Syllabi: Creative Writing for Medical Students

INSTITUTION: Stanford University School of Medicine

COURSE INSTRUCTORS: Nancy Cohen (Stegner Fellow, Stanford University); Ramona Doyle; Audrey Shafer, M.D. (email: ashafer@stanford.edu)

ENROLLMENT: 1st and 2nd year students; elective

SEMESTER: Winter Quarter 1999

Mondays 12-1 p.m.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

The primary objective of this course is to help medical students who are interested in creative writing find and use the time and imaginative space to undertake one or two projects this quarter. Most class time will be spent workshopping drafts of poems, stories, or creative nonfiction. Each student is asked to commit to attending all meetings, providing thoughtful response to other writers, and carrying a writing project through to a final form. The agenda for the final meetings will be set at the first and second meetings as participants choose their projects.

A writing exercise is assigned at the first meeting to be brought to the second meeting: Write a page about your closet in your childhood bedroom. If you did not have a closet, write about a bureau or some other space where you kept things of your own. Stick to the closet - don't describe the rest of the room.