Students (and educators) too often regard the essay as merely an instrument of assessing learning, but the essay has a rich history as a creative genre. In this course we will approach the essay as the creative, dynamic, imaginative literary form that it actually is. Your approach to writing essays will not be the same and you'll never go back to the five paragraph essay again! We will look at examples of the essay, use film for inspiration, and play with other means of creativity.

You will leave this course with a very different and improved understanding of the essay, and you will be better writers. The essays you write in the future may challenge some of your teachers’ more conventional expectations, but they will be better, more interesting, and more like the real writing professional essayists actually create. Your professors in college will be grateful.

• Become better writers, more independent, more creative, and more original.
• Choose topics of interest, explore genres of writing, develop their own voice, and write!
• Learn a little bit about the history of the essay as a literary genre.
• Read a variety of essays form a variety of essayists.
• Experiment with writing different kinds of essays, such as personal essays, op-eds, commentaries, and rants.
• Use film to inspire analysis and writing.
• Share writing with one another both for revision and entertainment.
• Play around with some multimodal forms of composition.