ENC 4404 Spring 2018 Ned Stuckey-French

This course will focus on the form and history of the personal essay. Though we will inevitably discuss the broader field of creative nonfiction, we will approach it through the lens of the personal essay. Students will write essays (one of which can be a multi-media piece), help each other edit and revise those essays, and identify possible venues for publication.

The essay is a mixed and messy genre, caught in a no-man’s land between belles lettres and journalism. The term has referred to a vast and sometimes confusing array of writing that includes op-ed pieces, the high art of Emerson or Woolf, magazine profiles, book reviews, memoirs, the personal statement on a job or school application, and even the schoolchild's five-paragraph theme. But if it is fraught with contradictions, the essay is also brimming with possibilities. In order to bring the genre into focus we will read and study essays in a variety of subgenres. While not a chronologically organized historical survey we will study essays from the inception of form in the work of Montaigne to its current new-media manifestations in video and hypertext.