Creative Writing and Public Theology Student Learning Outcomes
One-Week Intensive Goals
Each one-week intensive session focuses on biblical and theological reflection that engages genres of creative writing and is dedicated to hearing myriad voices in different genres; some practices of writing will accompany discussion and other class activities. During each one-week course, students will take field trip(s) to an art museum, jazz performance, poetry reading, or other cultural event to stimulate creativity and conversation about engagement with theological imagination in public spaces in particular cultural contexts.
The courses and field trips will collectively:
- Provide students with exposure to a number of creative voices from varying cultural, theological, and political perspectives;
- Offer practical experience and professional support in writing the various genres included under the creative writing umbrella;
- Ground students in practices of healthy attentiveness and theological reflection that are rooted in a sense of place with an eye and ear toward the salient concerns and opportunities within their contexts;
- Create opportunities for students to construct different voices and experiment with those voices in different genres of theological writing;
- Invite students to consider the doing of public theology from new angles.
Craft of Writing Workshops Goals
In lieu of a second week of class held in-person and on site, we will meet in a 10-week, online writing workshop that will function as craft classes. Except for the Publication Lab, each of these workshops will focus on a particular genre and will introduce aspects of content and form in that genre of writing.
The Craft of Writing Workshops will:
- Give students a deep dive into specific genres of writing, both as readers and as writers;
- Allow students to experiment with voice in and through different genres;
- Provide numerous opportunities to explore voice with an ear toward public theology in different cultural contexts;
- Help students learn how to listen more attentively to their own and others’ writing and how to be more competent proofreaders and editors of their own work;
- Invite students into relationship with working writers who will begin the mentoring process even before formal mentoring has begun;
- Assist students in placing their work for publication.
Mentorship Goals
The Mentorship part of the program will begin a little less than halfway through the cohort’s time together. The primary goal of the Mentorship is to support each student in writing a significant work for presentation for the degree and for eventual publication. Mentors will walk with each student through the final manuscript process and serve as readers on each completed manuscript.
