With course carts opening in a few days, MAWP students please consider ENG 477 Topics in Publishing: American Literary Magazine – Idealists and Happy Fools with Barrie Jean Borich.
“There will always be idealists and happy fools, so there will always be literary magazines.”
-Rob Spillman of Tin House
This hybrid course examines the American literary magazine, from inception to contemporary practice. It explores the missions, functions, styles, personalities, experiments and aesthetics of several little magazines and literary journals published form the early 20th century to the present day, particularly those representative of great moments of change in both political and literary culture.
Class participants compare and contrast ways literary journals develop in response to changing times, in keeping with innovations in literary form and in tandem with changes in publishing technologies, and analyze the literary journal’s relationship to both book publishing and individual authors’ careers.
Work includes:
- Examination of a variety of literary magazines
- Reading of contemporary scholarship about the literary journal
- Online class discussion and independent research
- Development of a prospectus for your own print, online, or hybrid literary magazine that speaks to present-day literary forms and themes
- Participation in manuscript deliberations for Slag Glass City, a nonfiction journal built around themes of urban sustainability
The class meets face-to-face Mondays 6:00-9:15 pm on 1/4, 2/8, and 3/7 along with two or three field trips to be announced.
The class fulfills the MAWP LLPT elective.