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MW 2:55-4:10
2789
Instructor: K. Gottschalk
Campus mail: Knight Institute, 101 McGraw Hall
Email: kkg1@cornell.edu
255-7049
The reflective essay is by turns personal, analytic, figurative, funny, critical and argumentative. It cogitates on the writer's experience, knowledge, feelings, and opinions, and brings those subjects to the attention of a public audience. In this course we will read and write creative non-fiction in this genre with both personal and public consequences, considering issues of voice, intention, scope, and artful execution. While course reading will include such writers as Alice Walker and Annie Dillard as well as Cornell's own E. B. White, James McConkey, and Kenneth McClane, we will spend equal or more time reading the writing of course members. Students will build their work from brief to longer compositions through frequent revision, and will gain skill at being one another's reviewers and advisors.