The only way to become a better writer is to write an awful lot, so there will be weekly formal and informal writing assignments and many opportunities to revise. My UWS will focus on the logic of argument and critical reading. In my course we will concern ourselves with the deployment of rhetoric, the value and inevitability of revision and the distinction between description and analysis. In the process of exploring these issues we will touch upon the important differences between academic and creative writing. Freud, Joyce, James, Wilde, T. S. Eliot, Swift, Carlyle, Johnson, Pope and Borges.
Academic writing is a specialized form of conversation.
It is vital to your success at the university level not only to understand academic discourse through critical reading and thinking but also to clear your throat and jump into the fray, adding to academic discourse with your own writing. In this course, you will gain the tools necessary for you to do just that, such as how to formulate topics for academic writing, how to structure your writing effectively, and how to refine your writing style. We will examine both classical and modern rhetorical techniques and theory and also chart the historical development of the essay. Authors to be examined will range from the earliest practicioners of the essay to such modern masters as Orwell, Woolf, and Baldwin. This course is as much an exercise in the art and practice of reading as it is of writing.