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The godfather of the personal essay, Michel de Montaigne, said that “Every man has within himself the entire human condition.” We’ll update that statement and say that everyone has within themselves the entire human condition. The personal essay is about the human condition, your human condition, and, in order to convey that, the writer needs to express that condition intimately to the reader. The personal essay is an extremely adaptable and flexible form—a form of writing threaded together by the “I.”

This course on the personal essay will enrich and challenge our understanding of the essay. In the classroom and on the page, we want to express ourselves as individuals, as writers, participating in a dialogue that seeks to heighten and strengthen our perspectives as well as others’. While the primary emphasis in class will be on workshopping our own writing, we will also invest ourselves in readings, discussion, and written exercises—all of which will ask us to reflect on the potentiality and the powers of this unique form.