Department of English

Community Writing combines theory with practice: students will first study critical and creative writing pedagogy, and then visit a range of Philadelphia communities to write creatively together and form new kinds of community through writing. Students will have the opportunity to work and write with community members from Sayre High School, the FreeWrite Prison Writing Program, the transcribez Writing Group for Trans and Gender Nonconforming Youth, the Write On! program with Lea middle school students, or the Writing a Life program at Kelly Writers House for people with cancer diagnoses. We will study nonhierarchical creative writing teaching techniques, such as spoken word and hip-hop pedagogy, and we will learn how to develop community-appropriate creative writing prompts that inspire people to write. We will also study a number of classic texts in radical pedagogy (by authors such as bell hooks and Paolo Freire) and generate ideas about how to harness the power of education—and creative writing in particular—for personal and social change. 

Community Writing is an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course. This course is cross-listed with Urban Studies 127.

Contact the instructor for permission to join the course: zolfr@writing.upenn.edu.