Becoming a Great Essayist

See how the practice of writing essays has evolved over centuries yet has remained versatile, and examine the many uses of essays across the ages. Professor Cognard-Black uses examples from Aristotle to Michel de Montaigne to Edgar Allan Poe on how to look both inward and outward to find inspiration and build the story you most want to tell.

Look at the world around you with a new lens and discover how to convey those memories you've kept as an experience rather than just a recounting of facts. You'll travel down the streets of London with Virginia Woolf to explore her home as a stranger might, learning how taking on a new perspective can translate into compelling essays.

One of the most remarkable consequences of essay writing is the insights you discover about yourself. The nature of the essay doesn't allow for plot building or outlines - you simply sit and write, which means the story takes its own direction. Professor Cognard-Black encourages this process of discovery and shares stories of how many an essay she started turned into a different piece in the end.

Essays that present conflicting views are not uncommon; Socrates would commonly switch sides in order to test all parts of an argument, and many others have followed his example. Learn how writing essays that provide both sides of an argument, even if you support one side and oppose the other, can help you to develop an elasticity of mind, expand your range of ideas, and add to your credibility.

The most important artistic proof in any essay is ethos - the writer's ethical appeal or credibility. She demonstrates how to effectively use ethos along with logos or rationality to bring reasonableness into your essays, which vital to writing effectively. You'll examine the work of a pair of writers who mastered the reasonable essay: Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele.

Professor Cognard-Black explores the world of unreasonable essays, often written for the sake of humor or irony, or to be provocative, such as Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." You'll explore an example of an essay that showcases conflicting views yet remains reasonable, and then look at examples where unreasonable writers use demagoguery to play on readers' emotions.

Revisit Aristotle to master the craft of pathos - being able to express empathy for the subject of any essay. Learn how to elicit emotions from your readers while remaining authentic and not manipulative, clichéd, or contrived. Reflect on honest and moving uses of language from Maxine Hong Kingston and Barack Obama.

You'll be introduced to three examples of logical fallacies and then take on a challenge that brings together emotional appeals with rational ones to achieve credibility, empathy, and candor. You'll examine Naomi Shihab Nye's ability to blend rational argument with compassionate anecdotes, then hear a personal take on the concept of "home" from Professor Cognard-Black.

The use of a first-person perspective in essay writing. Ethos is more inherent in an "I" essay because the person sharing the story actually experienced the events. Learn how to write concisely to avoid an "I" story becoming simply an outlet for your own feelings, instead using your emotions to develop a broader appeal that will interest and benefit others.

Using imagery in essays does more than describe and evoke a scene. When done well, imagery can transport your reader to a specific time and location. Professor Cognard-Black provides examples of metaphors and sense-based descriptions, which are the most effective ways to employ imagery within essays.

Writing a visual essay requires you to detach yourself from how you have been taught to view images your whole life. Once you start writing, though, the goal is to not recreate the exact image that you saw, but instead to reimagine it - to view it anew. Professor Cognard-Black discusses an example essay by Barbara Kingsolver in which images enhance her writing, adding shape and color to her words.

Professor Cognard-Black guides you through Aristotle's process of inventio or invention, which the period of discovery as you write your first draft. You'll examine openings from a number of works, gaining a powerful toolkit that can help you craft the first sentence of your draft. From there, Professor Cognard-Black provides a multitude of invaluable tools for revising, editing, and reviewing.

Learn how essays can break the rules of conventional writing, allowing you to design forms to match your needs rather than being forced to fit the rules of convention. Examine structures that reimagine the essay, such as the microessay and the prose poem or "proem." Professor Cognard-Black shares her own students' work to explore what makes them successful essays.

A memoir is often confused with a personal essay, but Professor Cognard-Black shows you the difference, using examples from her own students' work. She then provides tips to help you recreate your memories and turn them into fascinating pieces of writing. Learn techniques that allow you to get as detailed as possible in your descriptions while still maintaining focus and writing concisely.

Professor Cognard-Black demonstrates the similarities between a lyric poem and a lyric essay and shares a moving lyric piece written by one of her students that uses memory fragments and figurative language to synthesize experience into a kind of mosaic. A lyric essay does not focus on telling a chronological story, but instead is meant to share the impressions that create a mood or an idea.

See how a handwritten letter differs from any other form of direct communication. You'll explore the similarities between letters and the epistolary essay as they both speak to a specific audience and convey a strong sense of reality and veracity. Then, consider passages from the book Between the World and Me, which is written as a letter to the author's son.

Delve into this dynamic between a subject and its writer and examine this power struggle as it plays out in a portrait essay. Using examples from Truman Capote and Scott Russell Sanders, you'll see how your own anxieties and prejudices can come through in an essay focused entirely on someone else.

Professor Cognard-Black demonstrates public intellectual essay through her own examples and those of well-known public figures, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Salman Rushdie. You'll learn how to trade superficial terminology and over-the-top imagery for clear, simple, and direct prose without losing the engagement emotional connection to your audience.

Originating in the medieval period, polemical essays are the form for writers who wish to focus on a topic from one perspective only. They are often written to be deliberately polarizing. Professor Cognard-Black shares examples of both well-written and overly strident polemical essays from authors such as Jonathan Edward and Laura Kipnis.

The non-artistic proofs of research and data set the scene for a historical essay, which connects personal memory to a larger project of human history. Professor Cognard-Black shares samples of strong historical essays with a compelling use of non-artistic proofs from authors such as Maureen Stanton and Jeffrey Hammond.

Aristotle once noted that laughing at tragedy is cathartic for both the writer and the audience. You'll delve into how self-deprecating humor lends itself to creating ethos or credibility in this particular form of essay. Professor Cognard-Black provides a treasure trove of humorists to study, including droll examples from David Sedaris and Tig Notgaro.

Since the first nature essays were written in the 19th century, such pieces have often romanticized the natural world - but there is value in not sentimentalizing the great outdoors. Examining works by William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, Deb Marquart, and Michael P. Branch, Professor Cognard-Black explores the various takes on nature that offer a balance between realism and idealism.

Recipes form the basis of edible essays, which start out as instructions and ingredients, but when you mix in personal connections between a dish and your own culinary culture, add a dash of imagery, and stir in the history behind the food, you've extended your recipe into a taste memory. Professor Cognard-Black demonstrates how food essays can be among the most delicious to create and consume.

The modern form of the essay may be seen in blogs, although not all blogs are essays. Professor Cognard-Black provides examples of what components are required for a piece to be a fully formed blog essay. While looking at examples from her students and professional writers you'll discover the benefits to blogging and learn about the pros and cons of other forms of publication for your essays.