ENC 5317 Spring 2018 Ned Stuckey-french
This workshop will provide opportunities to explore the broader field of creative nonfiction, but will focus mainly on the personal essay and that genre’s rich tradition. We’ll read published essays, including some critical and theoretical work, in order to explore issues such as genre, persona, context, audience, and voice, but our focus will be on workshopping student work (including memoir chapters, if anyone has them). Our readings will include some canonical essays by writers such as Montaigne and Emerson, but will focus mainly on work published in the United States during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by both established essayists such as White, Baldwin, and Didion as well as emerging writers such as Eula Biss, Claudia Rankine, and Jenny Boully. We’ll also discuss video, graphic, and digital essays. Students have the option of submitting two drafts for workshop, or workshopping one draft and turning in a final revision. One of these two pieces can be a digital, graphic, or video essay.
TEXTS:
- Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay (Anchor-Doubleday)
- John D’Agata, ed., The Next American Essay (Graywolf)
- Carl Klaus and Ned Stuckey-French, eds. Essayists on the Essay: Montaigne to Our Time (Iowa)
- Various handouts and links
Requirements: Successful completion of this course satisfies three credit hours of the academic requirement for the Certificate in Editing and Publishing. If a student has already met the academic requirement, the course can count for additional credits toward the 12-hour Certificate.