Essayism: Trajectory of a Genre

This course explores the thematically capacious genre of the essay, a compact prose form where science and poetry meet. Students learn the essay's history, explore various theories of the essay, and encounter prominent examples of essayistic writing from across the centuries. The essay, itself a hybrid form, seems always to reach beyond text toward other media: essay-film, photo-essay, desktop essay. The class invites students to analyze these new essayistic experiments and consider the implications the essay form might have for their own scholarly writing.