Event Details

What is the point of writing an essay, and how do the best essayists achieve the goals they set for themselves? In this four-session program, we will explore these and other basic questions about the art of composition by considering three possible reasons for writing an essay: explaining, persuading, and telling a story. Some essays, in other words, try to explain big ideas in an accessible way, helping us understand difficult theories so that we can apply them in our everyday lives. Other essays try to persuade us to change our minds about controversial ethical, religious, or political issues. And still others tell stories so that we can feel what it's like to live in someone else's skin. In order to understand these three goals and the tools good writers use to accomplish them (sometimes all at once!), we will read and analyze a selection of exemplary essays, and we will practice how to emulate them through workshops and writing exercises. Along the way, we will discuss a range of rhetorical terms and techniques. And in our final session, we will discuss one further goal of good writing, which is perhaps the hardest of all to achieve: making the reader laugh.

Speakers

  • Peter Conroy (Postdoctoral Fellow at Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences)

    Peter Conroy

    Postdoctoral Fellow at Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences

    Peter Conroy is a postdoctoral fellow at the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences. Before moving to Beijing, he received his PhD from Yale, his MPhil from Cambridge, and his BA from Columbia. While in graduate school, he taught several undergraduate seminars on literature and composition, as well as one seminar on academic inquiry and writing for the Yale Prison Education Initiative. He also has experience teaching elementary and middle school English, and enjoys working with students at all levels of the writing process.

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Tickets

Summer Break Price
Early Bird
Standard Ticket
Standard Price RMB 6,888
Group Discount for 2 persons
Standard Price RMB 11,776
Group Discount for 3 persons
Standard Price RMB 17,664
Group Discount for 5 persons
Standard Price RMB 22,940
Online Summer Break Price
Online - Early Bird
Online - Standard Ticket
Standard Price RMB 5,888
Online - Group Discount for 2 persons
Standard Price RMB 9,776
Online - Group Discount for 3 persons
Standard Price RMB 14,664

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