For the past several semesters, I’ve offered students in my US History to 1877 survey the option of completing an “unessay” in place of a traditional research paper. Like almost all of my pedagogical innovations, the “unessay” was borrowed and adapted from someone else. Emily Suzanne Clark introduced me to the concept of the unessay in a January 2016 post at Religion in American History (a more detailed description of the assignment is available here). As Emily notes, she in turn borrowed and adapted the idea from Ryan Cordell, who borrowed and modified it from Michael Ullyot and Daniel Paul O’Donnell. The core aim of the assignment is to free students from the constraints of the traditional essay and to spur them to think, research, and write (or not write!) more creatively. Continue reading →