 |
The Book Art and English Departments welcome you to schedule a visit to learn more about the program. Please contact Jess Heaney to arrange a studio tour, class visits or information sessions.
The MFA in Book Art and Creative Writing Program, the first such program in the country, is designed to allow you to develop as both a writer and a visual artist, to enhance your understanding of contemporary writing and its visual forms, and to encourage a deep exploration of the book form in both content and materiality. The program seeks to provide students with a theoretical and historical knowledge of both contemporary literature and contemporary artist’s book practice while also encouraging new explorations between and among these fields. Ideally, the MFA will be a space where you can create your own original work, contextualize that work within contemporary literary and visual art practices, and ultimately push and transform the boundaries of these fields. Thus, the curriculum is designed to develop writers and artists who will be at the forefront of re-envisioning the relationship between a book’s form and content.
Our focus on the artist’s book is designed to encourage student exploration of the book as both a literary artifact and a material object that exists in space and time. Along with the study of these practical, historical, and theoretical contexts, the curriculum provides opportunities to build skills in craft practice. Courses in art and literary theory, criticism, and the history of artists’ books are coupled with workshops in creative writing and artist’s book production, leading to the development of individual thesis projects that explore relationships between the visual and literary, the word and spatial design. The program assumes two years of course work which culminate in a fully integrated thesis that may combine readings, installations, and gallery presentations; these can be completed in a final nonresident semester.
Thesis projects might take the form of artists’ books, gallery installations, archival research, performance, curation, or other visual/written forms that can be supported by Mills faculty. (Note: The MFA program does not support work specifically focused on children’s book production, graphic novels, or graphic design.)
While in the program, you’ll have the opportunity to work in a dedicated graduate studio with your colleagues, where you will be trained on a broad range of letterpress and bookbinding equipment. You will participate in regular critiques and mount small interim exhibitions. You may find yourself collaborating with a musician, a dancer, or another visual artist or writer as you join the community of innovative MFA programs across the campus. You'll have the opportunity to study with renowned artists and core faculty members Kathleen Walkup and Julie Chen in book art. In addition, the Book Art Program welcomes many national and international artists to its classes; past artists have included Susan Johanknecht, Daniel Kelm, Ronald King, Susan E. King, and Helen Mirra. Likewise, you’ll work with members of Mills' distinguished core faculty in creative writing: Elmaz Abinader, Cornelia Nixon, Patricia Powell, Stephen Ratcliffe, and Juliana Spahr. You'll also have the opportunity to work with exciting visiting writers such as Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Brian Teare, and Truong Tran.
Every semester several prominent writers visit campus as part of our Contemporary Writers Series. As a student in the MFA in Book Art and Creative Writing Program, you will have the singular opportunity of working with writers such as Bhanu Kapil, Joan Retallack, and Edwin Torres to produce an original broadside of their writing. Past writers who have contributed work for the broadsides include Kenneth Goldsmith, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snickett), Grace Paley, Michael Palmer, and Rosemarie and Keith Waldrop. As a writing student, you also will have the opportunity to attend a workshop or meet directly with some of the writers from this notable series.
Because the Mills MFA in Book Art and Creative Writing Program is housed in our beautiful and diverse liberal arts setting, you will be ensured the personal attention and professional mentoring that are the hallmark of all our MFA programs. You'll engage with your own writing and artists' books as well as with those of your peers; you will become part of a unique community of artists and writers that will endure even after you graduate. In short, your Mills experience will be not only one-of-a-kind, it will give you the opportunity for a truly unique degree that you simply can't get anywhere else.
|
|
 |
|
