WRITING THE ESSAY I: THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES. This first-year writing seminar examines the theory and practice of creative nonfiction, focusing on the memoir and the personal essay. Students will learn how to translate personal experience into effective pieces of writing. We will study the techniques of “writing the self,” integrating literary analysis and creative writing and an exploration of the role of memory and imagination in reconstructing and shaping the past. We will read a variety of texts and examine the ways writers use language to bring their subjects to life, reading not only for the story but, more importantly, for distinctive prose style and technique. As writers we all have unique concerns, backgrounds, and perspectives. Our goal is to effectively communicate what we have seen, heard, and felt, focusing on the world outside of ourselves as much as our interior worlds. Our workshops will help us focus on hearing our unique voices and the voices of others, offering new ideas and thoughtful critiques. We will learn how to use the truth of our lives to create compelling narratives that feature quality thinking, depth of insight, and impressive prose style.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: TBD

WRITING THE ESSAY I: DOUBT: In a 2013 New York Times piece, Philip Lopate called the essay an exercise in doubt. Rejecting the often-touted virtues of certainty, Lopate instead invited essayists to honor the deeply unsure and divided nature of human consciousness and to embrace doubt as integral to the essay writing process. In this first-year writing seminar, we will explore and consider the value—and possible limitations—of Lopate’s insights in discussing and practicing various essay forms: the personal essay, the argumentative essay, and the exploratory essay. Texts may include readings by Joan Didion, Philip Lopate, David Foster Wallace, Cheryl Strayed, Brent Staples, Amy Tan, Richard Blanco, Timothy O’Brien, Junot Diaz, Zadie Smith, Tom Junod, Roxane Gay, and more. Our encounters with these readings are designed to inspire your ideas and unique approaches to your own writing, which will be harnessed through lots of brainstorming, free writing, workshopping, drafting, redrafting, and critical feedback from your instructor, your fellow students, and yourself.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: WRITING ABOUT VALUES: In this first-year writing seminar, we will explore fundamental issues of our lives in order to develop key analytic and argumentative skills. We will discuss what is really worth striving for and what makes a good or meaningful life. Topics include questions of priorities, definitions of good and evil, cultural and moral relativity, the nature of love, the challenges of suffering and death, and sociopolitical issues such as minority rights, feminism, and the environment. Texts may include short works by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Plato, Euripides, Shakespeare, Woolf, Sartre, June Jordan, Michael Pollan, Al Gore, and many others, as well as Eastern and Western religious texts and topical newspaper articles. In the course of composing and workshopping essays related to the readings, students will focus on tackling the stages of the writing process, entering a conversation, identifying key value conflicts, anticipating counter arguments, identifying sources, and engaging the reader. We will work on developing close reading and research skills, logical strategies, rhetorical techniques, and grammatical clarity, along with the effective deployment of summary, quotation, citation, and tone.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: WRITING THE CITY: In this first-year seminar we will read, discuss, and respond to the experience of being a writer in New York City. This course will explore and interrogate what it means to live and to write in the world capital of capitalism, how to “make it” in the big city, and how to find one’s voice in a city teeming with an overwhelming and diverse range of voices. Through our reading of the assigned texts, we will look at the ways in which New York City has influenced previous generations of writers from the early twentieth century until today; what role it has played in the imagination of these writers; how the economic, cultural, and political changes throughout city’s history has affected the way it is portrayed; and what formal experimentation living in a metropolis has inspired. Texts may include work by: E. B. White, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Zadie Smith, and Alfred Kazin.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: PROFOUND BOREDOM. All day long, boring experiences threaten our enjoyment of life. Waiting for the train. Washing the dishes. Attending required college courses. But what do we mean when we call something “boring”? Where does boredom come from? And is there any benefit to being bored? In this first-year writing seminar we’ll explore these questions and many more through an exciting and unpredictable selection of reading and writing assignments. Topics will include: small talk, long speeches, the science of how we experience time, handheld devices, the internet, capitalism, “women’s work,” reality television, intentionally boring films, Buddhism, asceticism, meditation, mindfulness, heroin, prison, the Internal Revenue Service, the fear of missing out, the lives of zoo animals, life in a boring town, living off the grid, summer vacation, heaven, and silence.