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.
Winter 2021
Finding Connection While in Isolation
“Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” ―
The Fall 2020 semester was unlike any we have experienced before. The magical, spontaneous moments of connection that happen in the classroom, unforced and unexpected, were sought in Zoom chats, breakout rooms, games, debates, peer review-partnerships, small discussion groups, and one-to-one conferences. Every connection we discovered in two-dimensional space felt valuable and precious.
In this issue, Professor Ellen Brooks, Gianna Wainwright Milfort, and Lily Oyen bring us back to the early days of quarantine and track how we have bridged then, when we were blindsided by an absence of connection, and now, where we continue to tap into our creativity in new ways. Personal essays by Lotte Fincken, Angel Gonzalez, Julia Little, Clara-Hannah Sobouti, and Leanora Tapper remind us that writing and literature invite us to look within, in order to reconnect with ourselves and others. Jordan Moore and Henry Mosto capture an eerie unsettling tone that seems to fit this time of uncertainty, in essays that show their narrators on the brink of danger, on a psychological precipice, with each narrator recovering with greater self-awareness and strength. Students in the College Writing Lab wrote profiles of teachers from their past who made an indelible impression, and informed the course they are on now. And, a few selections take us “inside the classroom” reflecting the critical thinking and rhetorical practices that occur in all College Writing courses; Jannessa Alexandre, Abigail Frederick, and Rebeka Sawka are each exacting in organizing evidence to form a compelling and profound argument, to express an idea that resonates beyond their initial sources and prompts readers to think in a new way about each source and its implications.
Many thanks to College Writing faculty for their time in nominating student work for this issue. Special thanks to Professor Dearing for writing a powerful faculty essay that distills effective and supportive ways to nurture student motivation. With gratitude to the readers for this issue, Expose Editorial Fellows Sonnel Hill-Basora and Aaron Noriega, and Professor Morris and Professor Sausen. My heartfelt gratitude to sophomore Anna Brand for sharing a collection of paintings, pastels, and collage works that together create a vibrant, colorful issue of Expose. Onward into this new year, together.
—Amy Beth Wright, Editor