ENGL 12
The Art of Telling a Good Story Winter 2019

This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

How do you offer an audience, out loud, a compelling and memorable story? This course will aim to develop both a sense of the structure behind a good story and the improvisational skills that bring a told story to life. In class we’ll tell stories. We’ll explore basic approaches to shaping stories (and elaborations on these approaches), as well as what makes a story a “story” instead of something else, using the models of folktales and narrative nonfiction. We’ll engage in improvisational exercises, and explore the expressive capacities of voice, body, tempo and silence, considering how the improvisation of told tales might intersect with or resemble improvisational performance in other arts. We’ll also discuss issues facing tellers of traditional tales, personal stories, and other story types. When do you or do you not have the right to tell a particular story? How do you claim “authority” to tell a story? What are the implications of choosing the stories we do tell? What stories need to be told that are not? What stories need amendment? What does storytelling mean for other academic or social realms? Outside class, students will analyze and critique videos of other storytellers with the goal of enhancing their own storytelling strategies. Students will prepare for presentation in class three different kinds of stories and will offer stories to two different public audiences, one on campus and another in a local school. Students will also be asked to write a brief reflective essay. The class will meet for two hours a day, Monday through Thursday. Adjunct Instructor Bio: Kelly Terwilliger has been telling stories professionally for 17 years in schools, libraries, festivals, parks, museums, community centers, and pubs.
The Class: Format: mornings
Limit: 10
Grading: pass/fail only
Requirements/Evaluation: 2- to 3-page paper; performances, one of which will be offered to the wider public
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: statement of student interest
Materials/Lab Fee: none
Attributes: EXPE Experiential Education Courses

Class Grid

Course Catalog Archive Search

TERM/YEAR
TEACHING MODE
SUBJECT
DIVISION



DISTRIBUTION



ENROLLMENT LIMIT
COURSE TYPE
Start Time
End Time
Day(s)