Alumni describe the CCS Literature program

Here's a nice description of CCS Lit, written by a group of alumni in 2011. I'd just change a few parts of it; I'll put my notes afterward.

College of Creative Studies Literature Program (founded by literary critic Marvin Mudrick in 1968)

Students are admitted based on work in evidence of talent: poems, short stories, memoirs, and/or essays. Students’ applications are often highly original.

The curriculum concentrates on major literary figures in English and other literatures. There are no lecture, introductory or survey courses in writing or in literature. In English these major figures have always included Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton.

Depth rather than breadth distinguishes the seminars: Readings are close, intense, and ambitious, i.e., it is not unusual that many texts of a single author might be covered in a quarter.

Students approach literature as writers.

Through deep immersion in the works of a single author or a few authors, and instructor-guided close readings, the CCS Lit student refines his or her ability to respond to literature, builds the skills necessary for literary analysis, and gains the knowledge necessary to become an excellent writer.

The notion that the qualities that distinguish good writing are the same across genres—clarity, precision, suppleness of language, vitality of voice, freshness and passion—inform the curriculum and evaluation of student work. The flexible curriculum often includes contemporary or under-represented authors, and works in new genres.

CCS faculty include working poets or writers of fiction, able to serve as mentors to developing writers.

Creative writing courses—the writing of verse, the writing of narrative prose–build the skills of emerging writers in the program but also help students become better readers—more critical and more sensitive to language.

The CCS Literary Symposium offers students continued exposure to a wide range of working writers and is part of the curriculum: speakers have included U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, Pulitzer prize-winning food writer, Jonathan Gold, novelist Maxine Hong-Kingston, playwright Eve Ensler, writer of fiction and documentary film maker Lisa Teasley, and writer of fiction Reyna Grande.

The writerly focus of CCS Lit serves the University as a whole and the English department in particular by nourishing young writers, by serving their literary point of view, and publishing them in Spectrum and Into the Teeth of the Wind.

CCS Lit has served its students well for over 45 years: Graduates have become novelists, poets, lawyers, journalists, playwrights, film and television writers, and scholars, and have been accepted into distinguished and highly selective graduate schools.

In response to "Students’ applications are often highly original" - originality is great of course, but I believe the key is that the application shows a strong enthusiasm for writing instead of just fulfilling writing assignments.

Also, it's likely that "The curriculum concentrates on major literary figures in English and other literatures" was accurate when these alumni were students, but a lot of my Literature classes were on specific movements or themes instead of specific authors.

And there are an increasing number of recent graduates who are technical writers and editors (like me), which is great and worth mentioning too.

More Facebook discussion groups

I haven't been an active CCS Literature alumna recently, but in case anyone is looking for news, rumors, rants, and discussion, here are a few Facebook groups that you might be interested in joining:

• College of Creative Studies - an open group for all CCS students, alumni, faculty, staff, friends, and even prospective students.
• CCS Literature Collaborative - a closed group mostly intended for current Lit students.
• College of Creative Studies, UCSB Literature Alumni - an open group for all Lit alumni, also welcoming current students and friends.
• CCS Student-Alumni Network - an open group with the goal to improve communication between alumni and current students, mostly about the Lit program.
• College of Creative Studies Lit Alumni Mercenaries and Castoffs (1995-2011) - a closed group for recent Lit alumni.

Update: This announcement is why the alumni groups have been active recently:

The Executive Vice Chancellor has requested that the Academic Senate consider a hold on admissions to the Literature major for Fall 2014 in order to provide the time and opportunity to strengthen a cherished and valued program. The recommendation stemmed from an established and carefully considered program review process for academic units of the University of California; the review for CCS was conducted last academic year. The Academic Senate will be reviewing the recommendation and will make a determination on the appropriate next steps. While the process continues, admissions to the program remains open; applications will be read and assessed as normal until the College is informed otherwise. We have been working earnestly to resolve this matter, and will continue to do so. Rest assured that this will not affect any student who is currently enrolled, nor will it affect current students’ ability to complete their degree. As pertinent information is made available, we will post it here.

Also covered in the Daily Nexus.

The new Lit Collab discussion group (and some comments for incoming students)

Current CCS Literature students have set up a new Literature Collaborative Facebook group for talking about the program and sharing links with each other. Yay! And for incoming Lit students, I've been writing a little bit of advice in the unofficial UCSB CCS class of 2015 Facebook group. I'll include those comments here, with some extra context, in case future incoming CCS Lit students are interested.

Clarifying the future of CCS Lit

Every year, Bruce (the dean of CCS) meets with students in each major to update them on the status of their program and ask for feedback on how well the program is working. This year, a lot of the Literature meeting was about the future of our program. Bruce is dedicated to making sure that CCS Lit is here to stay, and that it's here to grow stronger, but there are some interesting uncertainties about what the future will exactly look like. Here are my full notes from this meeting (also included at the end of this post).

All of this may sound worrying, but I've found that CCS Lit is an interesting and unique program, especially because many of the students are so passionate about it. We're very lucky as students that we get to participate in this improvement process — it's pretty rare that a dean of any department/college makes an effort to discuss internal department processes and politics with undergrad students.

