Academic Writing for the Public / May-June 2021

Each week, essayist and former academic Jonathan Malesic will guide you through the craft of writing engaging and intellectually serious articles for general readers. You will read and discuss examples of public-facing academic writing, do writing exercises, and workshop your essays with other members of the class.

You will leave the class with a brief op-ed article, a longer article, and a pitch letter to send to an editor. More important, perhaps, you will leave with skills you can put into practice in the years ahead, so that when the public needs your expertise and insight, you will be ready.

Class topics

• Style, tone, and mindset: How writing for the public is different from writing for your academic peers – and how it is similar.
• Showing and telling: How to perform the basic movements of good nonfiction writing.
• Structure: How to follow the narrative and rhetorical patterns of op-eds and essays.
• Research, reporting, and recollecting: How to integrate hard-won information into narratives and arguments.
• Pitching and publishing: How to get your words to your intended readers, and what to expect from the editing (and payment) process.

How the class will work

Everything in the class will happen in five one-week units. Each Monday beginning May 24, a set of readings, discussions, and activities will become available on the class’s online platform, WetInk.

Lectures: I will set the tone for the week and offer some general instruction on each week’s theme in a brief written “lecture” (really more of an essay on craft). In the lectures, I will often point you toward ways to approach the assigned reading; it may make the most sense to read the lectures before starting the reading.

Reading: There will be essays and op-eds to read each week. Mostly, they will be examples of the writing technique that is the week’s topic. A goal of the class is to help you see how authors put the example essays together.

Discussion: The lectures and readings will raise issues worth discussing. I will offer a few questions and prompts, but I hope you will respond to the material however seems best to you. I will weigh in, too.

Writing exercises: I will also prompt you to practice each week’s technique with a short exercise. You will be able to comment on each other’s exercises. These exercises will be good opportunities to generate essay ideas!

Workshops: In the third and fifth weeks, you will each submit essays (up to 800 words in the third week and up to 2,000 words in the fifth) for workshopping. In a workshop, the other members of the class (and I) will offer our reactions to and constructive feedback on your piece. Because you’ll need to have something to workshop, you should set aside some time each week just to work on your essays.

Zoom meeting: In the fourth or fifth week, there will be an optional, hour-long Zoom meeting so we can talk about whatever writing topics you want to address.

Your instructor

Jonathan Malesic is an essayist, journalist, and scholar with a long record of writing for both academic and general audiences. He is also a former tenured professor and former director of a college teaching center who holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Virginia.

He has published dozens of articles for general readers in The New Republic, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, America, Commonweal, Notre Dame Magazine, The Hedgehog Review, The Point, Religion Dispatches, and elsewhere. His essays have been named as notable in Best American Essays (2018, 2019) and Best American Food Writing (2019) and have received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology (2019). He has been the recipient of major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisville Institute. His first book, Secret Faith in the Public Square, won a ForeWord INDIES gold medal for the religion category (2009). His next book, The End of Burnout, will be published as a trade title by University of California Press in Fall 2021.

He now teaches writing at Southern Methodist University, University of Texas at Dallas, and Writing Workshops Dallas.

For more about Jon and to see examples of his writing, visit his website.

Testimonials

"It isn’t easy to teach well online, but Jon Malesic does it with generosity and grace. He is a careful reader of his students’ prose, offering insightful feedback that manages to be both supportive and challenging at once, and the individual attention he gives to every student is complemented by the invaluable instruction he gives to the class as a whole. Months after my class with him has ended, I find myself regularly drawing on his lessons on how to write in a clear way for a general audience, find the right venue, and craft a compelling appeal to editors. His observations about structure, conflict, and purpose in an essay have transformed my writing for good."

--Kathryn Hamilton Warren, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Department of English, University of Texas at Arlington

"With incisive edits, Jon helped me identify my audience and rapidly turn research into prose that would speak to readers of the Wall Street Journal and others."

--Annelise Heinz, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History, University of Oregon and author of Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture