Creative-Critical Writing: Imaginaries (BISR Practicum)

Writing is never solitary, but always takes place in relation to other texts, thoughts, people, and spaces. How does this process put us in intimate contact with the many imaginaries that shape what we know and how we live? And how might writing itself constitute an active mode of imagining, and re-imagining, the world—pointing, as we write, towards new forms of knowing and living?

In this hybrid creative-critical, writing-reading seminar, we will bring theory into vital contact with lived experience to play with the ways writing develops knowledge and thought. Using “imaginaries” as our point of departure, we will engage a series of readings that trace the shifting coordinates by which we relate to place, to others, and to ourselves. That is, we will consider “imaginaries” as they manifest in the material, symbolic, and libidinally inflected forms we live in, including those forced upon us, those that contour our everyday lives, and those we adopt to resist oppressive forces. As we read and write, we will ask: How do imaginaries, whether reactionary or radical, take shape? How do we learn the rules of our governing myths, systems, and methods, and how do desire and displacement determine what we can and can’t know about them? How do imaginaries make landscapes and histories? How do we sense and orient our way through them? In addition to a critical examination of these questions, we’ll also take up prompts and provocations from the readings to engage in a series of writing experiments.

This course welcomes established writers and novices: come with a willingness to write, to try new things, and to be in conversation with other writers of all stripes. Readings and writing prompts will be gleaned from works by Renee Gladman, Fred Moten, Jackie Wang, Muriel Dimen, Robin Wiegman, Sara Ahmed, and others.

Course Schedule

Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm ET
September 15 — October 06, 2026
4 weeks

$355.00

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