Daily prompts will ask you to engage in oral storytelling sessions with people around you, to make short audio recordings, and to write based on this experience. Reading and listening assignments will include the work of Anna Deavere Smith, John Cage, Krista Tippett, Amy Winehouse, Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Solnit, and Neil Gaiman. In the course blog we will discuss how sound and dialogue inform and motivate these works. How does each artist use speech acts to achieve their emotional impact? What is the role of questions? When and how does silence come into play? How can we use these models to listen more deeply to the people around us?

Students should come to the first class having established contact with two people who are okay with being interviewed and recorded. A smart phone or other audio recording device is required. In addition to submitting work, you will be expected to comment on one-two of your classmates’ writing responses daily. At the end of the course, I will conduct one-on-one conversations with each student via Skype or email to discuss further revisions and how to move forward.