Andrew Grace taught at Stanford University, Washington University and the University of Cincinnati before recently joining the English Department at Kenyon. His books of poetry include A Belonging Field (Salt Publishing, 2001), Shadeland (Ohio State University Press, 2008) and Sancta (Ahsahta Press, 2012). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Boston Review, Iowa Review, TriQuarterly and Prairie Schooner. He has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford and the winner of an Academy of American Poets prize.
Areas of Expertise
Poetry Writing, 20th century American and British poetry, Literary Theory, Cultural Studies, History of the Pastoral
Education
2013 — Doctor of Philosophy from University of Cincinnati
2004 — Master of Fine Arts from Washington University
2001 — Bachelor of Arts from Kenyon College
Courses Recently Taught
ENGL 103
Introduction to Literature and Language
ENGL 103
Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors will assign frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.
ENGL 104
Introduction to Literature and Language
ENGL 104
Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors will assign frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of department chair. Offered every year.
ENGL 150
Creative Writing: A Multi-Genre Workshop
ENGL 150
This open-enrollment, multi-genre writing course will give students the opportunity to develop as creative writers and readers through a series of writing assignments and workshops. In addition to poetry and short fiction, areas of focus may include creative essay, playwriting, screenwriting and multimedia works. Students will conclude the course by revising and polishing a selection of their original work as a final portfolio. This class will be limited to 12 students, with three seats reserved for each class year. It will not be open to students who have already taken workshops at Kenyon.
ENGL 201
Introduction to Poetry Writing
ENGL 201
This course begins with two premises: (1) that students of the craft of poetry should be challenged to write in as many different ways as possible and (2) that students are individual writers with different needs and goals. In this course, we will study a variety of types of poetry. Regular writing exercises will encourage students to widen their scope and develop their craft. The course will emphasize discovering the "true" subject of each poem, acquiring the skills needed to render that subject, understanding the relationship between form and content, and, finally, interrogating the role and function of poetry in a culture. In addition to weekly reading and writing assignments, students will submit a process-based portfolio demonstrating an understanding of the revision process and a final chapbook of eight to 12 pages of poetry. Admission to this course is open, though students may not take this course in the first semester of their first year. Seats are reserved for students in each class year. Offered every year.
ENGL 205
Creative Writing: A Multi-Genre Workshop
ENGL 205
This open-enrollment, multi-genre writing course will give students the opportunity to develop as creative writers and readers through a series of writing assignments and workshops. In addition to poetry and short fiction, areas of focus may include creative essay, playwriting, screenwriting and multimedia works. Students will conclude the course by revising and polishing a selection of their original work as a final portfolio. This class will be limited to 15 students, with seats reserved for each class year. Students may not take this course in the first semester of their first year.
ENGL 301
Advanced Poetry Writing
ENGL 301
This course sets out to trouble your assumptions -- both conscious and unrecognized -- about poetry: writing it, reading it, responding to it; its purpose, its nature, its public and private selves. We will explore revision in the fullest senses of the word, aiming not only toward compression and economy but toward expansion and explosion, toward breaking down the boundaries between what constitutes -- for you as writer and reader -- poem and not-poem. We will reverse the usual order of things: Our workshopping will focus on canonized poems, and you should expect to engage fully in your role as poet-critic when you respond to classmates' work, approaching it as you approach texts in the literature classroom. We will explore poetry's technologized face through blogs and webzines, even as, Luddite-like, we hand write, cut, paste, find and memorize poetry. This class requires intensive reading (and attendant thoughtful response) in poetry and poetics, enthusiastic engagement with exercises in critique, revision and poem-making, and a final project, demonstrating your advancement as both critic and poet during the course of the semester. Texts will likely include several volumes of contemporary poetry, selected critical essays, manifestoes, writings on process and readings by visiting writers. Prerequisite: ENGL 201, submission of a writing sample and permission of instructor. Offered every year.
ENGL 385
Contemporary American Poetry
ENGL 385
The young Robert Lowell, before he attended Kenyon, wrote to Ezra Pound, "If the 20th century is to realize a great art comparable to that of Chaucer or Shakespeare, the foundation will have to be your poems." James Wright, some years later, wrote his Kenyon honors thesis on "The Will in the Thought and Art of Thomas Hardy." This course offers a sampling of contemporary American poets of the generation of Lowell and Wright and later generations, including Ashbery, Bishop, Gunn, Jarrell, Merrill, O'Hara, Plath, Olson, Ginsberg, Duncan, Rich and Baraka. We will pay particular attention to their dynamic and widely varying relationships with the traditions they inherited and transformed, and we also will attempt to locate their poems within social and political as well as aesthetic contexts. This counts toward the post-1900 requirement for the major. Prerequisite: junior standing or ENGL 210-291 or permission of instructor.
ENGL 405
Senior Seminar in Creative Writing
ENGL 405
This seminar is required for English majors pursuing an emphasis in creative writing. The course will involve critical work on a topic chosen by the instructor (such as "Reliable and Unreliable: Investigating Narrative Voice," "Beginnings and Endings," "The Little Magazine in America" and "Documentary Poetics") to provide context and structure for students' creative work. Students should check online listings for the specific focus of each section. Although not primarily a workshop, this seminar will require students to work on a substantial creative project (fiction, nonfiction or poetry). Senior English majors pursuing an emphasis in literature are required to take ENGL 410 instead. Students pursuing honors will take ENGL 497 rather than the Senior Seminar. Prerequisite: senior standing and English major. Offered every year.
ENGL 493
Individual Study
ENGL 493
Individual study in English is a privilege reserved for senior majors who want to pursue a course of reading or complete a writing project on a topic not regularly offered in the curriculum. Because individual study is one option in a rich and varied English curriculum, it is intended to supplement, not take the place of, coursework, and it cannot normally be used to fulfill requirements for the major. An IS will earn the student 0.5 units of credit, although in special cases it may be designed to earn 0.25 units. To qualify to enroll in an individual study, a student must identify a member of the English department willing to direct the project. In consultation with that faculty member, the student must write a one-to two page proposal for the IS that the department chair must approve before the IS can go forward. The chair’s approval is required to ensure that no single faculty member becomes overburdened by directing too many IS courses. In the proposal, the student should provide a preliminary bibliography (and/or set of specific problems, goals and tasks) for the course, outline a specific schedule of reading and/or writing assignments, and describe in some detail the methods of assessment (e.g., a short story to be submitted for evaluation biweekly; a thirty-page research paper submitted at course’s end, with rough drafts due at given intervals). Students should also briefly describe any prior coursework that particularly qualifies them for their proposed individual studies. The department expects IS students to meet regularly with their instructors for at least one hour per week, or the equivalent, at the discretion of the instructor. The amount of work submitted for a grade in an IS should approximate at least that required, on average, in 400-level English courses. In the case of group individual studies, a single proposal may be submitted, assuming that all group members will follow the same protocols. Because students must enroll for individual studies by the seventh class day of each semester, they should begin discussion of their proposed individual study well in advance, preferably the semester before, so that there is time to devise the proposal and seek departmental approval before the established deadline.