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.

Open to Degree and PACE students

This course will consider the diversity of approaches to the structure of the essay. We will study the essay as a form of invention and innovation that experiments with technique. Looking at the origins of the essay as a form meant to be an open-ended inquiry into challenging ideas about self and society, we will embark on crafting our own understanding of the art of essaying. We will read essays that investigate a wide variety of topics, including identity, culture, art, history, gender, sex, politics, nature, race, whiteness, ancestry, home, and homeland. Students will craft writing that investigates their own personal histories, research, or examinations, using various forms of the essay as modeled from our reading. This course will also focus on process and practice: how do you create a writing process that works for you? What inspires you as a writer to create? What story can you alone tell and how do you develop the tools to do so?

Assignments include three essays and two significant revisions of these essays; final portfolio of revised work; letters on your writing process; writer's notebook

Class Participation 25%; Essays, revisions, and homework 50%; final portfolio 25%