CCS students get to participate in the construction of their educations on every level, from selecting much of your own course plan to freedom in choosing how to complete assignments — to learning about how the college works and being able to contribute real feedback to help direct the current and future state of the college. This is my favorite thing about CCS: it's an intellectual community influenced by all of its members, especially people who choose to actively put in effort to help organize and develop it, not just a standardized academic program that gives you a degree at the end.

Basically I love CCS to little pieces and I want all of you incoming freshmen to be really excited about it. And when you arrive here, I want to encourage you to make your education into the education you're looking forward to.

Comments about taking classes outside CCS Lit

I loved the English department! Taking classes there worked very well for me because my particular focus was in academic study of literature, media, and technology, not really in creative writing (CCS Lit is wonderfully flexible for people with unusual interests). So I took tons of upper-division seminar classes over in the College of Letters and Sciences. You do have to put some care and effort into picking your professors and classes, but I found a lot of smart professors and students in the English department.

I'd recommend that CCS Lit students check out the specializations available in English and see if any of them ring true for your interests, and if so, consider unofficially following their curriculum recommendations and the professors in that specialty. (I chose Literature & Culture of Information, unsurprisingly.)

Taking upper-division classes as a lower-division student is a privilege that's available if you want it. Some departments around campus are less willing to accept lower-division CCS students into their upper-division classes, even though you're technically allowed to take those classes, but it was easy in the English department. I also took a graduate-level class in the Comparative Literature program and it was great; I should have done more of those.

CCS Lit already includes a number of academic/theory classes — in my experience, they're often taught by people from other departments who want to have a chance to teach more specialized and experimental topics than they can in their "home" departments, since CCS allows for a lot of flexibility in class topics and usually has small class sizes. It sounds like CCS will be doing more of that in the future, and possibly in a more formal way, which sounds good to me. Generally it's good when CCS students spend time in outside departments and within CCS.

The Book Art classes within CCS are awesome, and everybody interested in art or books should take them. Sign up for them right away if you can — don't wait too many quarters to start!

My unsolicited advice

CCS Lit is not a program that works for everybody by default, but when you apply the effort to make it into something that does work for you (with a bit of luck along the way), you can't imagine having gone anywhere else. Bruce says that CCS is a place for "weirdly focused" students. I think it works especially when your interests and ambitions don't quite fit into a standard college structure — when you want more, when you want to determine your own intellectual path, when you want to work on what you're interested in, when you want to produce original work instead of filling out assignments for grades, when you are willing to find your own advisors from across campus and hang out with people in different majors to learn what you can learn. And maybe also for people who find interdepartmental politics fascinating. :)

Edit: My notes from the meeting

Since the CCS Literature Collaborative group is now a closed group, I'll repost my notes from that meeting below:

To ensure the survival of CCS, Bruce is working on integrating the college more effectively into the campus. External reviews over the past ten years criticized the inward-facing structure of the college because it was not terribly valuable to UCSB as a whole (although of course valuable to its students). Improving this will mean that we can keep our budget now and in the future.

The other majors have made a lot of progress, but CCS Literature is still inward-turned -- and there aren't enough qualified faculty in the program right now to lead the Lit major going forward, since Shirley is retiring next year. We need to add in more people from the rest of campus. But CCS Lit will continue to have creative writing as part of its unique value to UCSB and its students, especially since English and the Writing Program don't provide that kind of class. Bruce wants CCS Lit to stay here and stay strong, and it is obvious that it will be altered over the course of this growth process, but he does not yet know exactly how.

English is interested in increasing and developing its multimedia and multidisciplinary offerings. This will probably become a stronger part of CCS Lit -- but the idea is to open the additional doors of new media, not to close the existing doors of developing the craft of writing for readers.

Over the course of the transition period, current students will be able to continue with the program they signed up for (their intellectual contract with the college). New students will get the new program.

What can we do to help? Talk to our favorite professors about CCS and generally be good CCS citizens across campus. Get involved with campus jobs, especially as tour guides, and share information about jobs with each other. It'd be great if CCS could develop its alumni network more.

The current CCS Lit advising system is very weak. Bruce knows this and is working to get more faculty into the program to help with it.

Can't we make our current lecturers into stronger parts of CCS, as advisors and leaders? Not really, because of how the university is structured. There are three kinds of teachers here: "ladder faculty" who are long-term members of the staff hired for teaching, research, and service; "lecturers" hired for teaching and service (who can become longer-term members of staff after teaching for a while); and "unit 18s" who are hired to only teach (on a shorter-term basis). A lot of our teachers in CCS Lit are unit 18s, but the leader of CCS Lit is required to be a ladder faculty member.

How do we help the university and the broader community learn about CCS? Bruce knows that the CCS website is awful and is attempting to make progress on that front. Bruce is also working on getting CCS classes to not be "secret" on GOLD. Ellen also proposed the idea of a downtown reading series that would involve CCS students and alumni, to help promote the image of CCS and also benefit student and alumni writers.

Yet more advice for students

This Little Friends of Printmaking interview is about making a living as artists, but parts of it seem to apply to Literature students too:

for us, the main benefit of being at art school was the unfettered access to the facilities. We tried to make the most of that; I mean we really, really cranked out the work.

if you’re in art school, you’re essentially paying people to look at your work and take it somewhat seriously. I used to get something out of that; but then we started doing posters and design work that reached a wider audience, where the success or failure of something became definitively less subjective. Then I was like, “ya’ll have been replaced, bitches!” (I didn’t really say that, but you can imagine.) So my main advice to recent graduates is that the flow of good and bad advice that comes from critique will eventually get shut off, so maybe come up with your own way of getting your work in front of people and make things that interest people and are, somehow, a part of their lives. (And do so without spending a huge amount of money.)