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: THE JOYS OF PROCESS: In this First-Year Writing seminar, we will bring a voracious curiosity to studying the many ways that writers and artists approach the process of creating things. Looking at notebooks, sketchbooks, project diaries, rough drafts, and other “work-in-progress” materials, we’ll familiarize ourselves with how an idea makes its way from observation and imagination to polished creation: essay, story, novel, painting, comic, film, dance. We will, meanwhile, draw inspiration and encouragement from these investigations, learning how to embrace mess, experimentation, and rough attempts as necessary parts of bringing our own written work to fruition. Readings will include work by Lynda Barry, Ross Gay, Tatsumi Hijikata, Isaac Babel, Charlotte Forten, and Fyodor Dostoevsky—to name just a few. Students will be expected to keep an ongoing “process notebook” over the course of the semester, which will lay the groundwork for a final project that reflects a commitment to generative work, development, and revision.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: WRITING ABOUT VALUES. In this first-year writing seminar, we will explore fundamental issues of our lives in order to develop key analytic and argumentative skills. We will discuss what is really worth striving for and what makes a good or meaningful life. Topics include questions of priorities, definitions of good and evil, cultural and moral relativity, the nature of love, the challenges of suffering and death, and sociopolitical issues such as minority rights, feminism, and the environment. Texts may include short works by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Plato, Euripides, Shakespeare, Woolf, Sartre, June Jordan, Michael Pollan, Al Gore, and many others, as well as Eastern and Western religious texts and topical newspaper articles. In the course of composing and workshopping essays related to the readings, students will focus on tackling the stages of the writing process, entering a conversation, identifying key value conflicts, anticipating counter arguments, identifying sources, and engaging the reader. We will work on developing close reading and research skills, logical strategies, rhetorical techniques, and grammatical clarity, along with the effective deployment of summary, quotation, citation, and tone.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: TECHNOLOGY, SURVEILLANCE, AND CLIMATE CHANGE. In this first-year writing course we will examine texts that give us a deeper look into the role of technology and its effects on surveillance and climate change. Technology is often thought of as a field that inevitability advances with time. Is there a chance that the height of technology has already been reached? How does it influence how we interact with ourselves and the larger state apparatus? We will be reading Michel Foucault, Peter Singer, James Bridle, Michelle Alexander, Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, Solmaz Sharif, Aimee Bender and others. We will also be using autoethnography as a tool to unpack these ideas. Students will write personal essays as well as research papers in this course.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: THE COMING OF AGE NOVELLA. THE COMING OF AGE NOVELLA. Some of our most beloved books and movies are coming of age tales—but what does it really mean to grow up? Is coming of age characterized by self-actualization—or by separation and loss? In this class, we will read and respond to a range of 20th and 21st century novellas that reimagine and reinvigorate the bildungsroman, which traditionally depicts a young person’s moral or spiritual education. As we read, we will think about the ways in which sexuality, family, and struggle shape our protagonists, and ask questions such as What is knowledge? and How is the (growing, changing) self constituted by its particular social world? Authors will most likely include Jamaica Kincaid, Justin Torres, Sayaka Murata, Carson McCullers, and Toni Morrison.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: OBSESSED: WRITING ABOUT WHAT HAUNTS US. In this first-year writing seminar, we’ll visit the landscapes that leave their observers obsessed, and observe and put into practice our own writing obsessions. How can an incredibly close study of a subject find its way into our work? What's the difference between deep research and obsession? We'll read essays, fiction, and poetry by Jhumpa Lahiri (Italian language); John McPhee (truckers); Vinson Cunningham (sermonic essays); Jonathan Franzen (birds); Natalie Goldman (craft essay on obsession in Writing Down the Bones); Natalie Diaz (poetry); Roxanne Gay (Scrabble); Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation); Siddhartha Mukherjee (cancer); M.F.K. Fisher (frugality)

