The Art and Craft of the Diary

Undergraduate

The self is an ongoing story we tell ourselves. Nowhere is this project more evident and malleable than through the form of a diary. In this creative writing course, students approach the diary—a capacious genre that includes list-making, accumulating observations, chronicling a journey or transformation—as its own literary craft and a process that is central to the larger practice of writing. Over the semester, students create several original diaries by modeling works that poetically harness observation—from tenth-century Japanese poet Shōnagon’s lists, to the travelogue films of Chris Marker, to Sheila Heti’s alphabetically organized diaries, to the journals of renowned writers, such as David Sedaris and Eileen Myles, and W. E. B. Du Bois, which is archived at the Beinecke, and that we observe in person. Our readings and material studies reveal the diary to be an ever-evolving literary form and also serve as inspiration for our own record-keeping. Students begin the semester by keeping a new form of diary every other week. In the second half of the semester, students expand on one of the archiving practices we’ve explored, building a collection that they present to the class in excerpted form. Students interested in any writing genre and from all majors are welcome to take the class. HU TTh 2:35pm-3:50pm