2025 - Spring

Personal Anthropology

Course Number: JOUR-GA 1182.014

Day & Time: Mon | 10:30 AM – 2:00 PM

Location: 20 Cooper Square, Room 657

Instructor: Jon Baskin

(CRC Priority)

This class will explore the first-person essay in various modes, from conversion narrative to political testimonial to cultural reportage to philosophical investigation. In reading exemplary essays from these different genres, we will consider the way authors utilize their autobiographies to achieve their effects, paying special attention to voice, persona, pathos, and argument. We will also consider the most typical pitfalls of first-person writing, including narcissism and an over-emphasis on ambivalence or ambiguity. Although the course is not a historical survey of personal writing, we will trace pathways of influence between the different genres and track trends in personal writing across time. Finally, we will look at the virtues and limitations of mobilizing techniques from other forms of writing–novelistic, academic, and journalistic–in the first-person essay.

The course will involve some short writing assignments tied to themes that we will discuss in our readings, as well as one longer piece of writing–possibly an expansion of a shorter exercise–to be handed in as a final project. Students will receive feedback on each of their writing assignments from the instructor, who is an experienced magazine editor, in addition to occasional input from classmates.

Readings will include first-person writing by Joseph Brodsky, James Baldwin, Mary McCarthy, Annie Dillard, Kristin Dombek, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Michael Clune, Rachel Cusk, and Agnes Callard, among others.