Critical and Reflective Inquiry: Failure

Theme: Failure

In this course, we will investigate notions of failure and in particular "failed writing," that is, writing deemed either by others or ourselves incorrect and divergent. What makes a piece of writing worthwhile or "strong"? Where do these standards come from and what kind of audiences benefit from their reproduction? Is it possible to focus less on how good a piece of writing is and instead begin the long and uncomfortable project of understanding how language happens to us in the specific bodies and identities we come to carry? Through creative experiments, critical reading, and a variety of writing tasks we can begin to bear witness to what we cannot say, must not say and then say. As a framework we will read a wide array of literatures and investigate "failure" as a theme explored in stories, poems, and artworks.