WRITING THE ESSAY I: PORTRAITS AND LANDSCAPES. Portrait and landscape: two paradigms, two orientations, two ways of seeing the world’s inhabitants and the worlds they inhabit. We will borrow these genres from the field of visual art to explore how we “frame” human and non-human lives in writing. We will read a range of texts by authors including essayists like Roland Barthes, Michel Serres, and Leslie Jamison, poets like Charles Baudelaire, Claudia Rankine, Mahmoud Darwish, and Yehuda Amichai, and fiction writers like Shobha Rao, Anuk Arudpragasam, and Cesar Aira, using their work to address questions of land and belonging—to whom does land belong, who belongs in a given landscape?—as well as questions of identity and profiling—whose faces matter, with whose faces do we identify and why? We will also hone our techniques of description and analysis by examining the work of painters and photographers.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: DISMANTLING THE HOUSE THAT RACE BUILT. Race is a story. This is why it’s often called a “social construct”—an invented idea, a fiction—even as it’s a fiction so powerful it shapes the realities of our histories, our social systems, and our daily lives. We have seen what happens when, as one contributor to the Racial Imaginary anthology writes, Americans' imaginations are “riddled with the stories racism built.” How do we write against these stories, producing texts that not only refuse to reinscribe racist narratives, but also weaken and dismantle them? What possibilities are born when we approach writing as a potentially anti-racist act? This first-year writing seminar progresses from inquiry to action: we will examine U.S. conceptions of race as represented in contemporary texts, practice writing anti-racist texts ourselves, and finally design a public-facing project that aims to share what we’ve learned with our communities.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: ILLNESS AND HEALING. In this writing intensive course 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 tell us if we heal ourselves we can heal the world. Students will write personal and research essays as well as discuss current events and news about Covid-19 and racism in real time.

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, questions of cultural and moral relativity, the nature of love, the challenges of suffering and death, and sociopolitical issues such as minority rights, feminism, food production, and the environment. Texts may include short works by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Plato, Orwell, Woolf, Sartre, June Jordan, Michael Pollan, Al Gore, and several others, as well as Eastern and Western religious texts (such as the Book of Matthew and Buddhist texts), along with poems and 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: CITIES AND THEIR LITERARY SIBLINGS. A city can be a writer’s muse and it can be a writer’s curse and it can be a writer’s longing. Writers describe the physical world as they see it, and in doing so they create new, literary versions of existing cities. As readers, we are privileged to experience these transformations. In this first-year writing seminar, we 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. Our readings may include such discoveries as Aleksandar Hemon’s Sarajevo and also his Chicago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Lagos and Meron Hadero’s Addis Ababa, Virginia Woolf’s London and Joseph Brodsky’s Venice, Teju Cole’s New York and Lauren Elkin's Paris. Through a series of writing responses, students will investigate personal connections to the cities of their past and present.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: TIME AFTER TIME: EXPERIMENTS WITH REVISION. In this first-year writing seminar, we will focus on what it means to write and rewrite through time: What does it mean to think about revision not only as a way to improve our writing but also as an opportunity to revisit the past and our present stories about it? We will study examples of writing and art that dive into the archives of history and play tricks with time—time travel narratives, alternate history, speculative nonfiction, and documentary/verbatim theater—and examine their various effects. Readings include essays, short stories, a play, and visual and performance art. Writing assignments will include a personal essay and a critical essay, with the option to develop a hybrid project that may involve photography, film, and performance.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: THE COMING OF AGE NOVELLA. What does it mean to grow up? In this first-year writing seminar, we will read and respond to a range of 20th and 21st century novellas that reimagine and reinvigorate the classic literary genre of the bildungsroman, which traditionally depicts a young person’s moral or spiritual education. As we read, we will 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 Justin Torres, Jamaica Kincaid, Jeanette Winterson, and Tao Lin.

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: THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES. This first-year writing seminar examines the theory and practice of memoir and personal essay through a study of the techniques of writing the self, integrating literary analysis and creative writing in an exploration of the role of memory and imagination in reconstructing and shaping the past. Students will learn how to translate personal experience and research into effective pieces of writing. To that end, we will read a variety of texts including memoir, personal essay, and travel writing, among others, and examine the ways writers use language to bring their subjects to life, reading not only for the story but, more importantly, also 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 Virginia Woolf, Jamaica Kincaid, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Jeanette Winterson, Margo Jefferson, Mary Karr, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Maggie Nelson, Alexander Chee, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and others.

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. Our encounters with various readings from authors such as Joan Didion, Cheryl Strayed, Brent Staples, Amy Tan, Timothy O’Brien, Junot Diaz, Zadie Smith, Tom Junod, and Roxane Gay are designed to inspire your ideas and unique approaches to your own writing, which will be harnessed through lots of brainstorming, freewriting, workshopping, drafting, redrafting, and critical feedback from me, your fellow students, and yourself.

