What Is Night SchooL?

CLASS

Instructor: Dahiya 

Online, 6 weeks/2 hrs, Wednesdays, Mar. 3-Apr.7, 7-9 PM EST. Pay what you can; $180 suggested. Open to everyone.

In 1837, German philosopher Wilhem Hegel famously declared that Africa “is no historical part of the world; it has no movement or development to exhibit.” It is instead simply a dark, voluminous landmass in the Southern hemisphere. More recently, in a 2016 TEDtalk, Black feminist theorist Brittney Cooper argues “that if time had a race, it would be white,” and according to author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, “the defining feature of being drafted into the black race is the inescapable robbery of time.” What does it mean to be outside of history and for time itself to be racialized? What is the relation between power, politics, oppression, and philosophical concepts of space and time? How are time and space experienced under colonialism? What is the spacetime of slavery? In this six-week course, we will explore how “abstract” concepts of space and time are deeply intertwined with histories of racism, colonialism, and the history of enslavement. Together, we will examine how certain philosophical conceptions of space and time actually bolster sexed, raced, and colonial oppression.

We will read and think with those who have been forcibly pushed to the physical and metaphorical margins of society to study what bell hooks calls “the cosmology of the margin” to consider how voices in and from the margins can challenge and subvert the ideas, people, and places we tend to center in our ways of knowing and what we know. Finally, we will also consider how we must radically rethink and challenge an oppressive and restrictive conceptualization of time itself--specifically a linear time where the past has no relation to the present and a universe that is always pre-determined and pre-given in advance—in order create the possibility of a more just and liberatory futures that do not extend or reproduce oppression of the past.  

Using landmark readings in the history and philosophy of science, Caribbean anti-colonial philosophy, Black feminist thought, and certain strands of 20th century French philosophy, we will study how the concepts time and space can and must be rethought in order to create new times and spaces where oppressed peoples can not only live but flourish. 

Readings will include bell hooks, Brittney Cooper, Rene Descartes, Nicole Fleetwood, Elizabeth Grosz, George Wilhelm Hegel, Ashon T. Crawley, Kara Keeling, Frantz Fanon, Issac Newton, Henri Bergson, and Édouard Glissant.

CLASS

Instructor: Clough

Online, 6 weeks/2 hours, Thursdays Mar. 4-Apr. 8, 6-8 PM EST. Pay what you can, $180 suggested donation. Open to everyone.

Comics is an art form, not a genre. The combination of words and images can tell any kind of story, from intimately personal autobiography to incisive journalism to high fantasy. Many people tend to think of the history of comics as being one and the same as the history of super-hero comic books. However, the history of comics goes much wider and deeper than just one genre. In The Hidden History Of Comics, each week we will look at the development of comics through a different lens and ask how and why one genre became so dominant. We will look at the history of comics distribution and how it affected who could have access to comics. We will examine the parallel history of queer and straight underground comics. We will look at comics' place in the zine revolution of the '80s and '90s and the continuing importance of self-publishing. Some of the topics we will explore include: the rise of comics aimed at children, the gendering of comics, the near exclusion of girls' comics, the role of political and journalistic comics, the importance of memoir comics, and the role of formal innovation in changing our understanding of what comics can be. The instructor will provide ample images and samples for the class, as well as providing a suggested reading list for each week of class. The aim is to allow the class to discover not only the rich tapestry of diverse possibilities present in today's comics scene but also how this was true, yet hidden, for much of the art form's history. 

CLASS/WRITING WORKSHOP

***This class and waitlist are FULL. If you are already on the waitlist, you will be notified if a space becomes available.***

Instructor: Andrews

Online, 8 weeks/2 hours, Sundays Mar. 7-Apr. 25, 7-9 PM EST, Pay what you can, $220 suggested donation. Open to everyone.

How do you write your “self”? What are the words that might make you “you” enough to cohere in language?  Do we even want to be coherent selves? In this course we’ll explore different versions of “self” (auto) writing that attempt to engage with lived experience and give it voice. What is an autobiography (literally: self-life-writing), and how does it differ from, say, a memoir? What is the point of difference between a “true” story of your life and “autofiction”? And how have writers engaged with theory, philosophy, and other writers to not only write about, but also attempt to theorize their own lives—to give their lives meaning? In this eight-week course, we’ll read into the longer history of autobiography and memoir, while also taking up more contemporary categories such as autofiction, autotheory, and other allied genres. We’ll think about how economic formations determine what “genre” the self’s writing falls into, and how that’s been raced and gendered, too. All of this will be with the ultimate aim of doing our own self-writing. . . whether we come to know our selves better, or in the end, those selves fall apart.

