Where: Toronto Metropolitan University
Instructor: Dr. Irene Gammel
Contact: gammel@torontomu.ca
Course Description
“Creativity is a characteristic given to all human beings at birth,” Abraham Maslow wrote, while Sigmund Freud asserted that creativity was rooted in childhood play and pleasure. Through the lens of a variety of writers and thinkers, students will engage with questions regarding the role of creativity in everyday life. Students will examine a broad range of writings about everyday life, including sports writing, writing about food and family, illness and trauma and healing. They will look at the relationship between writing and the visual arts including documentary arts and comics. Students will be able to learn directly from and engage with leading creative writers and practitioners like Indian-American writer Amitava Kumar, President Obama’s favourite novelist; American-Canadian artists’ biographer Molly Peacock, Globe and Mail sports columnist Cathal Kelly, British poet and writer Clare Best, and journalist and author Jan Wong. Through a field trip to the AGO, students will be able to appreciate the role of creativity in decolonizing and rewriting the old colonial stories and power structures. Ultimately, students will be able to bring their own voice to bear on an important international conversation about creativity, writing, and the everyday life.
Download or view the course syllabus (PDF)
Course Goal
In this course students examine a range of texts in relation to theories and practices of creativity to learn, appreciate and deepen humanistic skills in creative (and critical) reading, writing, making, reflecting, as well as discussion and research. Moreover, students network with authors and other practitioners in the field.