In other words: write a lot, and work on finding an audience for it even before you graduate. Kind of obvious, and easier said than done, but I like the reminder.

14 suggestions for improvements to the Lit program

I completed my Literature degree with the end of Fall quarter in December, and I've moved away from Santa Barbara! Since I'm not at CCS anymore, Lit Collab no longer exists as a weekly club, but it may be picked up and led by another student if people feel a need for it again. We founded the group in Spring 2007 in response to perceived problems, so in one way, it's good when that interest fades. Somehow I made a bunch of good friends along the way. ♥

Over my years at CCS, I discussed the Literature program in depth with my advisors (Robyn Bell and James Donelan), Lit Collab members, and other friends, usually trying to come up with ways to improve the major. Here are some of these ideas in writing in the hope that they will continue being discussed.

Note that these are just recommendations, limited by my single viewpoint as a student. I've sometimes been frustrated by aspects of this college, but as a whole it's been even more than what I imagined as a bored high school student thinking about the perfect university. I love CCS, and I'm happy I got to contribute to it in a few ways.

Advising

1. Advisors should regularly ask their advisees what they think of the Lit program and how it should be improved, starting during their freshman year. (Some advisors do this already, but not all of them.) Encouraging students to think critically about their educations and involving them in discussions of teaching styles, curriculum, etc. supports the mission of CCS: helping students think for themselves and produce their own educations instead of simply accepting knowledge.

2. Advisors should encourage their advisees to take core classes from a broad range of instructors in both CCS and L&S (English, Comp Lit, etc). Every instructor has something different to teach.

3. Advisors should follow up with all of their former advisees 1 year and 5 years after they graduate, probably through simple personal emails, and compile the results into a document discussed by the Lit program and used to help fine-tune future advising and program choices. Do they have jobs, and if so, where are they working? Are they in graduate school? Are their careers in progress? Are they satisfied with the preparation that CCS Lit gave them? Do they want to start donating money to CCS?

4. Advisors should encourage all students to consider taking a CCS Book Art class in their freshman or sophomore years as a way to think more deeply about writing and reading. Setting a poem by hand with metal type makes a person consider every single comma; learning to sew and glue eight different ways to structure a book encourages a person to think about innovative ways to structure narratives.

5. Advising is central to CCS, but I’ve heard many students complain about their advisors for all kinds of reasons. I’d like students to have to write an anonymous advisor evaluation at the end of every year, much like class evaluations: formally collected, typed up, compiled, and distributed back to those advisors (and the Lit program as a whole).

Requirements

1. The Lit program should produce and distribute a one-page document that explains to students why they have to take Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare. Students complain about the arbitrariness and old-white-men bias of this requirement, but there are reasons for it: they are a symbolic remnant of traditional liberal arts curriculums, they changed the English language, etc. I picture this document with one paragraph from each instructor explaining his/her thoughts about this requirement, putting it into a broader academic context.

2. Lit Symposium should present Marvin Mudrick once a year (or couple of years), with a video or a reading of his writing and/or transcribed classes. A lot of students graduate from CCS Lit having barely heard of the interesting person who established much of what CCS is today, and I think they missed out. I’ve benefited from reading about his ideas and thinking critically about them both on their own and as embodied in the current Lit program. This remembering shouldn’t be worshipful or antagonistic, just educational.

3. Lit Symposium should also have a student reading once a year or so, probably in Winter quarter. There are usually some student-organized readings in Spring quarter for Spectrum and Teeth, and sometimes people create other reading events in the evenings, but it’d be great for students have more chances to share their work with their peers in a large-ish and somewhat formal setting. It could work like this: the Lit Symp organizer would email a call for submissions to all Lit students a couple weeks before the reading, and then the organizer would review the submissions and approve 10-12 diverse short pieces or excerpts.

4. The Senior Portfolio project is important and should be more rigorously defined. I imagine it like this: each student would produce at least two copies of a portfolio book of some kind, to be determined in conjunction with his or her advisor. This may be: a collection of poetry xeroxed and stapled; a set of academic essays and short stories, interspersed with drawings by a friend, bound by the Alternative Copy Shop; a themed gathering of photography and memoir writing hand-bound with a technique learned in a Book Arts class; or anything like that. They would usually include an introduction and a list of important classes the student has taken while at CCS. One copy stays at CCS in a small library of portfolio books created by graduates, available for all interested current Lit students to browse and take inspiration (maybe on a shelf in the CCS office or something like that).

5. More small group projects outside of class might be able to help Literature students get to know each other better. A sense of community in the Literature program is very important. Each student’s Literature friends contribute to his or her individual success through informal discussions, writing exchanges, class recommendations, etc.

The program itself

1. Literature is too large, diverse, and personal of a field to approach with a rigorously defined system. Throwing students into the deep end with serious classes starting as freshmen and teaching them via modeling by instructors and other students in discussion-based classes, with lots of reading and lots of writing, is the most effective way I’ve seen to teach literature. We should continue improving this system with good visiting instructors and enthusiastic new students.

2. Some aspects of the CCS Lit program aren’t well explained, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work. I’m in favor of incremental changes, not drastic ones.

3. CCS Lit should offer core classes that engage with a broad range of approaches, subjects, and time periods, so that each student can piece together a solid and specialized overview of the field by the time he or she graduates. This may include classes involving feminist theory, postcolonial scholarship, postmodernism, and psychoanalytic theory as well as the literatures of many nations and cultures and eras.

4. What’s the difference between the L&S English program and the CCS Literature program? I’d really like to be able to provide a solid answer for this when people ask me, respectful of the perspectives and goals of both of these programs.

Some recommended classes

Now that it's time to pick Winter classes, here are recommendations from members of Lit Collab. See also our Fall 2008 Very Unofficial Collection of Helpful Hints for New Lit Students (PDF), which has more suggestions on page 5 from Jordan '09, Ellen '10, and me. Feel free to comment on this post with a list of your own favorites!

Danielle '10

Basic Narrative Technique or anything like it is crucial for jump-starting your creative writing skills. Even if you think you know all the basics, trust me, you don't. Take this class.

Sign up for every creative writing class, attend the first meeting, and decide which ones you want to keep, if any. If you don't have a writing class every quarter, you can always do independent study, and the great thing about independent study is that you can pick which teacher you get to work with and what you work on.

Torrie '10

Some of the best courses are the random ones taken outside of your major. I highly recommend looking into the Anthropology and Classics departments; Professor Erickson in Classics is wonderful.

The language departments offer cool courses on literature, film, culture, etc. which are taught in English, so there is no need to be afraid to take a course in the Italian department if you don't speak the language. Just look for courses that have weird letter combinations after them, like Ys and Zs, and they will often be the English-language offerings.

The English department has a lot of great classes. I loved Environment and Literature, Detective Fiction and Fairy Tales. For professors, I recommend Zinn, Hiltner and Shirley Lim (who is also very involved in CCS).

If you are interested in creative writing, take Barry Spacks.

As a Lit student it seems almost required — but very fun and rewarding — to take either or both John Wilson's Diaries course and Caroline Allen's Telling Life Stories.

Take Walking Biology before you graduate.

Britta '09

Try the Feminist Studies department. I signed up for Gender, Science, and New Technology, not expecting much, and I loved it. Experience with academic feminist study can add a lot of depth to your understanding of literature, and it's also just refreshing to be part of a room full of people who deeply agree about the equality of human beings.

Take at least one graduate-level class — even better if you buddy with a CCS Lit friend and take it together. Danielle and I picked one in the Comparative Literature program and learned a lot in a tiny class from a distinguished visiting professor. So good! If the class you choose turns out to be too hard, you can drop it halfway through and still have had a valuable experience. All you have to do is pick up a form in the CCS office and get a few signatures.

Advice about writing papers

The following quote is from an email that Professor Richard Corum (now retired) sent to his CCS Lit Shakespeare class in October 2007, when we had a paper due soon. I find this oddly helpful to re-read when I'm working on an essay, and I hope you will too.

You're being asked to do this task entirely on your own. The point of this is not to defeat you and lead to learned helplessness, but to empower you, to give you confidence that you can do this kind of work on your own — that, more generally, you can learn to do all kinds of difficult things. This is the most important part of the assignment because this is the only hope that your age group will be able to keep on creating new knowledge once all of your teachers are dead. What you are most up against in doing this are, most likely, your feelings of panic, incapacity, fear, of wanting to do the right thing, the best thing, of succeeding even if success is handed to you. To write this paper you need to be able to get these emotions under some control, and to keep them from destroying the possibility of stepping outside your comfort zone. If you are in your comfort zone on this paper you aren't doing the assignment (unless you've done a lot of things like this in the past).

Take risks, and make this, in whatever way possible, something pleasurable for yourself. And, remember, it's better to get nowhere (this time) than to cave in and do the same old, same old.

Mapping the college

Hidden within the CCS website, there's a map of our building (left). I made a new version (right) as part of the in-progress website revision.

I could list the current uses of each room (and the past uses of some of them), but that's not very exciting. Instead, here's some history.

The college folklore is that our building is a "temporary" structure built during World War II as a commissary for the Marine air station that later became the UCSB campus (MCAS Santa Barbara). It seems like normal wartime construction, not intended to last a hundred years, maybe hasty, but pretty durable anyway. Commissary usually means grocery store, but the UCSB Long-Range Development Plan identifies Building 494 as a mess hall. This makes sense, since the book arts lab has old kitchen equipment hookups and a shed with extra sinks. I've heard that the Old Little Theater was a movie theater.

UCSB Geography has a great article about the spatial history of the campus and its department, which includes the following aerial photos (with circles added by me). Compare to the current map of the campus and Google Maps satellite view.

From the UC Library, that's the barracks area of the Marine base, probably photographed sometime between 1942 (when the buildings were constructed) and 1946 (when it stopped operating). It can be seen in context in this 1944 aerial photo of the whole station. According to the California State Military Museum, the station was established here to use the existing Goleta airport for training pilots. (It's no coincidence that there's now a WWII memorial right next to the airport parking lot.)

