The Art & Practice of the Personal Essay (ARTS90044)

In this 16-hour seminar series students will read and discuss writing that explores complex ideas and issues in personal, engaging, and creative ways. These seminars will examine the rhetorical, narrative, and poetic strategies of the personal essay as a contribution to public intellectual discourse, as well as the kinds of occasions that give rise to the essay (personal crises, social issues, shifts in societal sensibility, ethical dilemmas). Some essayists we might read: Montaigne, Zadie Smith, M. J. Hyland, Helen Garner, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace. Possible text: Best Australian Essays 2016 (Black Inc). Most reading material will be available electronically. Students will draft and workshop their own creative writing during the seminar sessions. This subject is relevant to humanities researchers directly, but could be useful to science and social science researchers who wish to explore and extend their prose techniques.