WRITING THE ESSAY I: GREAT SHORT FICTION: This first-year writing seminar aims to develop the broader skills of close reading and clear, analytical writing. The syllabus offers a survey of the short story with authors both canonical and contemporary, including James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Sherman Alexie, and others. The course explores such themes as character and conflict, experimental and psychological fiction, and moral fiction, as well as the role of voice, descriptive language, and symbols. The course requires ongoing shorter assignments plus multiple drafts of three formal essays.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: THE QUEER PAGE: In this first-year seminar we will read, discuss, and respond in writing to a multiplicity of queer texts, from foundational works of queer theory to contemporary fiction, essays and poetry. This course will consider the relationship between body and text, and we will practice close reading a wide range of LGBTQIA textual bodies, queer pages that work to counter hegemonic norms. Some questions this course will raise include: How do queer texts function as a space for intersectional analysis, and what are the connections and places of overlap between bodies and texts? Texts may include work by: Sara Ahmed, Gloria Anzaldua, James Baldwin, Judith Butler, Meg Day, Samuel Delaney, Jack Halberstam, E. Patrick Johnson, Rickey Laurentiis, Audre Lorde, José Esteban Muñoz, Maggie Nelson, Robert McRuer, Adrienne Rich, Eve Sedgwick, Julianna Spahr, and Monique Wittig. This course will ask that you hone skills in close reading, writing the personal essay, and will involve a final project involving scholarly and creative elements.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: GREAT SHORT FICTION: This first-year writing seminar aims to develop the broader skills of close reading and clear, analytical writing. The syllabus offers a survey of the short story with authors both canonical and contemporary, including James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Sherman Alexie, and others. The course explores such themes as character and conflict, experimental and psychological fiction, and moral fiction, as well as the role of voice, descriptive language, and symbols. The course requires ongoing shorter assignments plus multiple drafts of three formal essays.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: LOOKING AT ANIMALS, LIVING WITH ANIMALS: This course proposes to investigate written representations of the human-animal relationship. We'll read stories, poems and essays by Kamala Surayya, Franz Kafka, Elizabeth Alexander, HA Rey, Jakob von Uexküll, Jacques Derrida, Ibn Khalawayh, the Carters and many more. We'll also engage with the historical development of the zoo as institution and its imbrication with colonial violence, thinking specifically about the display of trafficked human beings in the halls of Montezuma, in 19th-century European World's Fairs, and in the Bronx Zoo.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: YOUR FAVORITE POET'S FAVORITE POET. is a class celebrating poetic lineage. Students will discover that every poet has to start somewhere – and that behind every good writer, is a good reader. Together, we will demystify the idea that poetry is for the select few and explore the art form through the lens of inclusivity, legacy and community. We will read and assess the work of poets recommended by Ross Gay, Airea D. Matthews, Mahogany L. Browne, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Dunya Mikhail, Gregory Pardlo, Marwa Helal, Joseph Millar, Tyehimba Jess, Hanif Abdurraqib, Ada Limón, Patricia Smith, Dorianne Laux, Tina Chang, Sharon Olds and more. Essay assignments will range from annotations on poetic craft to larger explorations of social justice, inspiration, risk-taking, imagination and permission. Students will also write essays identifying poetic choices that resonate and spark their imaginations, giving direction to their own creative work.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: REVERSE ENGINEERING THE ESSAY. Sometimes an author’s name becomes so synonymous with a particular kind of prose or style – or even human situation – that it becomes an eponymous adjective or proprietary trademark: We speak about things as being Dickensian or Pynchonesque or Kafka-esque in the way that we use words like Velcro or Xerox or BandAid. But what are we really talking about when we talk about “style”? If a work of art becomes completely permeated by one particular author’s vision, it’s not just because that author has given herself permission to fully inhabit her own quality of perception or pursue one set of concerns to exciting and unpredictable places, but also because she is deploying a very particular set of technical strategies at the level of the sentence. What makes a story Kafka-esque? What makes a David Foster Wallace sentence so distinctly “DFW”? In this seminar we will reverse engineer various brands of literary styles, taking a close look at their interior designs and architectures. Part of this will rest upon the premise that a certain amount of emulation is wholesome and that the way out of our influences is through them. What can we learn by trying very earnestly – and ultimately unsuccessfully – to sing along with the voices of the writers who move us the most.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: ILLNESS AND HEALING. In this first-year writing seminar students will look at classic texts on illness and healing such as Susan Sontag's Illness As Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors and Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals as well as essays on black women's maternal death rates and climate change. Is the earth sick? Why is chronic illness on the rise? Do mental illnesses need to be "cured"? We will formulate questions and learn to think on the page and research. The memes tells us if we heal ourselves we can heal the world. Students will write personal and research essays as well as look at news about the wellness industry and discuss current events in real time.