"The essay" is potentially one of the most interdisciplinary, creative, and non-commercial of the literary genres. More than any other form, the essay requires that its practitioners articulate prior knowledge and personal experience, as well as incorporate research. Essay writers also hover between self-disclosure and objective argument, and must often bend language between storytelling and expository purposes. Because their work is known for its urgency and defiance of the polite voice of the essay of previous centuries, our study will focus primarily on North American essayists of the 20th century, including N. Scott Momaday, Maxine Hong Kingston, James Baldwin, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Rodriquez, and Cynthia Ozick. We will also study experimental essays that challenge traditional thesis-plus-evidence essay structures, interrogating the very notions of authority, linearity, and the stability of language itself. To this end, we will read "de-centered" works by Charles Simic, Josephine Foo, Anne Carson, and Edmond Jabès. After close study, we will imitate and expand the forms and themes we encounter, writing multiple drafts that will result in three complete essays. Finally, concerning our approach to writing, the words of Annie Dillard come to mind: "When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner´s pick, a wood-carver´s gouge, a surgeon´s probe." We will see, as she suggests, that our writing will change, "from an expression of your notions to an epistemological tool. The new place interests you because it is not clear. You attend." In other words, we will write both because we know and because we want to find out.

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