Dr. Edna Bonhomme
The Art of the Essay: Writing Creative Nonfiction
Seminar, English, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Mondays, 10-12 h, weekly, starts 20.10.2025, Hardenbergstraße 33, room 102

Registration on Moodle starts on 13.10.2025: https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=2856
Enrollment Key: nonfiction

This course will focus on mastering the art of essay writing through cultural criticism and creative nonfiction. During the course, students will develop the essential skills necessary to craft engaging short and long-form, thought-provoking essays about film, music, literature, and other art forms. Whether you're looking to break into arts journalism, enhance your critical thinking, or express your cultural insights more effectively, this course provides a structured pathway to develop your unique critical voice. The course will be conducted as a workshop, where students craft exercises during class and review each other’s work.

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: regular and active participation.

Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science, a cultural writer, and a journalist based in Berlin, Germany. She writes cultural criticism, literary essays, book reviews, and opinion pieces. Her writing explores how individuals navigate the challenging states of health, particularly on topics related to contagious outbreaks, medical experiments, reproductive assistance, and illness narratives. Edna’s work has been featured in Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, Berliner Zeitung, Esquire, Frieze, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. A graduate of Princeton University’s Ph.D. programme in History of Science, she has received awards and fellowships from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Ludwig Maximilian University, the Camargo Foundation, Baldwin for the Arts, the Robert Silvers Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Edna is the author of A History of the World in Six Plagues (Simon & Schuster; Dialogue Books; Ullstein Verlag) and the co-editor of After Sex (Silver Press), a literary anthology focusing on reproductive justice.