WRITING THE ESSAY 1: 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 Sedgewick, 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: 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? Readings will include writers on their obsessions, including Jhumpa Lahiri (Italian language); Vinson Cunningham (sermonic essays); Siddhartha Mukherjee (cancer); M.F.K. Fisher (frugality).WRITING THE ESSAY I: OBSESSED: WRITING ABOUT WHAT HAUNTS US.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: GREAT SHORT FICTION. In Moral Fiction, John Gardner argues for the storyteller’s need to make readers “understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened.” In this Writing I module, we use short fiction as a means to explore something strikingly, recognizably true about the problems we face, but also to develop the skills of close reading, investigative inquiry, and clear writing. The syllabus readings include a diverse group of authors: James Joyce, Alice Munro, Edward P. Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, Amy Hempel, Franz Kafka, Sherman Alexie, and others. Through these texts, we’ll raise complicated questions about the pressure from family or community, the quest for identity and gender, the difficulty of trauma, and the struggle to understand one’s values.

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: TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL: This first year writing course 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: PROFOUND BOREDOM. Now more than ever, boring experiences threaten our enjoyment of life. Living in lockdown. 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, with an emphasis on the craft of the essay. Topics may include: small talk, long speeches, the science of how we experience time, quarantine, smartphones, capitalism, chores, reality television, intentionally boring films, monks, meditation, mindfulness, opiates, prison, the Internal Revenue Service, the fear of missing out, the lives of zoo animals, summer vacation, heaven, and silence.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: THE FUNCTION OF TRUTH IN FICTION AND NONFICTION. Verisimilitude is a necessity, no matter the form or subject. Truth is a fact but it’s also a feeling. What constitutes reality is perspective, and as we’ll seek to discover—desire. We’ll read critically both nonfiction and fiction and determine for ourselves what constitutes veracity and what misses the mark. What is reading? Is it about stoking wonder? Is gaining understanding a play of empathy? What, exactly is information and how do we know how to utilize it? Readings may include We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones and Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: DISMANTLING THE HOUSE THAT RACE BUILT. Race is a story. This is why it’s often called a “social construct”—an invented idea, a fiction—even as it’s a fiction so powerful it shapes the realities of our histories, our social systems, and our daily lives. We have seen what happens when, as one contributor to the Racial Imaginary anthology writes, Americans' imaginations are “riddled with the stories racism built.” How do we write against these stories, producing texts that not only refuse to reinscribe racist narratives, but also weaken and dismantle them? What possibilities are born when we approach writing as a potentially anti-racist act? This first-year writing seminar progresses from inquiry to action: we will examine U.S. conceptions of race as represented in contemporary texts, practice writing anti-racist texts ourselves, and finally design a public-facing project that aims to share what we’ve learned with our communities.

WRITING THE ESSAY I: DREAMING CARE. Abolitionists such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, and Mariame Kaba teach us that abolition does not simply mean to do away with, but rather, it is a practice of bringing new/old forms of care and kinship into being so that all people can live in safety and dignity. But what does it mean to care? For oneself, for family and community, for people unknown to us, for the Earth? How do we offer, give, receive, and experience care? What kinds of care are required for liberation and how do we understand our roles in them? Is it possible for a system to care? What are the politics of care? And how have people used writing and art to dream new worlds of care into being? In this writing-intensive seminar, we will explore the idea of care through the lens of liberatory texts from a range of intersecting lineages including abolitionist, disability justice, queer black feminism, environmental justice, and multiple literary genres. Through close reading, writing the personal essay, and a final project involving both creative and scholarly elements, we will meditate closely on the internal, the interpersonal, and the institutional, asking ourselves and each other: How do we understand care and what can care look like in action?

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: MOURNING AND MELANCHOLIA. In this first-year writing seminar we look at texts that confront depression, grief and heartbreak. Poets and philosophers have often examined these emotional states as passage through a “dark night of the soul” in which an author confronts despair and finds a way to traverse it. These personal and spiritual reckonings are often deep examinations of the self and a search for meaning in existence. This writing intensive course considers philosophical, poetic and other renderings of mourning and melancholia in authors such as Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Claudia Rankine, Sigmund Freud, Maggie Nelson, James Baldwin, Paul Celan and others. Through a series of essays, we begin a conversation in our own writing and thought with these authors and issues.

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This class is an intensive seminar for first-year students to help them develop their ideas through reading and writing. Instructors choose literary topics based on their interests and expertise.The topics, which range in scope and approach, are geared toward the work of crafting and revising essays.Students experiment with a variety of expository and creative styles and proceed throughout the semester from familiar writing (the personal essay) to more analytical writing (the critical essay). Students emerge from this course with more confidence in the process of formulating, developing, and expressing your ideas with the written word.

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This class is an intensive seminar for first-year students to help them develop their ideas through reading and writing. Instructors choose literary topics based on their interests and expertise.The topics, which range in scope and approach, are geared toward the work of crafting and revising essays.Students experiment with a variety of expository and creative styles and proceed throughout the semester from familiar writing (the personal essay) to more analytical writing (the critical essay). Students emerge from this course with more confidence in the process of formulating, developing, and expressing your ideas with the written word.