In the photo, building 494 is surrounded by an orderly arrangement of two-story barracks buildings; a few of them are still standing as buildings 429, 407, and 408. The Old Gym (with the swimming pool on the left) is there too. The tall lines of trees had been planted as windbreaks when the land was a ranch — see this history from the Music department as well as this map from 1888, which is part of a fascinating set of maps of the Goleta slough area. The row of eucalyptus trees along Ocean Road (between campus and Isla Vista) is also an old windbreak — and according to the UCSB LRDP it was "utilized as a gun range that included grenades, bombs, bomb fuses, pyrotechnics, rockets, small arms, and machine gun related ordnance," which is awesome except that the ground may be contaminated.

UCSB moved from its former location (now SBCC) to this spot in 1958. In this 1960 photo, the campus still has most of the old barracks-area buildings, with the addition of the Santa Rosa dorm and some other structures. I'd like to know what that thing is on the other side of the lagoon — that area is now just some crumbling pavement in the grass.

When the College of Creative Studies was founded in 1967, it was housed in the one-story WWII-era building a little north of its present home. In 1975, it moved to building 494 so that an extension to the library could be built on the site of the old place.

The UCSB Long-Range Development Plan's "Sensitivity Study for Potential Historical Resources" says that the few remaining Marine buildings on campus have "low potential to be historical resources" and can be knocked down. Noooooo! These structures aren't beautiful or distinctive, but their presence is educational and adds character to UCSB. They excite curiosity about the history of the campus, they can teach about World War II and the experiences of Marines, they add diversity and interest to the range of structures on campus, and they make students think about the uses and re-uses of places and buildings. I think the CCS home and similar buildings are significant enough to merit working with, not just razing, when planning a future grand avenue and bland dorm complex. (See the "Library Mall" page of the short version of the Campus Plan.) Luckily the UCSB budget probably won't be able to pay for new construction projects for a while.

Update (November 17, 2009):

I've been informed that the mystery structure in the second image is an old lookout tower. Wow!

I've also been learning more about "temporary" WWII construction. Here's a great article from the University of Utah about their similar buildings as worthy of historic consideration. From the article:

The main reason that these structures were labeled "temporary" was due to the general opinion that wars end...These structures were built with the expectation that they would last only 5 to 20 years. However, they have been somewhat over-designed if the objective was to erect temporary structures. President Roosevelt promised the mothers of servicemen that modern facilities and adequate shelter would be provided...a standard of health and comfort previously unknown by U.S. troops during wartime.

The significance of these buildings often lies in their connection to [the whole war effort] rather than as individual buildings...Though few renowned individuals, if any, have graced these buildings' halls, thousands of the unsung did on their way to and from the battlefield.

They are also significant for the way they influenced the building industry. These "temporary" buildings represent a construction methodology that swept the country after the war; that is, standardized plans, prefabrication of components and construction crews that specialized in only one aspect of the construction process.

[For the university's purposes,] costly new construction has often been postponed or even avoided in many instances by simply upgrading these "temporary" buildings with relatively inexpensive modifications such as adding insulation, making them ADA accessible, interior remodeling, a periodic painting, or as has often been the case, moving them to a needed location.

The blog City of Sound discusses another CCS-like building adapted for academic use at MIT (quoting from How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand, one of my favorite books):

"(A) temporary building left over from World War II without even a name, only a number: Building 20...'Unusual flexibility made the building ideal for laboratory and experimental space.'"

"Building 20 was...spartan in its amenities, often dirty, and implacably ugly. Whatever was the attraction?...'One never needs to worry about injuring the architectural or artistic value of the environment'; 'We feel the space is really ours. We designed it. We run it. The building is full of small microenvironments, each of which is different and each a creative space. Thus the building has a lot of personality.'"

Building 494 is a lot like that. You don't have to worry about getting it dirty, and it's full of nicely worn-in rooms that have adapted to their uses. Students are allowed to make many modifications, although we have to ask before doing permanent structural damage (it's a small building, not a huge one like MIT's). City of Sound goes on to discuss the replacement for Building 20, called Stata and designed by Frank Gehry, and how it both continues that tradition of hackability (with careful planning for flexible spaces) and doesn't continue it (because it's a very expensive new building). It'd be nice if CCS had the funds for a replacement building, much less one like Stata, but even then it'd lose something important that Building 494 has.

The Golden Gate National Recreation Area also has a page explaining their preserved WWII temporary buildings. And I found references to a document from 1993 titled World War II Temporary Military Buildings: A Brief History of the Architecture and Planning of Cantonments and Training Stations in the United States, but I don't have access to it.

Summer reading

Heather recently posted this stack of books she read over the summer:

Yay! I got inspired to take a picture of my stack, with some in common because we both took "Reading and Writing Personal History" with Barry Spacks:

All of my books were for summer English and Literature classes; I wouldn't read that much on my own. I got most absorbed in This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff, When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago, and Kindred by Octavia Butler (I'd already read it in 10th grade, but it was good the second time too).

In other news, the CCS Student Lounge now has a set of this year's New Yorker issues for reading and borrowing but not stealing. We're watching you.

