Cullman Center Institute for Teachers Past Programs

Rivka Galchen

Liberating Constraints: A Creative Writing Workshop

Monday, July 30, 2012, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 30 - FRIDAY AUGUST 3)

RIVKA GALCHEN, Instructor

Shakespeare wrote soliloquies in iambic pentameter; Freud composed some of the 20th century’s best writing in the form of medical case histories; Elvis turned gospel into rock ’n roll; and Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a bet that he could write a book using just fifty different words. A narrow passage allows the wind to whistle-- at least sometimes! We’ll read texts by Kobo Abe, Roberto Bolaño, Anthony Burgess, and others, identifying the constraint under which each operates and noting when the author violates that constraint. Participants will complete several writing exercises before composing their own short fiction in a constraint of their choosing.

Laura Shapiro, photo by Gabrielle Linzer

Writing Food: A Writing Workshop in Creative Non-Fiction

Monday, July 23, 2012, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 23 - FRIDAY JULY 27)

LAURA SHAPIRO, Instructor

A wide range of literary genres is open to writers who are deeply curious about food and who find it a peerless– in fact, irresistible – window onto history, experience, and character. This seminar will be held in conjunction with “Lunch Hour: NYC,” a major exhibition of food-related items from the Library’s collections, and will examine the work of such influential culinary storytellers as MFK Fisher, Anthony Bourdain, and Laurie Colwin. We will also draw on contemporary voices from the online world and discuss the importance of culinary research in The New York Public Library and beyond. Throughout the week, participants will compose their own food histories, criticism, and reportage.

Adam Shatz

Black Bohemia: Poetry, Painting and Jazz on the Lower East Side, 1955-1965

Monday, July 16, 2012, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 16 - FRIDAY JULY 20)

ADAM SHATZ, Instructor

From the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, New York below 14th Street was home to a thriving -- and increasingly politicized -- black bohemian scene. Black writers, painters, and jazz musicians moved downtown in search of cheaper rents and a more tolerant racial atmosphere, and were soon mixing with their white counterparts in bookshops, taverns, and jazz clubs. By 1965, the scene had imploded, with the assassination of Malcolm X and the rise of black nationalism. This course will chart the rise and fall of this passionate but volatile experiment in interracial collaboration, with a focus on the life and work of the poet, critic, and playwright LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka. Readings will include memoirs of the period, plays, poetry, and criticism; we will also listen to music by jazz musicians who participated in the scene.

Kate Walbert

Life into Fiction: A Creative Writing Workshop (spring break)

Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

KATE WALBERT, Instructor

Using Eudora Welty’s memoir One Writer’s Beginnings, this workshop examines ways in which a life’s beginnings can be mined to shape and inform fiction, with particular emphasis on T.S. Eliot’s notion of the ‘objective correlative.’ Participants will conduct related writing exercises, creating short fiction from their own early pasts.

Kate Walbert is the author of the novels Where She Went, The Gardens of Kyoto, Our Kind, and A Short History of Women, which she is currently adapting for the stage. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize Stories, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review.

Ben Katchor

Text and Image Workshop (spring break)

Friday, April 6, 2012, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

BEN KATCHOR, Instructor

Through a series of writing and drawing exercises, we will explore the possibilities of expression that arise when text and image are combined on the page. Participants will discover and amplify, through their writing, the stories suggested by their drawings, and analyze, through their drawing, the descriptive passages in their written texts. No previous drawing experience is necessary, but everyone will be asked to make the attempt.

Ben Katchor’s latest graphic novel is The Cardboard Valise. The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” Fellowship, Katchor has drawn and written several books, including Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer and The Jew of New York. He teaches at Parsons School of Design.

This seminar is by application only and the deadline to apply has passed.

Evan Haefeli

Being Discovered: Native Americans and Henry Hudson

Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

EVAN HAEFELI, Instructor

Using the famous case of Henry Hudson’s ‘discovery of New York,’ the seminar will reflect on this crucial moment in American history. We will use primary and secondary sources, both European and indigenous, to build perspectives on this foundational experience and illustrate how interpretations of the past belong to our present.

Evan Haefeli teaches history at Columbia University. He is working on a book that draws on the diversity of peoples, languages, beliefs, and politics in colonial America, and on the relations – religious and violent, friendly and legendary, personal and imperial – between them.

