Literature and Creative Writing (BA)
Program Description
Literature is 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.
The major in Literature and Creative Writing consists of ten courses. 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 therefore explore the interplay between reading, scholarship, and creative practice in five required courses: Literary Interpretation; Introduction to Creative Writing; Problems and Methods in Literary Studies; and the capstone experience which consists of the Capstone Seminar and Capstone Project or their equivalents if the student chooses to do their capstone in an alternate major.
Students take five electives, at least one of which must be in each of three broad course categories: histories, geographies, and topics. Histories courses investigate literary forms, traditions, movements, and periods in their interactions with their cultural, social, and political contexts. These courses primarily engage, but not exclusively, pre-twentieth-century literatures and contexts. Histories courses therefore offer students a historically-framed entrance in particular literary traditions and practices. Geographies courses focus on the literary practices of specific regions which could be defined, nationally, continentally, ecologically, or culturally. They may also include the literatures of migration and diaspora, and of encounters and perceptions across cultures. This includes literary exchanges shaped by translation. Topics courses focus on specific themes, genres and/or writers. Courses might introduce conceptual frameworks such as social and cultural analysis, postcolonial/ decolonial theory, gender and sexuality studies, race/ ethnicity studies, ecotheory, Marxism, etc., in order to examine a particular genre, a writer’s oeuvre, or aesthetic/ artistic/ literary movements. All creative writing courses are included in the topics category.
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.