Vinson Cunningham

Description is one of the most basic tools of all writing. You might even think of it as a primary reason for writing to exist at all. Yet, we rarely stop to consider exactly what kind of act it is and how better to control its effects and divulgences in our own work. This class will be a kind of experimental playground, a place to think about how experience—the seen, the heard, the tasted, the felt—becomes art. We will read from a wide range of works—ekphrastic poems, entries from literary diaries, clips from films and other audio-visual media, speeches, essays, magazine articles, and works of criticism and fiction—in search of the values hidden or dragged into the light by description. Students will maintain a weekly journal of close descriptions and write fairly regular “reviews” of art, as well as of other items plucked from everyday life. Work by writers and thinkers like Jamaica Kincaid, Joan Acocella, Susan Orlean, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Konstantin Stanislavski, Ivan Turgenev, Georges Perec, and Herman Melville will be key to our investigations. We’ll also look at lots of visual art.

When you say that you’d like to start working on an “essay,” you’re probably referring to one of two related but distinct forms, each with its own history. There’s the argumentative essay that, here in America, is descended from the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson—developed out loud, in sermons and speeches, for the purpose of persuading (and, just as importantly, entertaining) an audience. Then there’s the more ruminative essayistic tradition that stretches back to Michel de Montaigne and the French Renaissance. In this course, we’ll explore both traditions and play with what we find. We’ll start with classic early American sermons by John Winthrop and Jonathan Edwards, as well as Montaigne’s first attempts to map his restless consciousness onto the page, in prose. Then we’ll wind through time, visiting Emerson and Douglass, Didion and Sontag, Dr. King and Zadie Smith. We’ll make work informed by their tendencies and strategies on either side of the essay’s enduring line.

The essay, in its American incarnation, is a direct outgrowth of the sermon—developed out loud and for the purpose of persuading (and, just as importantly, entertaining) an audience. Beginning with Winthrop on the boat and Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, our nonfiction tradition has been coaxing and argumentative, insistent and not infrequently irritating. The implications of this sermonic heritage can be found in the sentences, styles, voices, and attitudes of writers from Emerson and Douglass to Didion and Sontag. In this course, we will read and discuss sermons and speeches from the likes of Martin Luther King, Gloria Steinem, and Billy Graham, as well as a range of argumentative essays, and make work informed by the tendencies and strategies that we find.

The essay, in its American incarnation, is a direct outgrowth of the sermon—developed out loud, and for the purpose of persuading (and, just as importantly, entertaining) an audience. Beginning with Winthrop on the boat and Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, our nonfiction tradition has been coaxing and argumentative, insistent, and not infrequently irritating. The implications of this sermonic heritage can be found in the sentences, styles, voices, and attitudes of writers from Emerson and Douglass to Didion and Sontag. In this course, we will read and discuss sermons and speeches from the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinem, and Billy Graham, as well as a range of argumentative essays, and make work informed by the tendencies and strategies that we find.