Students in this course can expect to develop and refine their existing writing skills, including honing the elements of their prose style, deepening the capacities of their arguments, and integrating analytic research into their papers. We will be reading professional essays that have been published within the last year, some others that have remained compelling for centuries, and, of course, student essays from our own class. In all of our reading, in all of our discussions, we will be giving special attention to those qualities that make an essay exceptional. There will be four formal essays (a two-page descriptive essay; a three-page definition; a six-page proposal argument; and a four-page comparative analysis), three of which will require some degree of research. Additional work will include short response papers and substantial, advanced contributions in the peer-editing of student papers. Everyone will be required to have a copy of the St. Martin’s Handbook (Lunsford, ed.). Additional readings will be provided as handouts or available on CTools.