ENG 143N | Prose Nonfiction (Our Culture, Our Lives)

2020 Fall

Scott Saul

This course is a nonfiction workshop in which you learn to write about many different types of art and culture, from TV to music and film, while also developing your own voice and sensibility as a writer as you learn to write about your own life.

By the end of the class, you should come away with a working knowledge of how to write reviews, profiles, “think pieces,” and autobiographically-shaded essays that center around a cultural figure or flashpoint.

Our semester is guided by a few basic questions: What can we demand from culture? What does it mean to love or hate a song, TV show, actor, director, artist, celebrity? How are we changed by our encounters with specific works of art? And how do our arguments about a particular work of art, particular artist, or particular place connect to broader dreams about politics, freedom, community, and our sense of the possible?