After the first wave in the 1970’s which coincided with the Black Power and Black Arts Movements, Afrofuturism has experienced a second wave in the 21st century with the advent of new literature, hip hop music, television, comics, and film. The pinnacle of this second wave of Afrofuturism has been the meteoric rise of the 2018 … Read more
Can Othello be a woman? Can Ophelia be a man? Why not? Deep shifts in thinking about sex, gender identity and expression, and sexuality have occurred since the turn of the millennium, and correspondingly in casting, directing, and acting decisions in Shakespearean performance. Both major and regional productions reflect shifts in how gender changes are … Read more
Writing your family history may seem like a daunting task, but when relatives are intrigued, you can develop ideas to make your family history project a reality. This presentation will focus on the five steps to help you start writing your family history, including examples and resources. Handouts will be given.
Since even before America became an independent country, novelists have used their storytelling skills to help us understand our system of governance and our relationships with one another—sometimes with humor, sometimes with irony. Political novels have advocated causes or ideas, have recorded successes and issued warnings. They have revealed our flaws and trumpeted our strengths. … Read more
More than just knowing you could have said it better, reading like a writer means understanding what the writer meant to do in a given passage. There are specific choices writers make in character, scene, and plot. This workshop is for avid readers who want to adopt a fresh approach, book club members looking for … Read more
This presentation focuses on Oral History and its value to a community. Dr. Williams will share stories from two projects which he directed: the Appalachian Oral History Project and the Great Smoky Mountains Project. In the late 1970s Dr. Williams was one of the campus directors for an oral history project which covered four states … Read more
Learning to re-vise or “see again” is the most important skill in creative writing. This workshop addresses the challenges of revision from the shortest flash fiction to a complete novel. This session provides basic principles of revision and practical tools for approaching the work. Attendees will learn how to evaluate their pacing, language, and characters … Read more
This storytelling workshop presents the vocabulary for writers crafting short stories and novels. Who is the story about? What do they want? In exploration of genre expectations, seven basic plots, and the expected paths characters will follow, this workshop helps novice (and experience) writers name the structural elements of stories. The scaffolding of craft is … Read more
Immigration has been a controversial topic for many years, some would say forever, here and abroad. Having studied the Greek immigrants in his own family for his memoir, Because Memory Isn’t Eternal, and having talked to readers about their families, Deno Trakas will share his fascination with and understanding of the triumphs and travails of immigration … Read more
Having studied at USC with Matthew Bruccoli, the preeminent F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar in the world, Deno Trakas began his teaching career by designing a course on Fitzgerald, which became the most popular class he taught at Wofford. He was ever amazed by how the novel resonated with young adults a hundred years after its … Read more
The key scenes in the novel that launched Hemingway’s career take place in Pamplona, Spain, which is world famous for the running of the bulls every morning of the week-long Fiesta of San Fermin. As a devoted fan who had taught The Sun Also Rises for twenty years, Deno Trakas went to Pamplona to run with the … Read more
The writer Lisa Cron has said that stories are more important to human evolution than the opposable thumb–the thumb helps us to hang on; stories tell us what to hang on to. Deno Trakas will read selections from several compelling contemporary stories and discuss the essential element of conflict and its importance for readers and … Read more
