Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Figures viii
4. Preface and Acknowledgments ix
5. Introduction 1
6. Part I: Theories and Definitions
7. 1 Affinities and Contestations: The Self and the Other in the Essay 17
8. 2 The Birth of the English Essay 37
9. 3 The Problem of a Name: The Essay and Its Titles 50
10. 4 The Thing of the Essay 68
11. 5 Essay, Fiction, Truth, Troth 82
12. 6 The Essay as Resistance 98
13. 7 ‘Lived’ Experience, ‘Sought’ Experience and the Personal Essay 114
14. 8 The Essay and the Advertisement 130
15. Contemporary Essayists in Focus
16. Rebecca Solnit on the Essay 145
17. Claudia Rankine on the Essay 155
18. Brian Dillon on the Essay 160
19. Part II: Publics, Pedagogies and Histories
20. 9 On Reading and the Essay 167
21. 10 Heretical Hearts and the Infinite Game: Why Teaching the Essay (Still) Matters 180
22. 11 The Essay and the Episteme: A Genealogy for Modern Classroom Use 191
23. 12 Commonplace Mysteries: Soaring on the Wings of Desire 204
24. 13 Politics and the English Essay 217
25. 14 The Postwar American Essay, the Liberal Imagination and the Contemporary Essay 232
26. 15 Everybody’s Protest Essay: Personal Protest Prose on the American Internet 245
27. 16 Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Contemporary Women Essayists and Their Golden Moment 261
28. 17 The Essay in Asian (American) Contexts 276
29. 18 Beyond the Cocoon of Humanism: Essaying in the Ecological Turn Through Contradiction and Being Present 292
30. Contemporary Essayists in Focus
31. Leslie Jamison on the Essay 309
32. Robert Atwan on the Essay 316
33. Kaitlyn Greenidge on the Essay 322
34. Part III: Form and Genre
35. 19 On the Interface Between Philosophy and the Essay: Foucault’s Essayistic Ethos 327
36. 20 The Essay as Brinkmanship: Cioran’s Fragment, Aphorism and Autobiography 343
37. 21 Science Essays 358
38. 22 Columnism and Essayism 374
39. 23 The Lyric Essay: Truth-Telling Through Reader Participation 391
40. 24 The New Seesaws of the Digital Visual Essay: Genre Provocations, Definitions and Tensions Beyond the Age of Print 405
41. 25 Archival Materials: Essayism as a Process of Witness, Care and Reckoning 422
42. 26 The Essay as Trans Body 434
43. 27 Why the (Animal) Essay Matters 448
44. Contemporary Essayists in Focus
45. David Shields on the Essay 465
46. Jamaica Kincaid on the Essay 469
47. Notes on Contributors 475
48. Index 480