ENGL 381 A: Advanced Expository Writing

Travel writers, through their rendition of place in persuasive prose, radically shape how readers picture and engage with the world. Through descriptions of people encountered and landscapes traversed, travel writers create ways to know the new in order to transform places into culturally significant places in the imagination of their armchair readers. As a genre, travel writing is an excellent illustration of the immediate power of prose and lends itself well to the study of the effective use of words in ways that push against cliché and stereotypes. In this class, we will analyze some signature pieces of this genre as a way to develop our own prose styles. Classwork will consist of discussion of various essays, composition, and peer discussion of student writing. 

Required textbook: Best American Travel Writing 2020, edited by Robert Macfarlane.

Please note that I do not get addcodes until the first week of the quarter.