Writing

Critical Essays

Your main work for this course will be to develop, draft, and revise two midlength critical essays. By critical I mean writing that responds to the work of others. By essay I mean a piece that has been crafted to express something of the voice and personality of its author. To write a good critical essay, then, you need to do two things: to say something of interest about the texts (books, plays, movies, music) that you’re responding to, and to say it in a voice that feels your own.

That’s an ambitious goal, and you will get a lot of feedback and support as you work towards it. I will only put letter grades on the final versions of your two essays, but I will respond to all the previous drafts of them that you write. (Several of your classmates will read and respond to your work as well.)

Your first essay will be a response to one (or several) of the assigned texts—Educated, Rita, Push—that we read and discuss together in the first several weeks of the semester. For your second essay, I’ll ask you to bring a new text about learning to the table, to add to the list I’ve begun here. We’ll talk much more in the coming weeks about how to approach these projects.

And, finally, midlength? By that I mean that I’ll expect the final versions of both of your essays to run 1,500 words or more. Earlier drafts may be shorter.

X Assignments

The early stages of your two essays are marked on the class schedule as Xs. I will read and respond to these pieces, and track them with a √ or √–. Even though they will not receive a letter grade, these pieces deserve serious thought and care, since they will be the basis of your final, graded essays. (They will also factor into your final grade for the course. See Grades for details.)

We’ll talk more about each X assignment as we come up to them, but here is a very quick overview:

• X1: Response to Educated
• X2: Response to Educating Rita, both the play and film
• X3: Response to Push, both the novel and film
• X4: Proposal for your second essay
• X5: First full draft of your second essay
• X6: Second draft of your essay
• X7: Digitized version of your second essay

Guidelines about both the technical requirements (Specs) for submitting your writing and individual assignments are posted on the pages below.

Good luck! I look forward to reading your work!