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This class is for seniors writing extended manuscripts in a unified genre: literary criticism, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, drama, screenwriting, or a hybrid form that combines genres. We welcome entirely hybrid-form manuscripts, but mixed collections, i.e. some poems with some prose, are not acceptable in this class, for we privilege extended immersion in a single genre. Think of your work as having two, equally important parts: The steady development and drafting of your own project; and sustained engagement with the work of your peers.

Mystics––historically portrayed as passionate, dangerous, romantic, heretical, satanic––are a thorn in the side of organized religion. From the very beginnings of recorded human time, the presence and practice of mystics has been controversial. Sufi mystic al-Hallaj’s pronouncement that he was “the Truth” was received as blasphemy by the orthodoxy. His execution followed shortly after. Christian mystics of the 4th and 5th centuries were relegated to practicing outside the peripheries of the Roman Empire, in relative secrecy.

In collaboration with Mass MoCA’s Director of Public Programs, Lisa Dent, this course will combine art history and museum education as modes of inquiry into the unique challenges of presenting and contextualizing Black and brown artists in museums. Students will engage deeply with three solo exhibitions at Mass MoCA: (1) RACE/HUSTLE by Zora J. Murff, whose work “bluntly signifies how the art museum itself is part of the cultural arm of white supremacy and state power,” (2) Vincent Valdez’s Just a Dream, and (3) Jimena Sarno’s Rhapsody.