This class will be half seminar and half writing workshop. You should either already have some writing you’re working on or be prepared to develop and share some by the halfway point of the class. By the end of the class, you will have received initial feedback from a group of peers and a second round of feedback from the instructor, with the goal of creating a publishable piece of writing. Readings might include excerpts from: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince; Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, William Burroughs, Junky, Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; James Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain; Samuel R. Delany, The Motion of Light on Water; Karl Knausgaard, My Struggle; Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts and Bluets; Claudia Rankine, Citizen; Percival Everett, Percival Everrett by Virgil Russell; Ben Lerner, 10:04.

CLASS

Instructor: Stillman 

Online, 6 weeks/1.5 hrs, Mondays Mar. 8-Apr. 12,  6-7:30 PM EST. Pay what you can; $150 suggested. Open to everyone.

Have you ever wondered where the idea of a “pervert” came from? Would it surprise you to know that it’s actually a pretty recent invention? Given that so many of us believe in things like “normal” people and “normal” sexuality, it’s easy to take those beliefs for granted. The truth, however, is that “normal” had to be invented, and now it might need to be un-invented. In this class we’re going to take a closer look at things like “perversion,” “gender,” and “straight people,” and we’re going to talk about how all of those things are recent, political, and subject to change. Exploring deviance and perversion will bring us into contact with artists like Oscar Wilde and Alison Bechdel, and theorists like Judith Butler and Andrea Long Chu. We’ll look critically at the institutions that sold us on stories about what it means to be “normal” or “healthy,” or what it takes to be a “man” or a “family.” We’ve all been subject to these and other unwritten rules about who and what we’re supposed to be, and the first step toward being free of them, or at least having some say about them, is to understand them. This class is designed to give you a clear, evidence-based account of how categories like “gay” and “straight” or “normal” and “abnormal” were invented, how things were different in the past, and how they can—and will—be different in the future.

CLASS

Instructor: Andrews

Online, 4 weeks/2 hours, Tuesdays Mar. 9-30, 6:30-8:30 PM EST, Pay what you can, $120 suggested donation. Open to everyone.

The recent explosion of Black science fiction imagery—from Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer to Black Panther—may make it seem like Afrofuturism is new, but imagining Black futures in the US has a long past, and the spaceship has a precedent. As Mark Bould writes, “the ships landed long ago.” In this course, we will take up science critic Alondra Nelson's understanding of Afrofuturism as a series of concerns and imaginaries around Black futures that intervene in the often necropolitical realities of anti-black science, technology, and medicine. Nelson draws her definition from Ishmael Reed’s 1972 novel, Mumbo Jumbo. But as early as 1859, Martin Delany was developing a vision of insurrectionist slaves harnessing the powers of science and medicine. And in 1902, Pauline Hopkins published one of the first works of African American science fiction—long before the genre would take popular hold. From 19th century slave narratives to Sun Ra’s Arkestra to Netflix’s current series Marvel’s Luke Cage, in this four-week course we’ll track the Afrofuturist imaginary in the US in order to understand the deep stakes of envisioning Black futurity in a world so often disposed to Black death. We’ll learn about the history of race- and racist science and how these alternative imaginaries have been crucial in disrupting the prescriptions and supposed “truth” of pseudo (and often just plain bad) science to begin producing  alternative futures. We will primarily look at videos, art, and writing, an also deepen our understandings of the cultural imaginaries and histories to which the artists we engage with respond and subvert. There will be some reading (especially the first week) but the majority of our exploration will be in class. In addition to authors, artists, and texts mentione above, we will look at work by: Rammellzee, Basquiat, Lil’ Kim, MF Doom, Samuel Delaney, Nick Cave, and Kodwu Ashun, among others.

CLASS/WRITING WORKSHOP

Instructor: Dove

Online, 8 weeks/2 hours, Tuesdays Mar. 9-Apr.27, 6-8 PM EST, Pay what you can, $220 suggested donation. Open to everyone.

