From The Director

In The Morningside Review you will encounter essays that demonstrate the range of ways writers keep their audience in mind. It is no small feat to communicate one’s ideas to an imagined (and actual) audience of smart readers who are not familiar with the particular issues that concern oneself. It is more impressive when a writer is able to interest—and even implicate—readers in one’s argument. A primary goal of University Writing, the first-year course from which these essays have come, is to enjoin students even in their first months at Columbia to analyze and respond to contemporary issues. The essays in each edition offer examples of persuasive, thoughtful, and responsible thinking about questions under discussion both in academic contexts and the public sphere. The essayists in The Morningside Review do not simply express their opinions, but begin the heady process of entering into an existing intellectual conversation and exchange of ideas.