Student clubs and groups
Whether you're looking for a light, literary conversation in a social setting or critical engagement with new and hybrid literary genres; whether you want to screen films or get your game on with like-minded peers, there is an organization or an outlet for you at Wayne State.
Below is an always-partial list of ongoing groups and opportunities for engagement beyond the classroom. Look out for new additions and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
Community Writing & Engagement iN Detroit (CWEND)
Created by students who were enrolled in ENG 3020 (Community and Writing), CWEND fosters student engagement with the Detroit community through volunteer work with community partners. CWEND members also publish a newsletter about the work that students in ENG 3020 do in the community.
Kino Club
Love film? Want to watch, discuss, dissect, and even create films of your own? Meet like-minded peers in Wayne State's Kino Club 313. Named for the innovative Kino film movement and its collaborative Kino Kabaret, Kino Club 313 is Wayne State's student film group, dedicated to "sustaining a rich and vibrant film culture on our campus."
To that end, the group hosts free screenings, lectures, conferences, and discussions that are open to all. "Through these events, academics across a variety of disciplines and members of the community are able to come together to do what we love: watch and discuss movies."
Knit Lit
All members of the Wayne State community are invited for fun and fiber arts with Knit Lit – a monthly meet-up for casual discussions of light readings while stitching and weaving some threads together.
"Have any good books you've been wanting to read and discuss?" the group asked in their inaugural blog post, in September of 2014; "then Knit Lit may be for you!" The group encourages knitters, crocheters and fiber arts fans of all skill levels to attend (faculty, staff and students all included).
Wayne English Graduate Organization
This group is open to graduate students in the English department of Wayne State University for help with the promotion of professional development and collegiality.
Wayne Literary Review
The Wayne Literary Review is an annually published magazine of local and national literary writing. The Review publishes fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, comic strips and visual art. Wayne State students and local writers and artists are encouraged to submit; while the magazine does draw work from a national pool of submissions "to reach a large, diverse audience," their "chief goal" remains the showcasing of "the literary talent of Wayne State University and Detroit at large."
Visit wlr.submittable.com for submission guidelines.
Wayne State Comics Collective
Are you interested in visual narratives? The ways that the visual and the literary can build on one another to tell a story? Do you just like great comic books? The Wayne State Comics Collective is a group of students, faculty and comic fans in general, dedicated to reading and discussing comics, graphic novels, graphic memoirs, and the scholarship surrounding these hybrid forms. The collective meets monthly.
WSU Video Game Scholarly Interest Group
Students in the WSU Video Game Scholarly Interest Group meet monthly to discuss recent popular and scholarly writing related to the burgeoning subdiscipline of video game studies.
The group seeks to "put scholarly essays into conversation with our own experiences as players and scholars." Which means, of course, plenty of gaming at the monthly meetings, too. "We don't care if you are a hard-core gamer or a novice," the group declares on their blog, linked above; "if you are interested in studying video games, we invite you to join us at our monthly meetings."
See our Q&A with WSU English alumnus and associate professor at Purdue University, Samantha Blackmon on the field of critical game studies.