WRITING THE ESSAY III: CREATIVE INQUIRY. What is research and how do we go about it? What creative and innovative possibilities exist for the ways in which writers can use research in our work? What are the limits of research and what roles do invention, imagination, and the personal play in research-based writing? In this writing-intensive class, we will pursue paths of creative inquiry, taking as our subject the process of research itself, including the ways in which research and its methodologies have the power to harm as well as illuminate. We will examine various models of creative inquiry, exploring the work of writers who resist, push, and blur our understanding of and the boundaries between knowability, experience, and imagination. Students will try out a range of research methods that may include navigating archival research, accessing public records, conducting interviews, and drawing on (or seeking out) personal experience. Each student will embark on an individualized project of creative inquiry, culminating in an essay, that may be scholarly, journalistic, creative, or theoretical/polemical. Essay development will be supported by short research and reflection assignments. This course meets once a week and also requires weekly attendance at the Craft Lunch series of lectures on writing, held Mondays from 12:30-1:30 p.m. When you register for this course, you must also register yourself in LNGC 2075 Writing Craft-Lesson Lunches. This specialized course is designed for upper-level and transfer students who have yet to fulfill their WTEII requirement. Prerequisite: Writing the Essay I or equivalent in transfer credits.

WRITING THE ESSAY III: CREATIVE INQUIRY. What is research and how do we go about it? What creative and innovative possibilities exist for the ways in which writers can use research in our work? What are the limits of research and what roles do invention, imagination, and the personal play in research-based writing? In this writing-intensive class, we will pursue paths of creative inquiry, taking as our subject the process of research itself, including the ways in which research and its methodologies have the power to harm as well as illuminate. We will examine various models of creative inquiry, exploring the work of writers who resist, push, and blur our understanding of and the boundaries between knowability, experience, and imagination. Students will try out a range of research methods that may include navigating archival research, accessing public records, conducting interviews, and drawing on (or seeking out) personal experience. Each student will embark on an individualized project of creative inquiry, culminating in an essay, that may be scholarly, journalistic, creative, or theoretical/polemical. Essay development will be supported by short research and reflection assignments. This course meets once a week and also requires weekly attendance at the Craft Lunch series of lectures on writing, held Mondays from 12:30-1:30 p.m. When you register for this course, you must also register yourself in LNGC 2075 Writing Craft-Lesson Lunches. This specialized course is designed for upper-level and transfer students who have yet to fulfill their WTEII requirement. Prerequisite: Writing the Essay I or equivalent in transfer credits.