Description: The essay, a central literary genre in English, developed its own characteristic shape in the United States. After World War II, the essay increasingly became the tool that allowed Americans to address the world changing around them: topics of national significance--from war to baseball, from family life to psychedelic trips, from minority rights to sexual liberation, from “nature writing” to animal essays--were raised in essays published in nationally distributed magazines throughout the twentieth century and into the first part of the twenty-first century.
In this proseminar on the essay, students will learn to use the technical vocabulary for the discussion of prose texts of the so-called "Fourth Genre" (nonfiction prose) and assess the effectiveness of American essays in giving expression to the self and in shaping the national discourse on social and political topics.
- Teacher: Thomas Austenfeld