STEALING AND COLLABORATING: A FINE LINE

Course Description

The lone genius may be an antiquated term. This is a non-traditional writing workshop focused on collaboration in storytelling and writing traditions. Even this syllabus is written as an overarching collaboration with every class I’ve taken and every syllabus I’ve read. Throughout this class, we will examine storytelling and its iterations, we will steal and remold media, and we will experiment in collaborative forms.

How can we use collaboration to challenge our writing? What does collaborative writing achieve, and does creativity require it or reject it?

These questions are inquiries posed to understand the innate collaborative nature of storytelling and writing. There might not be an answer.

In this class, we will grow, and we will fail. We will remember how to have fun in group projects. To forgo the value of the product and re-price the process of creating it. To explore both the inspiring and weird of collaborating. To question where inspiration comes from, to deconstruct the idea of its necessity. To rethink the idea of the lone artist.

In this spirit of collaboration, students should expect no single-authorship of work in this workshop. Though they may opt out of participating or sharing their work, writing, or at least the process, will be collaborative in nature.

This is a student-led colloquium led by Maya Salem (maya_salem@ucsb.edu) under the supervision of Kara Mae Brown.