based narratives (“audio postcards”), focusing on such elements as voice, non-verbal sound, and interviews. Using the creative nonfiction genre as a model, students will then write an original audio essay, which they will record and workshop with their peers. In doing so they will examine what role sound plays in the development of voice and point of view, and what particular limitations and opportunities are afforded by writing in this medium. By listening to a variety of audio essays and shorter audio pieces, students will also learn effective techniques for pacing, audio layering, and balancing anecdote with reflection.