Darryl Pinckney, photo by Dominique Nabokov

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

DARRYL PINCKNEY, Instructor

The Autobiography of Malcolm X has surprisingly wide appeal as a coming-of-age story, perhaps because of its message of spiritual growth and intellectual change. But Malcolm X also became an icon of militant defiance. How can his book represent such a contradictory legacy? What about this controversial tale continues to fascinate? What would young women find in it? Does it carry the same message for black youth as for white?

An essayist and novelist, Darryl Pinckney is the author of the novel High Cotton and Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature. His writing appears frequently in The New York Review of Books. He teaches creative writing at The New School.

This seminar is by application only and the deadline to apply has passed.

Shamus Khan

Gatsby's Inglorious World

Tuesday, March 6, 2012, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

SHAMUS KHAN, Instructor

Relevant for history as well as English teachers, this seminar will focus on the social world portrayed in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald set his novel at the end of the Gilded Age, a time of staggering new wealth, staunchly-held prejudices, deep underlying inequalities, and a heady sense of promise. Will the bubble of the 1920s collapse? Will anything ultimately change?

The author of Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, Shamus Khan teaches sociology at Columbia University. He is working on a new book to be called Exceptional: Elite New York and the Story of American Inequality.

This seminar is by application only and the deadline to apply has passed.

Adam Shatz

LeRoi Jones and the Lower East Side, 1955-1965 (winter break)

Friday, February 24, 2012, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

ADAM SHATZ, Instructor

As a prominent poet, critic, essayist, playwright, and editor, LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), bridged the worlds of the Beats, the New York School, and avant-garde jazz, and did more than anyone to define the new black aesthetic. Readings will include several essays and poems as well as Jones’s short play, Dutchman. Seminar participants will also listen to samples of music by jazz artists who were close to Jones, and look at paintings by Bob Thompson, who documented that world in his tragically short, dazzling career.

A contributing editor at the London Review of Books, Adam Shatz served as literary editor of The Nation magazine from 2003 to 2007, and has written about jazz, literature, and politics for The New York Review of Books and The New York Times.

Chris Adrian

Weird Love Stories: A Creative Writing Workshop

Tuesday, February 14, 2012, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

CHRIS ADRIAN, Instructor

This workshop will examine the unconventional language used in a number of stories, including short fiction by Donald Barthelme and Judy Budnitz, to create a drama of romantic attachment that resists and overcomes cliché. Participants will also engage in a writing exercise that incorporates some of these elements to produce an affecting piece of writing about love.

Chris Adrian is the author of three novels – The Great Night, Gob's Grief, and The Children's Hospital – and a collection of stories, A Better Angel. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Paris Review, and other publications. Adrian is a practicing pediatric oncologist and holds a divinity degree from Harvard.

Mary Gaitskill

Flaws in the Texture of Life Feeling, Imagery, and Weirdness in the Short Story with Mary Gaitskill

Tuesday, November 8, 2011, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Mary Gaitskill, one of America’s master short story writers, leads a seminar on four brilliant stories: The 5:48 by John Cheever; Vandals by Alice Munro; Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor; and The End of FIRPO in the World by George Saunders.

Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV, part I

Friday, July 29, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

What’s so funny about Hamlet? Why is Falstaff tragic? What doesThe Merchant of Venice have to tell us about history? We will look at three of Shakespeare’s plays – a tragedy, a history, and a comedy – and examine how the playwright manipulates dramatic conventions. The course will take a dynamic approach: we will act out scenes, turn them upside down, and play them against the grain.

Andrew McConnell Stott teaches English at the University at Buffalo. A former stand-up comic, he is the author of Comedy and The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian. He received a 2010 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV, part I

Thursday, July 28, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

What’s so funny about Hamlet? Why is Falstaff tragic? What doesThe Merchant of Venice have to tell us about history? We will look at three of Shakespeare’s plays – a tragedy, a history, and a comedy – and examine how the playwright manipulates dramatic conventions. The course will take a dynamic approach: we will act out scenes, turn them upside down, and play them against the grain.

Andrew McConnell Stott teaches English at the University at Buffalo. A former stand-up comic, he is the author of Comedy and The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian. He received a 2010 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV, part I

Wednesday, July 27, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

What’s so funny about Hamlet? Why is Falstaff tragic? What doesThe Merchant of Venice have to tell us about history? We will look at three of Shakespeare’s plays – a tragedy, a history, and a comedy – and examine how the playwright manipulates dramatic conventions. The course will take a dynamic approach: we will act out scenes, turn them upside down, and play them against the grain.