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: THE ARCHIVAL IMPULSE. An archive is any collection of items judged to be enduringly valuable–whether it’s a set of maps housed at the Library of Congress, a curation of Instagram photographs, or a box full of a great-great-aunt’s journals and shoes. Because all archives are by nature selective and incomplete, they pose questions about what gets deemed valuable, why, and according to whom; and, accordingly, what gets left out of the historical record. In this course we will explore the relationship between writing and archives, examining how writers have both worked with existing archives (by engaging with archival sources, for example, or writing into absences and gaps) and also approached writing as archive (i.e., by chronicling their lives to produce new archives of experience). Throughout, we will explore the role and meaning of archives in our own lives while addressing issues related to privacy, access, and erasure. Readings will likely include work by Carmen Maria Machado, Jenn Shapland, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Saidiya Hartman, Lou Sullivan, Morgan M. Page, Lauren Russell, and Julietta Singh, among others. Assignments may involve diaristic writing, oral history, digital archives, and working with public records and institutional archives. As possible (given the unknown state of the pandemic this fall), we will take one or more field trips to local archives.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: YOUR FAVORITE POET'S FAVORITE POET. is a class celebrating poetic lineage. Students will discover that every poet has to start somewhere – and that behind every good writer, is a good reader. Together, we will demystify the idea that poetry is for the select few and explore the art form through the lens of inclusivity, legacy and community. We will read and assess the work of poets recommended by Ross Gay, Airea D. Matthews, Mahogany L. Browne, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Dunya Mikhail, Gregory Pardlo, Marwa Helal, Joseph Millar, Tyehimba Jess, Hanif Abdurraqib, Ada Limón, Patricia Smith, Dorianne Laux, Tina Chang, Sharon Olds and more. Essay assignments will range from annotations on poetic craft to larger explorations of social justice, inspiration, risk-taking, imagination and permission. Students will also write essays identifying poetic choices that resonate and spark their imaginations, giving direction to their own creative work.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: LITERARY CITIES. A city can be a writer’s muse, and it can be a writer’s curse, and it can be a writer’s longing. In describing the physical world as they see it, writers create new, literary versions of existing cities. As readers, we are privileged to experience these transformations. This first-year writing seminar will explore writers’ relationships with their surroundings and consider how they craft cities on the page, what moves them to do so, and how real cities are impacted as a result. We will discover such places as Lauren Elkin’s Paris, Ngozi Adichie’s Lagos, Meron Hadero’s Addis Ababa, and Teju Cole’s New York. Through a series of writing responses, students will investigate personal connections to the cities of their past and present.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: The RETROSPECTOSCOPE: ON MEMORY AND SELF : In this first-year writing seminar we will explore the way memory shapes how we see ourselves, others and the world around us. How do the circumstances under which a memory is formed affect us? How does the language we use to talk to ourselves and about ourselves inform how we assemble our sense of self? To what extent is the act of forgetting actually a core component in identity-making? As the semester progresses we’ll explore work by science writers, essayists and novelists in an attempt to understand the malleable nature of memory and the impact it has on how we interact with our reality. Some authors who will help construct our own arguments about this deeply personal, but universal topic, include: Jorge Louis Borges, David Eagleman, Jill Bolte-Taylor, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Roland Barthes, Jamaica Kincaid and Tim O’Brien, among others. Steeped in their unique and varying points of view, we will then write two short essays and one longer rumination on the nature of memory and identity.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: UNLOCKING REVENGE. In the Western world, we’ve come to think of revenge as a dangerous, never ending game of “an eye for an eye.” But are there ways to consider that the human impulse for revenge is merely a prompt? Can revenge help us wield our grief and make sure our losses matter? Can it be a critical and ethical tool to help bend our own lived narratives toward justice? In this first-year course, through readings, in-class discussions, our individual investigations, and a cumulative final project, we’ll examine the concepts of accountability and injustice, while also investigating varying modes of justice, including punitive/carceral/retributive justice, restorative justice, and transformative justice. A few of our foundational texts might include The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas and The Black Count by Tom Reiss, as well as the work of Christina Sharpe, Audre Lorde, Myisha Cherry, Danez Smith, Terrance Hayes, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and others. We might also spend some time with The Avengers movies (avenge and revenge having the same root and similar meanings).

