21W.731-3 Culture Shock!, Fall 2002

Abstract

This course is an introduction to writing prose for a public audience--specifically, prose grounded in, but not confined to, personal narrative.That is, you will write essays that engage elements and aspects of contemporary American popular culture and that do so via a vivid personal voice and presence. In the coming weeks we will read a number of articles that address current issues in popular culture along with essays, pieces of carefully-crafted nonfiction, by writers, scientists, philosophers, poets, historians, literary scholars, and many others. These essays will address a great many subjects from the contemporary world, using personal narrative and memoir to launch and elaborate an argument or position or refined observation. And you yourselves will write a great deal in the variety of forms that the essay genre embraces, attending always to the ways your purpose in writing and your intended audience shape what and how you write.