Spring 2026 Course Search

Reading and Writing: the Personal Essay — LIT4617.01

Instructor: Jo Ann Beard
Days & Time: WE 2:10pm-5:50pm
Credits: 4

The essay is an intellectual and an artistic endeavor, and work in the form means work in thinking—about life, values, our own ideas and the ideas of others. Good personal essays entertain, inform and move us through the rendering of, and reflection over, our own life experiences. Essays and stories by artists such as Virginia Woolf, E. B. White, Daniel Orozco, Annie Dillard, Alexander Chee, Alice Walker, and James Baldwin will provide students with a foundation for approaching and understanding their own stories.