WRITING THE ESSAY I: INTERSECTIONS OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS. In this first-year course, we’ll approach the currently unfolding climate crisis by reading intersectionally across texts regarding the histories of colonialism, slavery and exploitative industrialization, as well as texts from the civil rights movement, and the numerous gender equality and environmental movements that have endured since the 60s. Via in-class discussions, individual research, written responses, and a final project, we’ll attempt to discern how the same culprits that have come to cause the climate crisis have also served as the backbone to the oppressive systems that have been globally dominant for the past few centuries. While exploring the essay format, we’ll practice asking and answering brave and wild questions, like: How is addressing the climate crisis yoked to indigenous rights? How is it tied to the abolition and reparations movements in the U.S., as well as trans, gender non-binary and queer rights? Readings may include the work of Franz Fanon, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, James Baldwin, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Derecka Purnell, Judith Butler, Nathaniel Rich, as well as the work of writers from global communities on the front lines of the crisis.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: WRITING NEW YORK: In this First-Year Writing seminar, we will read, discuss, and write about a variety of texts—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, comics, photography, film—that take life in New York City, in one way or another, as their subject. We will consider the ways in which both subject and style in these works reflect an ongoing creative exploration of the kaleidoscopic and ever-evolving character of the city. We will investigate cultural and personal mythologies that inform our understanding and experience of the city with an eye toward expanding our consciousness of New York as both a symbol and an actual place. Readings may include work by: Maeve Brennan, Lucy Sante, Jesús Colón, Bonnie Tsui, Joseph Mitchell, Reinaldo Arenas, Teju Cole, Jeff Chang, Jane Jacobs, Samuel Delaney, James Baldwin, Vivian Gornick, Frank O’Hara, and Langston Hughes. In responding to selected texts, students will hone skills in close reading and in writing both analytical and personal essays. Work for this course will culminate in a final project involving scholarly and creative elements that investigates a particular topic related to the city’s history or present.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES. This first-year writing seminar examines the theory and practice of creative nonfiction, focusing on the memoir and the personal essay. Students will learn how to translate personal experience into effective pieces of writing. We will study the techniques of “writing the self,” integrating literary analysis, creative writing, and an exploration of the role of memory and imagination in reconstructing and shaping the past. We will read a variety of texts and examine the ways writers use language to bring their subjects to life, reading not only for the story but, more importantly, for distinctive prose style and technique. As writers we all have unique concerns, backgrounds, and perspectives. Our goal is to effectively communicate what we have seen, heard, and felt, focusing on the world outside of ourselves as much as our interior worlds. Our workshops will help us focus on hearing our unique voices and the voices of others, offering new ideas and thoughtful critiques. We will learn how to use the truth of our lives to create compelling narratives that feature quality thinking, depth of insight, and impressive prose style. Readings may include works by Kiese Laymon, Virginia Woolf, Jamaica Kincaid, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, David Sedaris, Teju Cole, and others.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL. This first-year writing seminar encourages students to consider the ways they are taught and the unspoken assumptions about their education. To do this effectively, students hone skills for reading, analyzing, and thinking about structures of implicit thought in formal education. To think through complicated issues, write to examine that thinking, share their ideas, and make arguments based on their perspectives and understandings. Authors include Paulo Friere, Adrienne Rich, Mary Louise Pratt, Susan Griffin, and Ralph Ellison.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: ELEMENTS OF FACT AND FICTION: In this first-year writing seminar we will ponder the importance, necessity and psychological functional of storytelling. As a species, humans are storytelling animals. We can’t explain ourselves or know each other without using, sharing, inventing and assuming stories. What is universal in reason? How does it work? Who decides the context of meaning? We’ll begin the semester reading old stories—fairy tales, for instance—and study the evolution of metaphor and culture. Good stories are timeless and relatable. How, then, do we keep churning out new ways of thinking old stories? We’ll read novels, memoirs and literary theory. We’re actively seeking an understanding of the goal(s) of narrative drive. How is learning achieved? What do we want to understand when we read other peoples’ experiences? Is it to relate to what’s already within us or do we grow? If so, how and where? Potential readings include: The Story Factor: Secrets of Influence from the Art of Storytelling, by Annette Simons; Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies, by Cristina Bacchilega; Strange as this Weather has Been, by Ann Pancake; Legend of a Suicide, by David Vann; A Childhood: The Biography of Place, by Harry Crews; There There by Tommy Orange; and My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES. This first-year writing seminar examines the theory and practice of creative nonfiction, focusing on the memoir and the personal essay. Students will learn how to translate personal experience into effective pieces of writing. We will study the techniques of “writing the self,” integrating literary analysis, creative writing, and an exploration of the role of memory and imagination in reconstructing and shaping the past. We will read a variety of texts and examine the ways writers use language to bring their subjects to life, reading not only for the story but, more importantly, for distinctive prose style and technique. As writers we all have unique concerns, backgrounds, and perspectives. Our goal is to effectively communicate what we have seen, heard, and felt, focusing on the world outside of ourselves as much as our interior worlds. Our workshops will help us focus on hearing our unique voices and the voices of others, offering new ideas and thoughtful critiques. We will learn how to use the truth of our lives to create compelling narratives that feature quality thinking, depth of insight, and impressive prose style. Readings may include works by Kiese Laymon, Virginia Woolf, Jamaica Kincaid, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, David Sedaris, Teju Cole, and others.