Stories are not explanations. The whole story is the meaning. This writing workshop and discussion-based course will examine what a short story is and the choices we make as writers at the sentence and structural levels. With short stories as our texts, we will read and write with the goal of illuminating what makes a story satisfying or complete. Together we will ask the questions: What makes a short story different from a novel? How do you know what to put into a story and what to leave out? And what, pray tell, is relevant detail?

In this course, you will read and write short stories and will workshop one original story as a class, learning as you write to investigate the dynamic among the story, the world outside the story, the reader and the author. Our analysis will focus on the recursion of language and structure to bring about the “swerve”—i.e. the inevitable conclusion—for every work we encounter. Along the way we will discuss how modern fiction writers engage the writing process and read essays and interviews to expand our understanding of “realistic” fiction and how it interacts with “truth.” 

This course will give you the vocabulary and knowledge to evaluate and revise your own writing and to discuss peers’ work and published stories in a critical and thoughtful manner. And you will come away with increased understanding of your individual voice, style, content, and ability for sustained narrative. Susan Steinberg, Sandra Cisneros, Joyce Carol Oates, Edward P. Jones, Flannery O’Connor, Amy Hempel, Lynne Tillman, Javier Marias, Mary Robison, Roxane Gay, Jennifer Egan and Sheila Heti are some of the authors we will likely read. 

CLASS

Instructor: Stillman

Online, 4 weeks/2 hours, Sundays Apr. 4-25, 5-7 PM EST, Pay what you can, $120 suggested donation. Open to everyone.

Is there any goal more widely shared or easily recognized than romantic love? To be with someone who is your best friend, but also your favorite lover? A supportive listener, but not an emotional drain? A partner in crime, but one you could open a bank account with? Maybe even have a baby with? All in just one person…? Unlikely as it sounds, most of us seem to rank romantic love among the basic features of a livable life. It’s everywhere, in virtually every commercially successful song, TV show, movie, novel; some might say that romantic love is in every successful life—especially the ones on Instagram. But has it always been this way? So much of what we might get from a whole community of different people—have we always looked for all of it in just one person? The answer, as it turns out, is no. Romantic love is actually a pretty recent invention, and its inventors, for the most part, were artists. In this course we’ll read selections from Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Emily Bronte to study what came before romantic love and how and why it was invented, and we’ll also use more recent works like Schitt’s Creek and the Savage Lovecast to understand what romantic love looks like today. Ultimately, our goal will be to figure out what romantic love is, how it shapes us, and, if we're curious, how we might imagine ways to live our lives that go beyond this singular idea of romantic love. 

CLASS/WRITING WORKSHOP

Instructor: Dove

Online, 4 weeks/2 hours, Thursdays April 8-29, 8-10 PM EST, Pay what you can, $150 suggested donation. Open to everyone.

The lyric is a message in a bottle that, as Edward Hirsch, says, “speaks out of a solitude to a solitude.” You write and, across space and time, someone else reads what you have written. In this way, a lyric poem or essay is also a two-way mirror that invites participation from the reader to create meaning from the language on the page.  

In this writing course, you will read lyric poetry and essays to internalize the inherent musicality and playfulness of language and find the language that shocks us awake. You will learn some poetic inclinations that can help us ask the questions, “Is it a poem?” and “What makes it a good poem?” Doing so will empower you to form your own poetic truths that are, what Kenneth Koch calls, “sense of a new kind.” With musicality and poetic inclinations as our base, you’ll then write lyric poems and/or essays in ways that what you’re saying is inseparable from how it’s said. You’ll learn how to embrace poetic lying and how to harness fear as a catalyst. Poetry is not explanation, nor is it information. We’ll also explore how the negative capability of poetry can empower us to hone our poetic truths outside of philosophical certainty and investigate what poet Solmaz Sharif calls the “political and aesthetic objectives” of erasure.

In addition to the writers above, we will draw knowledge and empowerment from the likes of 

Anne Boyer, Eileen Myles, Audre Lorde, Morgan Parker, Rachel B. Glaser, Heather Christle, Frank O’Hara, Cathy Park Hong, Claudia Rankine, Danez Smith, Patricia Lockwood, Sarah Manguso, Lyn Hejinian, Wendy Xu, Mary Ruefle, Bob Hicok, Sawako Nakayasu, Kate Durbin, Dorothea Lasky, Michelle Chan Brown, and Tommy Pico.