The Spaces Between Us: A College-Level Writing Course

29 May - 8 July 2020

“Questions of what is close, what is far, and what is far too close have become matters of life, death, and illness... Distance has become the sign of intimacy—of respect, care, concern, shared understanding of a shared world, a sense of belonging to a form of life.” Kyle Stevens, “When Movies Get Sick”

Who could have known a few months ago that our understanding of space would change so radically and in such a short time? Closing borders, limiting physical encounter, barring us from going out for all but our most vital needs, the Covid-19 pandemic has altered our relationship to the spaces we inhabit: our world, our cities, our homes and even our bodies. 

In this pre-college writing course, we will guide you through a series of texts - literary and theoretical - about pandemics past and present, real and imaginary, and help you to become a better academic writer before starting college.

We will start our course in the bedroom where Georges Perec spends his summer after high school, drinking pink gin and deciding to become a writer, and continue with Claire-Louise Bennett’s sea-side cottage, where she reads dystopian fiction and imagines being the last person alive. With Anton Chekhov we will travel to the sick bay of a Russian warship in the sweltering Indian Ocean, where soldiers lie dreaming of their snow-covered homes, and Steven Soderbergh’s thriller film Contagion will show us a world in the grip of a pandemic, eerily similar to the one we are living in. Finally, Daisy Hildyard will help us to think about our “second bodies”: the imprint we leave on ecosystems near and far.

This is a five-week course that is designed to prepare you for college-level academic writing. It combines online class sessions with weekly one-on-one tutorials with the instructors. 

Audience: High School Seniors and first year college students

The class meets from 4-5pm Turkey time Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Each student will also be assigned to one of the instructors (Oya or Olivia) for 30-minute one-on-one tutorials, which will also take place on Fridays, and will be scheduled with each student individually.

See the syllabus for more details.