Isla Vista

As a Lit major, you probably have opinions about the local coffee. Here are mine. Nicoletti's (and its branches at the Arbor, by Buchanan, etc.) is pretty much the only option on campus, and it's sufficient between classes but not great. Luckily Caje in Isla Vista is reasonably good. It's tastier, quieter, and less crowded than Java Jones. This is what Caje looks like:

Isla Vista in general gets a lot of loathing, but I'm fond of it. Check out this detailed UCSB and Isla Vista Walking Tour by a Physics professor. A few of the highlighted locations: the entrance to a long-defunct asphalt mine, the memorial to the symbolic Isla Vista tree, the geodesic dome house, the Celtic cross at Coal Oil Point, and remnants of Isla Vista's primeval oak forest. You also can't miss the Food Co-op.

Local opportunities for getting published

A compilation of details for all the UCSB-related publications I could find:

Creative writing

Catalyst is UCSB's free undergraduate literary journal of original poetry and short fiction. To reach the current editorial staff, contact Ann Wainwright (wainwright@english.ucsb.edu), undergraduate advisor in English.

Into the Teeth of the Wind is a poetry journal produced by CCS students who serve as editors, contributors, and publishers. Submissions are also sought from the greater community. Submit poems to windsteeth@ccs.ucsb.edu.

Spectrum is the literary journal of the College of Creative Studies. Many students have had writing or artwork published in this magazine, and others have served as editors or assisted in another aspect of production. Spectrum accepts submissions of prose, poetry, nonfiction, and art from anyone, anywhere. Submit work to spectrum.ccs.ucsb@gmail.com.

WORD Magazine is a quarterly Isla Vista arts and culture magazine produced by UCSB students as part of the course INT 185ST. More information.

Journalism

The Daily Nexus, UCSB's campus newspaper, holds meetings for interested writers, copyeditors, illustrators, and photographers near the beginning of every quarter.

The Independent, Santa Barbara's weekly paper, also sometimes hires students as columnists and interns.

Research

California Engineer is a research journal for undergraduate engineers in the UC system.

Focus Media Journal is the annual scholarly publication of the Film and Media Studies Department at UCSB. It accepts student submissions from all majors; see this announcement for instructions.

Discovery is UCSB's journal of undergraduate student research (see here). Manuscripts are considered from all scholarly fields and must be based on original research. A letter of recommendation from a faculty member must accompany your camera-ready manuscript. Deadline for submissions is one week after Spring quarter finals. Complete guidelines may be obtained from the Math Department Office, Room 6607 in South Hall.

The Law and Society Journal at UCSB accepts original student submissions related to law and society, including reviews, photo essays, and editorials.

Pictures of Building 494

I've heard people complain about the odd colors of the CCS building, but this is what it looked like in 2003 (credit to Brendan Barnwell):

I like the colors:

Blogs by Literature students

A couple of CCS Lit writing classes have encouraged people to start blogs, and some of us have just decided to do this on our own.

Here are a few that I know of by current students (some prefer to remain anonymous):

• AUDJ LODJ — '09
• Buffalo not Beef — '10
• Clockwork Oren — Oren '11
• Conejito — '09
• Dog-Eared — Danielle '10
• Jeweled Platypus — me '09

I helped Robyn write a few posts too: Uncle Saxophone.

And Barry has a blog: Poetry Matters.

Some by recently graduated Lit students:

• Inword — Sophia '07
• NYC Food Adventures — Pamela '07
• tie me in a knot and CinderLisaDesign — Lisa '07
• Unnecessary Analysis — Jessica '08

The big three

People don't always like the Literature requirement of taking Milton, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and there isn't much official communication about why we have to take them. Here are some reasons that I've heard or thought about:

• They're a vestige of traditional Literature education — back thirty years ago, all you studied as a Lit major (or equivalent) was old white men. Now we study a much wider range of writing, but there's a little bit of that left.
• Robyn says that part of the reason we study those three is because they each changed the English language.
• Nobody knows, especially since our founder was not a fan of them: "we were asked (though perhaps not expected) to get through piles of Shakespeare (whom he called a misogynist), Chaucer ('just pretend it’s horribly misspelled'), and Milton (again, no favorite of Mudrick's)".
• They show that Lit is a "hard" major.
• For bragging rights.
• To inspire debate about the literary canon.
• To understand allusions and references (but then why not include the Greek and Roman epics or the King James Bible?).
• Because they're old white men.
• Because they're just that good.
• Because they're challenging.
• Because it'd be ridiculous to get a Lit degree without having read them.
• Because it sounded like a good idea at the time.

For one of the three, we used to be able to substitute a class about a significant author if taught in the original language; now we can substitute various single-author classes (ask your advisor for details).

Litify it!

Hello, all! Danielle here, pinch-blogging for Britta to give you the happenings from the Literature meeting held last Friday:

Notes

The Annual Literature Meeting began on a somber note, with Bruce having to explain to us that a beloved teacher was going to have to take the remainder of the quarter off. As a result:

1. Solo Authors is canceled. Students will be rewarded 2 units for work already completed.
2. Donelan takes control of Milton after a week and a half hiatus.
3. Graphic Novels will be covered by another professor.
4. Lim will oversee the creative writing advisees as well as independent studies and my colloquium.

A "Thinking Of You" card will be circulating throughout classes to be signed by all students who feel so inclined this week and next.

After the bad news, we received some better news. Changes are happening within the Lit program in order to make ours as defined and organized as all the others in CCS. Most of the changes that will be implemented to support this project sound great so far.

