Nonfiction Workshop: Writing the Reflective Essay

Catalog description

This course is for students interested in writing essays set on the borderland where the personal essay and the essay of cultural opinion meet. Each week, in addition to talking about student work, we will discuss three or four published essays, some of which will focus closely on the writer’s life and some of which will mediate on social or cultural questions. For conference work, students will complete a short work of creative nonfiction every two weeks. Writers likely to be read include James Baldwin, G. K. Chesterton, Joan Didion, Gerald Early, Vivian Gornick, Phillip Lopate, George Orwell, Zadie Smith, and Susan Sontag. Given the range of writers and opinions we will read, it is safe to say that students will encounter many ideas they will consider objectionable over the course of the semester. One of the premises of the course is that exposure to unwelcome ideas, far from being harmful, serves to broaden and clarify one’s thinking. Memoir Workshop: Happy Families Are All Alike