MFA Curriculum

This opening residency is taught over 10 days in person on the Ashland campus. Students work with Master of Fine Arts faculty and with visiting writers by attending workshops, lectures, seminars, readings, discussion groups and individual conferences.

There are three major components to the course:

• Writers’ workshop/mentor tutorial sessions
• Craft, style and publishing seminars
• Evening/Weekend readings and discussions

In addition, students meet individually with their mentors to define a writing/reading project for the non-residential courses. There are also new student orientation sessions, academic advising sessions and computer support sessions. Collegiality and the ability to work within a supportive MFA community is a criterion for passing English 501 and for remaining in good academic standing in the MFA program.

This course is the first step in a program-long process of working toward the completion of a book of poems or prose, culminating in the MFA thesis.Each student will work online, individually with their faculty mentor and collectively with student peers, to develop the craft of drafting the body of a book. Students also develop skills in judiciously applying constructive criticism to improve the quality of their writing and skills in articulating constructive criticism of both published and student work. While students actively engage in the revision process, the emphasis of the course is on the generation of new material.

This course is the second step in a program-long process of working toward the completion of a book of poems or prose, culminating in the MFA thesis. Each student continues to develop the craft of drafting new poems or pieces of prose by working individually with a faculty mentor and collectively with student peers online. In addition, students work toward the completion of a group of poems or pieces of prose worthy of serving as the core of a book. While students continually create new work, there is an emphasis on the revision process and the ability of students to articulate the nature and degree of aesthetic coherence in their own developing manuscripts, as well as in existing works of literature.

This mid-program residency is taught over 10 days in person on the Ashland campus. Students work with Master of Fine Arts faculty and visiting writers by attending workshops, lectures, seminars, readings, discussion groups and individual conferences.

There will be three major components to the course:

There are three major components to the course:

• Writers’ workshop/mentor tutorial sessions
• Craft, style and publishing seminars
• Evening/Weekend readings and discussions

In addition, students meet individually with their mentors to define a writing/reading project for the non-residential courses.

This course is the third step in a program-long process of working toward the completion of a book of poems or prose. Students continue to develop new writing by working individually with a faculty mentor and collectively with student peers online. Students also sharpen the ability to articulate traits of theme, form and/or style that characterize the well-crafted books in assigned reading and their own developing manuscripts. While students actively work toward the creation of new prose or poems and continue to revise individual works, there is an emphasis on the ability to articulate key formal and thematic characteristics that contribute to the resonance and aesthetic integrity of a body of writing.

This course is the fourth and culminating step in a program-long process of working toward the completion of a book of poems, essays, short stories, a novella or memoir. Students further develop the craft of shaping a book-length collection of poems, creative nonfiction or fiction by working individually with a faculty mentor and working collectively with student peers online. Each student actively works toward the creation of new poems or new narrative segments of nonfiction or fiction and toward the revision of individual works. However, the primary emphasis of this course is on developing the student's ability to shape a book-length collection of writing into an aesthetic construct that is at once informed by and larger than the sum of its parts. At the end of ENG 701, faculty mentors will recommend to the MFA director those students ready to defend theses during ENG 503: Summer Residency III.

This exit residency will emphasize post-thesis concerns. Students defend their thesis before a faculty committee and participate in a thesis reading. They also develop a deepening awareness of the publishing industry with advice from faculty, visiting writers, agents and editors. There are individual meetings with editors and agents in addition to the three regular components of the summer residency:

• Writers’ workshop/mentor tutorial sessions
• Craft, style and publishing seminars
• Evening/Weekend readings and discussions

Emphases in the writers’ workshop/mentor tutorial sessions vary but typically involve a focus on methods of publication and navigation of the professional writing life, on new writing unrelated to the thesis, on outtakes from the thesis that might form the nucleus of a new book or on the further development of the completed thesis into a publishable manuscript.

This course focuses on the theory and practice of undergraduate reading and writing instruction, with an emphasis on the teaching of writing.

This course offers students support during their first semester of teaching composition to Ashland University undergraduates. The course focuses on effective and efficient teaching strategies, particularly in the online environment. These strategies include best practices for grading and giving feedback, classroom management and lesson development.