CCOG for WR 239 Winter 2025
- Course Number:
- WR 239
- Course Title:
- Creative Writing (Word & Image)
- Credit Hours:
- 4
- Lecture Hours:
- 40
- Lecture/Lab Hours:
- 0
- Lab Hours:
- 0
Course Description
Addendum to Course Description
Students write approximately 2,000 words of revised, final draft copy, including at least 1,000 words of essay work that explore writing craft or theory. Students meet with the instructor for two out-of-class conferences.
Intended Outcomes for the course
Upon completion of the course students should be able to:
1. Articulate the techniques and strategies of a wide range of established writers, visual artists, and graphic designers demonstrate in their work.
2. Write and design original work that effectively employs principles of writing craft and visual design to engage diverse audiences.
3. Use critical thinking skills and discipline-specific language to analyze and critique others’ work.
4. Employ rigorous self-assessment and imaginative effort when revising work critiqued by peers.
Integrative Learning
Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.
General education philosophy statement
English and Writing courses align with the PCC General Education philosophy by providing an appreciation of writing and literature from global and personal perspectives. Students in English courses engage the imagination, critical inquiry and self‐reflection, and in the process of doing so, cultivate a more complex understanding of their own culture(s), linguistic/communication practices, and perspectives in relation to others. Because the literary arts lie at the heart of most human cultures, they are essential for understanding ourselves and each other and navigating our differences. Like all artistic practices, Creative Writing allows us to process experience and, in doing so, discover and create meaning. In Creative Writing courses, students produce and revise original writing, workshop their writing and the writing of others, study literature, and learn about editing and publishing. Courses in creative writing empower students to realize themselves as writers. In the process, students nurture and harness their creativity, develop their unique writing voices, and explore interdisciplinary aspects of their craft — connections with art, music, and science, for example. Writing and Literature courses foster a stronger sense of engagement with history, culture, and society. Writing and Literature students develop an awareness of themselves as readers and writers in a global world, and an enlarged understanding of the relationships between language, identity, ideas, scholarship, communication, and transformation.
Course Activities and Design
This course should include some lecture, but will consist mostly of round-table workshops in which student work will be evaluated by peers and the instructor. Students will come prepared to critique the work and respond to it during this discussion, and will submit written responses as well. Students will read a variety of published word & image pieces. Students may be asked to complete word & image assignments using essay, fiction, non-fiction, and/or poetry forms. Though elements of comics and graphic novels may be read and discussed, this is not a focus of the course. Not every final piece needs to contain an image; a piece of writing might change, via revision, such that it no longer requires the image. The instructor should spend approximately an hour of conference with each student outside of class.
Outcome Assessment Strategies
Assessment may include informal responses to class readings and peer work; evaluation of small- and full-group discussion; in-class and out-of-class writing; word & image pieces as well as other types of more informal writing; presentations by individuals and groups; short and long quizzes; close reading exercises using support/evidence; writing exercises which include evaluation of various interpretations of a text and their relative validity. Both instructor and peer evaluation will be incorporated in the assessment process.
Outcome Assessment Strategies may include student critiques of student work, in-class and out-of-class writing, close reading exercises, and instructor conferences. Students missing a week's worth of class may not expect an A; those missing two week's worth may not pass the course.
Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)
· Illustration vs. Interdependence
· Ekphrasis
· Scale and Hierarchy
· Experimentation
· Revision
· Prosody
· Voice
· Tone
· Character
· Figurative Language
· Scene
· Point of view
· Dialogue
· Conflict
· Connotation
· Concision
· Allusion
· Symbol
· Imagery
· Audience
· Theme
· Irony
· Parody
· Analysis
· Writing as a process
· Close reading
· Contextualization
· Recontextualization