Letters as Literature

200 Level - First-years welcome! Dear students, dear writers, dear essayists-dear ones: Epistolary writing is letter writing, as in written correspondence. In this course, through reading and writing assignments, we will investigate the epistolary essay as a borrowed form-a soliloquy, a collaboration, a protest, a confession-and a tradition in its own right. We will write postcard essays and open letters, send fan letters and mail art, keep pen pals and hope a message in a bottle washes up on our shores. We may encounter diarists and crosshatched letters, witnesses and correspondents, letters that should be written but never sent, and the uncertainty of any letter reaching its destination or getting a reply. We will work with intimacy, distance, the "I," and the second person to ask: Who do we write to? Which is to say, we will write our way into a new understanding of the impact of epistolary essay in particular, and the impulse to essay generally. Featuring site visits to places like the post office, the campus mail room, and library Special Collections & Archives.