Literature and Creative Writing (BA)
Program Description
Literature has been central to the formation of collective identities across cultures, nations, and historical epochs. Though literary works are anchored in a particular time and place, many of them are read widely in other times and other places, and by cultures to which they would seem not to belong. The Literature and Creative Writing major at NYU Abu Dhabi is uniquely organized around problems presented by translation, adaptation, and circulation. Unlike many college literary curricula that restrict majors to the study of works in a single language or from a specific national tradition, this major engages students in critical conversations that cut across fields, and in doing so help to rethink the very foundations of literary studies and creative writing.
How are literary forms and the histories of literature and literary exchanges shaped by translation, by military victory and defeat, by colonization and postcolonialism, and by the rise of an economic world system? How do new forms and traditions of literature arise and is there such a thing as an emergent world or global literature? How might the imaginative encounter with other cultures renew our engagements with ourselves and our world? How do cultural, political, class, racial, or sexual differences inform and sustain a vision of a common world? How are literary studies and creative writing in dialogue with the other arts as well as with cultural analysis and theory? What is the role of literary writing in contemporary local and global contexts? How do we define authenticity in the context of existing and emergent technologies? What is the relationship between the written, the oral, and the performance? How do we define aesthetic significance across different cultural traditions and different literary modes? Students discuss these and other questions intensively with a distinguished faculty of scholars and writers who come from and work across a wide variety of literary cultures.
Tracks
The major in Literature and Creative Writing offers two twelve-course tracks, one emphasizing scholarship, the other emphasizing creative work. The program is devoted to the idea that an undergraduate literature major becomes more fruitful when literary scholarship and creative literary work enrich and inform one another.
Students in both tracks take five required courses, which explore the interplay between reading, scholarship, and creative practice: Literary Interpretation; Foundations of Literature I: Epic and Drama; Foundations of Literature II: Lyric Poetry and the Novel; Introduction to Creative Writing; and Problems and Methods in Literary Studies.
Students in the scholarship track take five scholarly electives (at least one of which must be from a list of courses dealing with “pre-modern” subjects). One of these five electives may include an additional creative writing course. Students in the creative track take three creative writing electives and two scholarly electives, which prepare them to produce a creative capstone that is informed by a scholarly perspective. Students in the scholarly track may take one additional creative writing course in lieu of a scholarly elective. All students must take one 3000-level course, one course in pre-modern literatures, and may count only one course with a core curriculum course number (e.g. CADT-UH 1021 Art of Narrative Science) for elective credit. All seniors enroll in two semesters of Capstone Seminar and Project in addition to intensive study with a faculty mentor on the project.
Study Away
The study away pathway can be found on the NYUAD Student Portal at students.nyuad.nyu.edu/pathways. Students with questions should contact the Office of Global Education.
Admissions
New York University's Office of Undergraduate Admissions supports the application process for all undergraduate programs at NYU. For additional information about undergraduate admissions, including application requirements, see How to Apply.