This course harkens to a 1988 New School class created by the poet, singer, teacher, and justice advocate, Sekou Sundiata, which investigates rites of passage in American culture and beyond. Together, we examine the ways our own communities prepare young people for the transition into adulthood as well as the ways we embark on other significant life transformations and transitions. We pay particular attention to creative passages and processes in the lives of artists seeking to spur change. Using Sundiata’s work and ideas to ground our conversations, students create their own writing through prompts and short weekly assignments, culminating in two longer submissions. These longer pieces respond to the themes in the course as students relate to them in their creative lives and could be in the form of essays, poems, song lyrics, manifestoes or hybrid works. Other poets, writers, singers and musicians are read and listened to with particular attention to stages and passages over the course of a creative life and the interplay between creative work and cultural change. In keeping with the original structure, this is both a seminar and writing course that, in Sundiata’s own words, “considers the role of the Challenge, the Vision Quest and the Initiation in rites of passage.”