In conjunction with the struggle to cover Robyn's classes and advisees, more student advisers are being sought out so each professor will have fewer students to advise and we, in turn, will receive more one-on-one mentorship.

Classes will be outlined hopefully a full year in advance to aid in planning of schedules.

Bruce is working to expand the breadth of topics covered by Literature classes, as in recent years they have been mostly regarding the same types of subjects (ie. specific authors, time periods, regions). In the past, however, Literature classes ranged from philosophy, religion, history, etc. studied through "a literary lens."To help bring in new literary topics outside of our usual studies, professors from departments including German/Slavic Studies and Psychology will be on loan.

A few students, including myself, will be working with Leslie to define more clearly the requirements for Literature majors in order to graduate. Lists will be drafted to clarify which classes fulfill the breadth and related reqs.

The mid-residency review process is still being polished, but its basic function remains this: to determine after a few quarters in CCS if a student is really meant to remain within the college, or might possibly be best served in another deparment. This decision will rest in the hands of a panel of faculty that will review a student's portfolio as it stands at the end of the sophomore year.

The senior portfolio is also a work-in-progress. They are not required this year but may be next year. The senior portfolio will also be critiqued by a panel of faculty to polish the set of work for graduate school applications and resumes.

Bruce introduced the idea of a Literature Symposium that all freshmen would take to reveal to all students the resources that are available to them at our university. The skills focused on in this one-quarter class would aid students in writing university-level papers and the general critical study of literature.

Spectrum and Teeth for this year have received full funding but other arrangements need to be made to match their budgets against next year. One goal Bruce has for Spectrum and Teeth is to reopen them to the literary world on a national level by increasing circulation.

These are the changes that so far are in effect/being finalized. Some other problems with the Literature program were brought to the Dean's attention by students.

Colloquiums are remaining at two units but the prospect of a writing workship colloquium counting for writing requirement credit was proposed. Bruce agreed that with a supplemental two-unit independent study with a faculty member would allow this.

The number of L&S students appearing in writing classes was brought up in relation to lack of opportunities to fulfill writing requirements. Marthine is going to be researching the ratio of L&S students to CCS Lit students in all classes, not just Creative Writing, to determine if this is a valid concern. Among the possible solutions suggested were a weeding-out process for any non-CCS Lit students in the form of a submitted piece of work to the professor.

Thoughts

The final concern voiced was the monotony of Literature Symposium. Whether students realize it or not, Literature Symposium is an opportunity to hear from many different kinds of people, writers and performers and publishers alike. It exposes us to a variety of careers and genres of writing and even the speakers we hate further educate us in what we do not want to do. As long as speakers are not being repeated within the year, we really have no right to complain. On top of all of this, it is only one hour a week. What doesn't kill us, makes us a stronger, for lack of a better way of phrasing that thought.

This brings me to a point of Bruce's I would like to touch on. Many Literature students waste their time complaining about the Literature class offerings not fulfilling every one of their educational desires. What many Literature students do not realize is that all other CCS majors receive the majority of their education outside of CCS. There are hundreds of classes out there in the university that will provide the subjects and studies we all want to persue. CCS cannot cover everything. The Literature program should primarily concern itself with teaching classes we cannot get outside of the college, otherwise money and time is being wasted. Also, a variety of professors should be circulated through CCS in order to give us all well-rounded educations.

These are all important things we need to think about concerning our futures in CCS and within the Literature major. We also need to keep in mind that Bruce cannot come up with a solution to every single problem we come up with. Changes take a lot of time and Bruce does his best to listen to everyone and take all opinions into account.

If you by choice did not attend the Literature meeting, seriously think about attending next year. Not only is it the perfect forum to have a say in your education (which you're paying thousands of dollars for), but it's also a great way to meet other Literature students and get to know our loveable Dean.

Thanks to Britta for having me as a guest blogger on the official Literature Collaborative blog =)

Literature course catalog descriptions

The official UCSB Catalog descriptions for CCS Lit classes sound so good:

CS 110. Genres
Emphasis on the development of literary forms, represented in the work of major authors, essential traditions. Exploration of ways genre directs and, discovered by a topic, takes individual shape.

CS 111. Literary Structure: Chronological
Emphasis on periods and influences: intervals during which literary production especially corresponds with or responds to activity in the culture at large.

CS 112. Literary Structure: Nonchronological
Logical, analogical, cyclical, and repetitive schemes.

CS 113. Subjects and Materials
Emphasis on style and content of literary texts: critical investigation of how matter and manner work together in serious literature.

CS 114. Themes and Motifs
Emphasis on structure and meaning in literary texts: analytic focus on principles of representation, and on recurrent features, in the literature studied.

I hope all of that is what I've actually been learning during the past 3.75 years! But no, Lit Collab has decided that these descriptions were probably just made up by our instructors a long time ago when UCSB demanded that they list something in the catalog. I still like them.

Photos from recent events

Into the Teeth of the Wind staff members putting up a poster next to a "pre-dental meeting" poster:

Teeth is currently accepting poetry for its 10th anniversary issue (no particular deadline - see website for details), and Spectrum is accepting writing and art until February 11. Both CCS publications are open to submissions from non-UCSB students.

