Expose: The Journal of Expository Writing
Expose biannually shares a selection of noteworthy personal and critical essays that are created by students in College and Expository Writing courses at Purchase College.
Fall 2024
The Creative Act of Research
“Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.”
―Joan Didion
This special issue is titled after Purchase College associate librarian Darcy Gervasio’s essay, included below, “The Creative Act of Research.” Darcy takes us from her moments of uncertainty and reticence with research as a college student (“learning to love research was a slow burn”) to the exact moments when, as a writer, she began instinctively “rearranging my own thoughts, seeing connections where I hadn’t before, and drawing new conclusions,” research fueling the writing process organically. Now, Darcy and the Purchase College community of librarians are boundlessly generous and inspired as students mine the subjects they feel most passionately about and emerge with new insights and interpretations.
Research, and the corollary skills and practices it embodies—brainstorming, distilling key ideas, connecting what we are interested in and drawn to with previously published works and complementary ideas and discoveries—is not only integral to writing, but to our everyday lives. College Writing culminates in a research paper, as students can connect their formative ideas and curiosities about the critical issues of our time and subjects that drive their creativity and individuality with broader scholarly conversations about the same.
Congratulations to this issue’s featured writers, Julia Aguinaldo, Hunter Baron, Nysine Ordoñez Blanco, Chase Koda, Anthony Cruz, Ashley Fermin, Darcy Gervasio, Charles Ireland, Kaelin Viera, and much gratitude to Chris Kramer for again creating original and intuitive illustrations for each essay in this issue. With special thanks to College Writing faculty members Professor Ellen Brooks, Professor Alexandra Dos Santos, Professor Tessa Rossi, and Professor Emily Sausen for co-creating this issue, and to Professor Aviva Taubenfeld, Director of the School of Humanities, for celebrating first year writers.
—Amy Beth Wright, Editor
Faculty Essay