English: The Art of the Essay

In this intermediate writing course, students explore and practice variations in the genre known as the nonfiction essay, attending to audience, purpose, context, style, and medium.

Asynchronous online

This course explores occasions for essay writing beyond the genres usually required in college courses. In other words, you will be writing (and reading) essays that may not match, in terms of content or structure, what you expect from a "homework assignment." The work you do in this class should prepare you to do stronger writing of that sort, but our writing goals will be more journalistic in nature: descriptions of place; investigations into other people's professional work; probings of the culture around us.

Regular (almost daily) reading and writing assignments, including grammar and style instruction and short descriptive or explanatory essays. We will take, as our models, feature essays of the sort that appear in The New Yorker or Harper's, though your pieces will of course be shorter. Instruction on English grammar is a serious part of this course. You can expect the grammar material to be supported by exercises and possibly quizzes. All students registering for this section should, before the class begins, purchase a subscription to Harper's magazine (at harpers.org). Instructor will contact the class early in the summer with a discount code for the subscription. We will primarily be using their online archives for our reading assignments. Because this is an online course, discussion and workshop of your work will happen in discussion forums. Timing of your participation in these conversations is flexible (and asynchronous), but you should expect to be online and communicating (briefly) at least daily on weekdays.

Grade comes from class participation (and preparation) and writing in roughly equal amounts. Some of class participation will be engagement with your peers' work in (online) workshop.