Prelude of a future English prof: UH Hilo English major Braden Savage designs and teaches upper-division writing class
Students taking undergraduate Braden Savage’s 400-level class are getting a chance to write stories within the horror and experimental genres, answering the need of a creative writing course in the English department’s curriculum.
A senior at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo has designed and is now teaching an upper-level English course.
This semester, students in Braden Savage’s 400-level class are getting a chance to write stories within the horror and experimental genres, answering the need of a creative writing course in the Department of English curriculum. Savage’s class will also learn about the process of pitching and publishing stories, meet with celebrated authors, and take a field trip to a statewide writers’ conference.
Susan Wackerbarth, an instructor of English and coordinator of the creative writing certificate program at UH Hilo, is Savage’s advisor. She worked with him to design the course, and while he is responsible for the active teaching including all lectures, projects, and assignments, Wackerbarth will grade all assignments submitted by students in the class. This experience will benefit Savage academically as well as giving him career-relevant experience, as he hopes to one day become a professor of English.
“I love the idea he came up with,” says Wackerbarth, “I have felt bad that there aren’t more upper division creative writing offerings, so I was excited when Braden said, ‘we [students] are talking about this, we’d love to explore horror writing and experimental writing and read this stuff and write it.’”
The class is a directed study course students are taking in lieu of a creative writing practicum. Savage is designing and teaching the class as part of his own directed study course, which he is taking in lieu of a 400-level course on teaching literature.
The undergraduate says he is building the new class from the ground up.
“I’ve created the syllabus, collected all of the reading materials, done my own research, created all of the assignments for the class, and am conducting all the lectures myself,” Savage explains. “This is part of an initiative to offer upper-division students a chance to study topics that aren’t currently available in our English department.”
Some of the topics and events covered in the class are studying the underlying mechanics of genre fiction, in particular the horror genre, and creating an original piece of horror fiction; studying the publication process from editing to working with agents, publishing houses, and marketing teams; studying experimental fiction and creating an original piece of fiction that implements a linguistic experiment; a virtual visit to the class from Lois Lowry, bestselling author of The Giver; an in-person visit from Kimberly Russell, a lecturer of English at UH Hilo who will be discussing her experiences with publishing children’s literature; and a department-funded visit to the Kauai Writers Conference in November.
Student enthusiasm and participation has been vital to the success of the course. Some who have enrolled in the class are English majors, but others are participating in the class for fun, not to fulfill a credit requirement.
Savage has demonstrated his dedication to learning all he can about writing and literature throughout his undergraduate years at UH Hilo. His writing has won several awards, including the Howard and Yoneko Droste Award for playwriting and fiction, and the Matthew Somchai Therrien Award for excellence in writing. He also is a peer tutor at Kilohana: The Academic Success Center at UH Hilo.
This history and experience has led him to taking on the directed study project. He says the class is a rare opportunity as an undergraduate student, to figure out what does and doesn’t work in teaching.
“This manifests by me working to create lectures every week, gather material, create projects for all of the students, and also to try new methods of teaching every week, see what works and doesn’t work.”
After he graduates from UH Hilo in spring 2024, Savage intends to pursue a PhD in English.
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UH Hilo English professor and her students present their work at Paris conference
Story by Evangeline Lemieux, who is double majoring in English and medical anthropology at UH Hilo. (Evy is taking Braden’s class this semester.)
