ENG32600

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the module the students will;

-have a knowledge of the essay as a distinct literary genre, and its evolution.
-have a knowledge and understanding of key essays from 20th and 21st century writers, across a wide variety of periods, identities, and styles.
-understand the context each essay emerged from, and how each essay impacted the form.
-see how, although patterns and ways of writing might shift, some preoccupations remain the same, there are constant recurring themes and motifs (comparing writers from different periods, for example).
-understand the role of non-fiction, and the essay, as a key form in creative writing.

Student Effort Hours:

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:

Each seminar will be based around an essay. I will provide context, and the position of each essay, in the progression and shifting of the form, and this will fold out into a class discussion of the essay; the context, the style, the impact.

There will also be a presentation element, with a seminar dedicated (in the later part of the semester) to a 5 minute presentation on an essay of the students choosing, to allow them to connect with the styles that relate most to their own writing, and that they find instructive.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.

Module Requisites and Incompatibles

Not applicable to this module.
 

Assessment Strategy

 

Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Feedback on continuous assessment will be given throughout the trimester; feedback on the portfolio will be given through Brightspace.

PRIMARY READING (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

de Montaigne, On the Cannibals (1595)
Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694)
Swift, Jonathan, A Modest Proposal (1729)
Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841)
Orwell, George, Politics and the English Language (1946)
Baldwin, James, Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring (1962)
Sontag, Susan, Against Interpretation (1966)
Didion, Joan, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
Lorde, Audre, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1978)
Stockdale, James B., The World of Epictetus: Reflections on Survival and Leadership (1978)
Bangs, Lester, Lou Reed – A Deaf Mute in a Telephone Booth (1973), Astral Weeks (1978), Free Jazz/Punk Rock (1979)
Foster Wallace, David, David Lynch Keeps His Head (1997)
MacFarlane, Robert, Ghost Species (2008)
Hustvedt, Siri, Sontag on Smut: Fifty Years Later (2016)
Smith, Zadie, Meet Justin Bieber! (2018)
Tolentino, Jia, The I in the Internet, (2019)
Applebaum, Anne, The New Puritans (2021)

RECOMMENDED SECONDARY READING

Fisher, M.F.K., The Gastronomical Me (1943)
Fowler, Henry Watson, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), updated version now known as Fowler’s Modern English Usage (2015)
Leavis, FR, The Great Tradition (1948)
Lopate, Phillip, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay (1994)
Lounsberry, Barbara, The Art of Fact (1992)
Malcolm, Janet, Forty-One False Starts (2013)
O’Connor Flannery, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1961)
Scholes Robert, Kellogg, Robert, The Nature of Narrative (1966)
Strunk Jr, William, and White, E.B., The Elements of Style (1920)
Wolfe, Tom, Johnson, E.W., The New Journalism (1973)
Wolfe, Tom, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.