First Year Courses & Programs

Basic Writing (ENGLWRIT 111)

Unit 6: The Oeuvre

Exploratory Writings

Your final project for this course will be the production of a magazine containing your own collected works from the semester.   This collection, often called a writer's "oeuvre," will consist of the five original essays you have written this term, a fully revised draft of one essay, an introduction to the full collection, and a brief preface to each of the total six essays.

The introduction will be a one or two page presentation of yourself as a writer and the essays contained in your oeuvre.  In the introduction you may wish to include any or all of the following: 1) a brief history of your writing career; 2) a discussion of your development as a writer, particularly over the last year and as you plan for the future; 3) an analysis of the main themes, metaphors and images that reappear through the various writings; 4) anything else you think important to your identity as a writer.

The six individual prefaces will be short discussions - just one or two paragraphs long - introducing each of the essays included in your oeuvre.  Each preface will explain the particular essay's place and importance in the complete oeuvre. At least one of the essays in your oeuvre should be a full and careful revision of an earlier essay.  All of the essays should be carefully edited and contain no spelling, grammar, or formatting errors.  You are encouraged to be as creative as you like in the production of this magazine, the formatting of its contents and the use of visual images.  You are the production editor as well as writer of your own oeuvre.  

The two final Exploratory Writings, "Themes" and "Growth," will help you as you reflect upon your work for this semester and as you represent - through introduction, prefaces and essays - the story of your own compositions.