Part of the crowd at Lit Collab's Scrabble evening on Friday:

See more pictures on Facebook. The top scorer was a biochemistry major, but that's OK. We'll have another rematch next quarter.

What the college would like us to know

As part of our series of posts learning about Mudrick (see these five descriptions and an alumna's perspective), here's a description of him from the Spring 2008 Literature Symposium announcements, probably written by John Wilson or Caroline Allen [paragraph breaks mine]:

Marvin Mudrick founded the College of Creative Studies in 1967. The existence and survival of CCS have depended on the ideas for education that Mudrick set down after Chancellor Cheadle asked him to "work up an academic plan for this campus." After the Regents approved it, Mudrick ran CCS as its Provost for nearly twenty years. Moreover he taught a literature class and a class in the writing of narrative prose every quarter. 

His classes were exciting, funny, and unlike anybody else's. Besides being a teacher and administrator, Mudrick was a brilliant and prolific writer. He published essays quarterly in The Hudson Review without missing a deadline for over twenty-five years, and most of these essays are collected in his books. But as good as his writing was, his talk was even better. He had the gift of gab and used it. In the classroom, according to Max Schott, Mudrick "took delight in arguing, loved hyperbole, had a propensity for intellectual provocation and irreverence and blasphemy, took pleasure in kicking against the pricks, and was convinced and tried to convince others that talk and the thinking in it (even about serious things, or especially about them) could and should be entertaining." 

Mudrick spoke in this way in a number of CCS symposia: starting with certain notions and improvising as he went along with a lot of wit and a lot of enthusiasm, trying to ignite a feeling for literature and music in others. One of these, an Art Symposium called "Am I Enjoying Myself Yet?" was videotaped in 1985. It will be shown for this symposium.

I enjoyed watching that videotape; it was helpful to hear him speak in his own words.

Also check out the only mention of Mudrick on the college website right now, this dull page titled History of the College of Creative Studies [paragraph breaks mine]:

Planning for the college began in 1965 when Chancellor Vernon I. Cheadle commissioned Dr. Marvin Mudrick, Professor of English, to serve as Academic Planner for the UCSB campus during the academic year 1965–1966. He was asked to propose a long-range academic plan for this campus’ growth. Chancellor Cheadle informed Dr. Mudrick early in their discussions that he was interested in the possibility of a special small college that would serve a part of the student population for which the University, at that time, made no provision.

Dr. Mudrick, who himself entered college at 15, formulated several proposals. Among them was the suggestion for a separate college, independently staffed and administered, with a specially selected and identifiable student body: students who, in addition to meeting UC entrance requirements, demonstrate “talent for original work in an art or science” (CCS Proposal, p. 1). The proposal was approved by the Regents in February 1967 and the College opened in Fall 1967 with an enrollment of 50 students. The College was originally housed in a cramped Marine barracks building next to the library — a relic of WWII when the seaside campus was a military base. The College moved to its present site, still a former Marine barrack, but a larger one, in the fall of 1975.

Literature showing up in sneaky places

Genre fiction in literature classes

In our meeting on January 7 we talked a little bit about genre fiction and its relationship to literary fiction, so here are a few related links that people may find interesting:

Science Fiction Authors That Lit Geeks Think It's Cool To Read — people who blur those boundaries.

Beautiful Sci-Fi covers — about an experiment in non-cheesy covers for science fiction books.

Thoughts on Genre — a quote from Joyce Carol Oates on "a tacit contract between [genre readers] and the writer."

Formula, Convention, and Cliche: Repetition in Genre Fiction — slightly more formal than the above posts.

Literature classes on Facebook

In our meeting today I talked about my dad's Facebook groups for the classes he's teaching at USC in American Studies (he's an English professor):

ARLT101.Spring2009, "Los Angeles: The Fiction"

AMST301.Spring2009, "America, the Frontier, and the New West"

Check out the "discussions" for his lecture notes. They're kind of silly but good, including lecture notes and a "YouTube Bibliography". He's told me that his students like to check Facebook during his classes anyway, so why not put the class there as well?

There's one UCSB English class that I know of with a Facebook page: ENGL 122NW: Narratives of War.

Quarterly updates

Summary of this past quarter in Lit Collab: we got to know each other, vented about classes and professors, distributed the Very Unofficial Collection of Helpful Hints for New Lit Students, went on a tour of the Book Arts lab, held a peer advising session for next quarter's classes, and started a little writing group. We also got a paper recycling bin in room 143. A few of us started using Wordie.

What is the Very Unofficial Collection of Helpful Hints for New Lit Students? It's a 10-page pamphlet/zine organized by last year's Lit Collab members for this year's new students. It includes notes about people and places, practical tips about classes, myths debunked, the library explained, a lot of recommendations for classes, secrets of the English department, information about Study Abroad, and more. You can download it as a PDF.

Our plans for next quarter: organizing another Scrabble evening (see photos of last year's Scrabble tournament), further decorating room 143, getting a stapler for the computer lab (and chaining it to the wall), bringing Robyn to one of our meetings to chat about the Lit program, holding a more effective peer advising session, and...who knows what else? Maybe designing and ordering some CCS Lit t-shirts?

I have a class next quarter during our usual meeting time, so we're probably going to move meetings from Wednesdays at 5 pm to Wednesdays at 2:30 pm.