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Course Info for ENGL - 496 - 01, Spring 2026
Class number: 2930 Title: Literary Creativity Department: English
Career: Undergraduate Component: Seminar Session: Regular
Instructor's Permission Required: No Grading Basis: Graded Units: 1.00
Enrollment limited to 15 Current enrollment: 6 Available seats: 9
Start date: Tuesday, January 20, 2026 End date: Friday, May 8, 2026 Mode of Instruction: In Person
Schedule: MW: 2:55PM-4:10PM, 115V - 103 Instructor(s): Bilston, Sarah
Prerequisite(s): This course is open to senior English majors only.
Distribution Requirement: Meets Humanities Requirement
Note: This course is open to senior English majors only.
Note: This course fulfils the capstone requirement.
Course Description:
What is creativity? This capstone invites students to reflect on what they’ve learned about literary innovation as English majors and then consider how to deploy their insights after college. Which writers seem, to you, particularly creative? What makes a work, an artist, an era, creative? Are there particular character traits or circumstances that inspire creativity or can anyone, at any time, be creative? What’s the relationship between creativity and innovation; creativity and tradition; creativity and resistance? Reading a series of secondary works alongside primary texts (by, for instance, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, and Jericho Brown), we’ll debate these issues in class and in written work (analytic essays and "creative writing"). Trying out new forms, experimenting with structures, our final project will be a manifesto on creativity, a personal guide for each student to use as they work after Trinity to lead reflective, creative, generative lives.