WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2015-2016       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Special Topics: A Poet's Tour of the Essay: Innovative, Aversive, and Engaged Prose
ENGL 321
Spring 2016
Section: 01  

"Do we read nonfiction in order to receive information or do we read it to experience art?" asks John D'Agata, noted writer and teacher. This seminar will tour creative nonfiction, looking at whether we as readers can find both information and art in the essay. We will read looking for the poetic and the "news we can use" in classic essays by Montaigne, Emerson and Baldwin, and in work written by contemporary writers, the late David Foster Wallace, John D'Agata, Tracy K. Smith, Eula Biss, Wayne Koestenbaum, and others. In addition, we will read short critical work that reflect on essays mutability, and how they meet our need to make sense of our selves and the world through memoir, letter, reflection, sketch and satire (and more).
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459