Writing, MFA
The graduate program in Writing consists of several core classes and seminars taken over four semesters (two years), with the goal of producing a final manuscript, performance, or collaborative event. Notable features of the Pratt MFA in Writing include:
- The Writing Studio, a weekly collective interdisciplinary critique forum inclusive of all students, faculty, and guest faculty;
- One-to-one guided mentorships with faculty members;
- Guided fieldwork residencies invite students to carry out an ongoing creative residency in collaboration with an outside social, cultural, and literary institution, community, organization, archive, or activist group;
- Special Topics seminars in literature, media studies, performance, translation, small press, and experimental writing traditions;
- Writing Practices seminars, research and discussion-based classes covering the history and theory of collaborative and engaged writing practices; and
- A course of study stressing a writing process that takes into account the material and technological aspects of writing, the human body that produces it, and the larger social, sexual, historical, economic, racial, and cultural contexts in which and through which all imaginative writing takes place.
| Semester 1 | Credits | |
|---|---|---|
| WR-600A | Mentored Studies I | 1 |
| WR-602A | Writing Practices I | 3 |
| WR-605 | The Writing Studio | 3 |
| Writing Elective | 3 | |
| Credits | 10 | |
| Semester 2 | ||
| WR-600B | Mentored Studies II | 1 |
| WR-605 | The Writing Studio | 3 |
| WR-603 | Fieldwork Residency I | 3 |
| Elective | 3 | |
| Credits | 10 | |
| Semester 3 | ||
| WR-600C | Mentored Studies III | 1 |
| WR-605 | The Writing Studio | 3 |
| WR-609A | Thesis I | 1 |
| WR-603B | Fieldwork Residency II | 1 |
| Writing Elective | 3 | |
| Credits | 9 | |
| Semester 4 | ||
| WR-600D | Mentored Studies IV | 1 |
| WR-605 | The Writing Studio | 3 |
| WR-609B | Thesis II | 3 |
| Elective | 3 | |
| Credits | 10 | |
| Total Credits | 39 | |
1. CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT
Students will be able to understand, analyze, critique and participate in the processes of knowledge
production.
2. SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
Students will be able to analyze cultural phenomena and include in their writing practice an engagement
with social issues, such as social justice, economic justice, gender equality.
3. COLLABORATION
Students will show a critical and practice-based interest in and creative facility with alternate modes of
authorship, such as collaborative modes of thinking, making and organizing.
4. AESTHETIC EXPERIMENTATION
Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of and/or engagement with aesthetic experimentation,
especially as it relates to create new modes of thinking and making and dwelling (sociality, community).
5. INTERDISCIPLINARITY
Students will be able to create texts, performances, video, etc., that cross or combine various creative
genres and media (disciplines).