Splash Biography

What is the neurological basis of fear? This course will address what happens when you're faced with a terrifying situation. We will discuss the physical responses to trauma and their neurological bases, going over topics like changes in memory and the fight or flight response.

In this class, we will read and discuss a short story and use it as a model for understanding fiction writing. Our story will be Kevin Wilson's "Blowing Up on the Spot," and we will discuss topics such as structure, characterization, setting, and narrative voice. We will conclude with writing exercises of our own.

This course will offer an overview of the form and philosophy of the American government from a primarily historical and legal perspective. We will cover the branches of government and the powers they hold, the Constitution, and the shifts in the practice of government that have occurred in new laws, presidencies, court cases, etc. At the end, the class may discuss their opinions of the American system of government and broader theories of government.

In this class, we will learn to read as writers, examining text to discover how it works. But this class moves beyond typical analysis to ask: what makes a story good? How can we write the kind of story we want to? What's the point of writing? This course will explore how authors use language through close reading of a short story and discuss how we might use language in our own stories.