Art of the Essay: Writing the Body

This is an advanced level course in the art of essay writing—what some call the "personal essay" and others call "creative nonfiction." The etymological roots of the word "essay" mean simply to try, to make an attempt. In our essays we will be making honest attempts to say clearly and creatively what it is swirling around inside us. 

Essayist Scott Russell Sanders says: "Unlike novelists and playwrights, who lurk behind the scenes while distracting our attention with the puppet show of imaginary characters, unlike scholars and journalists, who quote the opinions of others and shelter behind the hedges of neutrality, the essayist has nowhere to hide. While the poet can lean back on a several-thousand-year-old legacy of ecstatic speech, the essayist inherits a much briefer and skimpier tradition. The poet is allowed to quit after a few lines, but the essayist must hold our attention over pages and pages. It is a brash and foolhardy form, this one-man or one-woman circus, which relies on the tricks of anecdote, conjecture, memory, and wit to enthrall us."

This course will challenge each of us to push the boundaries of the personal essay form, focusing particularly on "writing the body," surely a potentially brash and foolhardy topic if there ever was one. And perhaps something vital and necessary, close to the skin, something we rarely take the time to explore in words. What is the body? Our bodies? Mine? Yours? What are the connections between body and mind? Body and soul? Body and the food we eat, the liquids we drink, or the air we breathe? What is the history of our bodies? How do family and culture shape the ways we see and feel about our bodies? What do scars, moles, creases, hair, bones, pain, diseases say about who we are? What can we mean by producing a "body" of writing? Each of us will explore these questions and more, and write and share three full revised and finished personal essays, each of them illuminations on the rich and intriguing possibilities in writing the body.