Department of English

A course in reading and writing non-fiction, especially autobiographical and journalistic essays. We'll read modern and contemporary writers like John McPhee, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, George Orwell, John Updike, Philip Roth, Amy Tan, Paul Theroux, Tom Wolfe, and Joyce Carol Oates. We'll write on topics like childhood, adolescence, family, television, movies, music, travel, work, play, and parody. Since we will be meeting in University Cith High School and occasionally tutoring students in writing, we'll focus especially on high school as a topic in media and memoir. Texts will include a four-month subscription to *The New Yorker*. The course will be run as a writing workshop, with drafting, revision, editing and classroom critiques of student work, leading to a final portfolio.