Ithaca College

Enroll in Personal Essay this summer (WRTG 20500, CRN 10062) , from 5/28 to 6/28. The course will be offered online.

This is a popular writing course that invites students to mine their personal experiences for stories. Since the class will be offered online, writing prompts will invite the students to go out into the world, and to share their observations and experiences in our classroom forum.

To mine our personal lives, we'll create maps of our external and internal geographies. We'll give attention to questions of craft: narrative, structure, form, style. We'll read essays by Roxane Gay, Joan Didion, Joy Castro, and Rigoberto Gonzalez, to name a few. And we'll work across the writing process: drafting a full-length essay, engaging in peer review, revision, and presentation.

Personal essay is perfect for students that are looking for an opportunity to explore and analyze their own personal experiences, both as a way to work in the essay form, but also as a way to delve into the many layers of their personal lives—to locate themselves in a complex world.  

Logistically, the online course will be run on Sakai, with the course site's forums serving as a home base. No books will need to be purchased; readings will be available via hyperlink. Course lessons/readings will be reinforced with clear notes, and, in some cases, video presentations.

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Raul Palma at RPalma@ithaca.edu.