assignments ENGL493 Seminar in Writing & Writing Studies:
The History of the Personal Essay
The 3.5 Experiment
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Overview: This course is meant to consider the history and evolution of the personal essay. And yet, the personal essay has been overtaken in the minds and hearts of most students by the academic essay. I want to argue that the 3.5 paragraph essay of SAT and MCAS fame is vestigial. It is what I would call, and others would call, the essay of ideas in it's lowest common denominator form. What I mean is, there are essays out there--and we will read a number of them--that use research and create arguments and whose sole focus is not on the personal with joy and verve and complexity. They are winding roads not as the crow flies arguments. They are subtle and sometimes confusing and often majestic.
But then we get essays that say that Summer is the best season because you can go to the beach, take vacations with your family, and not have to go to school.
What is the effect of this sort of dumbing down of the Essay of Ideas? We will consider what that effect is and then you will consider what that has done to your own writing. In what ways has that contracted the thinking work and the writing work of your academic career? Then we will explode the idea of the 3.5 essay, the academic essay in general, and re-see and re-write an existing essay from one of your classes at BSU. This essay does not need to be from an English class, but it can be.
I think that what you might discover is the difference between the essay as an academic form and the essay of ideas is simple and singular: passion. Academics writing about topics for a living are writing from a place of love and passion and joy about an idea and a vein of research. That is what is missing the classroom.
ORIGINAL IDEA FOR THE ASSIGNMENT: My preference is that you take an essay you've written for a class and revisit it, re-see it as an essay of ideas. What that requires, however, is that you identify the reason that this idea appealed to you in the first place. What is your passion for the idea? What peaked your interest? What is your personal intellectual relationship with this idea that can thicken up the piece and make it something more than a paper for a class.
ALTERNATIVE ASSIGNMENT: If there is no possible way that you can do the above with a given topic, than you may elect to write a wholly new piece.
PARTICULARS
But then we get essays that say that Summer is the best season because you can go to the beach, take vacations with your family, and not have to go to school.
What is the effect of this sort of dumbing down of the Essay of Ideas? We will consider what that effect is and then you will consider what that has done to your own writing. In what ways has that contracted the thinking work and the writing work of your academic career? Then we will explode the idea of the 3.5 essay, the academic essay in general, and re-see and re-write an existing essay from one of your classes at BSU. This essay does not need to be from an English class, but it can be.
I think that what you might discover is the difference between the essay as an academic form and the essay of ideas is simple and singular: passion. Academics writing about topics for a living are writing from a place of love and passion and joy about an idea and a vein of research. That is what is missing the classroom.
ORIGINAL IDEA FOR THE ASSIGNMENT: My preference is that you take an essay you've written for a class and revisit it, re-see it as an essay of ideas. What that requires, however, is that you identify the reason that this idea appealed to you in the first place. What is your passion for the idea? What peaked your interest? What is your personal intellectual relationship with this idea that can thicken up the piece and make it something more than a paper for a class.
ALTERNATIVE ASSIGNMENT: If there is no possible way that you can do the above with a given topic, than you may elect to write a wholly new piece.
PARTICULARS
- If you are selecting a piece you've already written, I think that if it is much longer than 15 pages it is too long to rework unless your idea is to shorten and focus a rangier piece of writing. It is possible that you wrote a 20 page paper on a 5 page idea--oh, don't think I don't know that that's possible.
- The finished product should be between 2500-3000 words. No more than 3000 for sure. I would say no less than 1700 words as well.
- Double space your final product.
- As part of the assignment, we will look at the role research plays in the Essay of Ideas and how it differs from writing for academic purposes. So a works-cited may not be a part of your final product. It might be, but it might not be.
- You should have an evocative and appropriate title. I will ask you to write the academic essay version of that title as well.
- We will work on and workshop the paper in class leading up to the mid-term portfolio, when this paper and all it's version will be due.