ENG1101 English Composition I, FA2018
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” begins the opening paragraph of Joan Didion’s essay “The White Album.” This course will take Didion’s assertion as a point of entry for examining a wide range of essays from the personal to the persuasive as we investigate the ways that all of our stories are interconnected.
We begin from the premise that all writing is conversation and that no one writes in a vacuum. When writers write, they are joining a conversation already in progress. Throughout this course we will learn how to write about our own experiences and ideas and also how to respond to ideas others have voiced. As students reflect on themselves and the world around them, we will be especially attuned to issues of gender, class, race, sexuality, and geographical location.
Reading and writing are important companions. Our class discussions and our writing will be spurred by studying both short and long form essays from some of the greatest contemporary writers of our time including Didion, James Baldwin, Ta-Nahesi Coates, and David Sedaris among others. Through close examination and rhetorical analysis of literary essays, personal narratives, essays of place, and persuasive essays, we will use various texts to spur class discussions and generate ideas for students’ own writing.
