New UW Creative Writing Class Considers Celestial Audience |  
|
Aug. 10, 2007 -- Class assignments in University of Wyoming Professor Jeff Lockwood's new creative writing class are literally out of this world.
Lockwood, professor in the UW Department of Philosophy, received a grant from NASA to develop a "Writers Workshop in Interstellar Communication," for UW's Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts program.
The UW professor says the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute has conducted much research into passive SETI, the act of listening to messages transmitted from outer space. Conversely, he says less has been explored through active SETI, or sending messages beyond the Earth's solar system.
SETI, glamorized by science fiction writers and Hollywood filmmakers for decades, has been overlooked by the nation's higher education institutions -- until now. According to Lockwood, the UW creative writing program is the first of its kind to receive a NASA grant to explore creating messages for an interstellar audience.
Next spring, UW will partner with the SETI Institute for the semester-long workshop. Douglas Vakoch, the SETI scientist responsible for exploring the possibility of sending interstellar messages, will attend the first two class sessions.
"Doug will help us with a lot of the background work. He will get us up to speed with SETI; what they're looking for, assumptions under which SETI operates, and how the class work fits into the active SETI picture," Lockwood says.
While the class will strive to produce useful content for the institute, Lockwood says the process likely will be more significant than the product.
"There are two reasons to do this workshop. One is to compose messages that may, in the future, be sent to outer space. And that's all quite interesting," he says. "But active SETI provides a fantastically powerful context in which to get students to think about what they would say to another being who knows nothing about us and how they would communicate it."
Lockwood is still brainstorming assignments for the new course, but says exercises will range from writing messages with limited vocabulary to communicating through meter, rhythm and rhyme. Whatever the assignment, he assures student creativity will be pushed to the limit in each one.
"There is so much we don't know about this subject. It stretches the imagination to try to picture what another intelligence is likely to be," Lockwood explains. "Students will be thinking differently simply by virtue of this mode. You can ask students to think deep thoughts about what it means to be human, but these unique class exercises will eliminate the artificiality that usually comes with it."
To learn more about UW's MFA creative writing program, call (307) 766-2867 or e-mail cw@uwyo.edu. Posted on Friday, August 10, 2007
|
