Online Course ESSAYING THE SELF by Rosalyn D’Mello

“This course addresses what it means to ‘personalise’ an essay, to insert the self as a subject that uniquely receives and participates in the world. It eschews the over-emphasis on craft and language in lieu of enabling writers to access their subjectivity as a replenishable, self-sustaining resource. It guides participants to arrive at a fine-tuned, nuanced understanding of their own creative process, allowing them to be more alert to the role of sensory and emotional information received by the body as it relates to its environment. Through a series of playful exercises, imaginative prompts, and choice readings, writers will learn how to investigate deeper the sources of their joy, and its role in thinking, feeling, tasting, loving, and living.

By helping relate the personal to the political and the structural through a series of guided self-examinations and carefully structured modules, the writing course actively subverts the notion of a ‘workshop’ in which writing is ‘prepared/polished’ for publication. Instead, the focus is quite squarely on process, especially on harvesting one’s sensual memories and emotions as grist for further reflections. The cross-disciplinary reading lists, cue-based writing exercises and curated exposure to performative ‘challenges’ will help writers befriend the ghost of self-doubt, and to harness its omnipresence as a navigational tool, thus stripping it off its crippling, debilitating power. Unlike conventional writing workshops, Essaying the Self relies on the semantic roots of the word ‘essay’ as a working methodology. Participants are encouraged, simply, to ‘try out’ different modes of articulating ideas and perform their research, reminding them of the active nature of writing as an art form.

The course considers anyone who has the desire to write as a writer, and is firmly non-hierarchical in its approach. It is most perfectly suited to anyone who is keen to work with memory as a narrative device. The ‘host’ will constantly intuit and improvise methods of catering to individual participants needs while fostering a spirit of collectivity and cohesion in order to make writing a less lonely, less alienating activity. We will together explore vulnerability, fragility, and ecstasy, and expose ourselves to brilliant texts. The underlying goal is to fall in love with the process of thinking and feeling, and to learn how to tap into our emotions and accommodate self-reflection, critique and care within the writing process.” (Text & photo by courtesy of Rosalyn D’Mello)