ENC 3310 Fall 2024 - Lasky

What constitutes a successful essay? What constitutes a successful article? After briefly exploring the history of the essay, first popularized by Montaigne, we’ll dedicate much of this course to reading essays and articles written during the 20th and 21st centuries. In addition to studying and practicing writing mechanics, we’ll also consider the ways in which essays can be a genre bending form, coming to include aspects of theory, memoir, politics, social activism, literature, music, and art criticism, along with the conventions of many other genres. We’ll read works by James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Hala Alyan, Lynn Melnick, Zadie Smith, Toni Morrison, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, John Berger, and Roger Reeves, to name only a few. Students will also be required to compose and workshop their own non-fiction.