Andrew McConnell Stott teaches English at the University at Buffalo. A former stand-up comic, he is the author of Comedy and The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian. He received a 2010 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV, part I

Tuesday, July 26, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

What’s so funny about Hamlet? Why is Falstaff tragic? What doesThe Merchant of Venice have to tell us about history? We will look at three of Shakespeare’s plays – a tragedy, a history, and a comedy – and examine how the playwright manipulates dramatic conventions. The course will take a dynamic approach: we will act out scenes, turn them upside down, and play them against the grain.

Andrew McConnell Stott teaches English at the University at Buffalo. A former stand-up comic, he is the author of Comedy and The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian. He received a 2010 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV, part I

Monday, July 25, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

What’s so funny about Hamlet? Why is Falstaff tragic? What doesThe Merchant of Venice have to tell us about history? We will look at three of Shakespeare’s plays – a tragedy, a history, and a comedy – and examine how the playwright manipulates dramatic conventions. The course will take a dynamic approach: we will act out scenes, turn them upside down, and play them against the grain.

Andrew McConnell Stott teaches English at the University at Buffalo. A former stand-up comic, he is the author of Comedy and The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian. He received a 2010 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The Reporter and the Story: A Workshop in Journalism

Friday, July 22, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Reporting usually connotes information-gathering—the seeking-out of knowledge from sources in the outside world. Yet reporting inevitably involves the writer’s emotional and sensory apprehension as well. We will explore the ways in which writers use these less-understood and complicated tools, particularly in the rendering of place. Writing by James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, Susan Orlean, Gay Talese, and others will guide us through this minefield. Participants will draw upon their own emotional experience in addition to conventional fact-finding to write a short piece about a place.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, a past Fellow of the Cullman Center and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, is the author of Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx.

The Reporter and the Story: A Workshop in Journalism

Thursday, July 21, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Reporting usually connotes information-gathering—the seeking-out of knowledge from sources in the outside world. Yet reporting inevitably involves the writer’s emotional and sensory apprehension as well. We will explore the ways in which writers use these less-understood and complicated tools, particularly in the rendering of place. Writing by James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, Susan Orlean, Gay Talese, and others will guide us through this minefield. Participants will draw upon their own emotional experience in addition to conventional fact-finding to write a short piece about a place.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, a past Fellow of the Cullman Center and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, is the author of Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx.

The Reporter and the Story: A Workshop in Journalism

Wednesday, July 20, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Reporting usually connotes information-gathering—the seeking-out of knowledge from sources in the outside world. Yet reporting inevitably involves the writer’s emotional and sensory apprehension as well. We will explore the ways in which writers use these less-understood and complicated tools, particularly in the rendering of place. Writing by James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, Susan Orlean, Gay Talese, and others will guide us through this minefield. Participants will draw upon their own emotional experience in addition to conventional fact-finding to write a short piece about a place.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, a past Fellow of the Cullman Center and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, is the author of Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx.

The Reporter and the Story: A Workshop in Journalism

Tuesday, July 19, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Reporting usually connotes information-gathering—the seeking-out of knowledge from sources in the outside world. Yet reporting inevitably involves the writer’s emotional and sensory apprehension as well. We will explore the ways in which writers use these less-understood and complicated tools, particularly in the rendering of place. Writing by James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, Susan Orlean, Gay Talese, and others will guide us through this minefield. Participants will draw upon their own emotional experience in addition to conventional fact-finding to write a short piece about a place.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, a past Fellow of the Cullman Center and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, is the author of Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx.

The Reporter and the Story: A Workshop in Journalism

Monday, July 18, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Reporting usually connotes information-gathering—the seeking-out of knowledge from sources in the outside world. Yet reporting inevitably involves the writer’s emotional and sensory apprehension as well. We will explore the ways in which writers use these less-understood and complicated tools, particularly in the rendering of place. Writing by James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, Susan Orlean, Gay Talese, and others will guide us through this minefield. Participants will draw upon their own emotional experience in addition to conventional fact-finding to write a short piece about a place.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, a past Fellow of the Cullman Center and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, is the author of Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx.

Setting Fiction in the Past: A Creative Writing Workshop

Friday, July 15, 2011, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Research offers abundant material for writers of historical fiction; one of the challenges lies in selecting precise details that help the story seems natural and unforced. We will examine passages by Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, John Dos Passos, Paule Marshall, Claire Messud, Philip Roth, Colm Tóibín, Edith Wharton, and others, paying attention to the ways in which the writers accomplish this fictional sleight of hand. During the week, participants will complete short exercises before composing their own sketches set in historical New York.