The essay has had a secure but circumscribed place in college education, mostly limited to freshman composition. What Do I Know? responds to the imbalance between the presence of essays in freshman composition and the relative absence of reflection about the genre, arguing for the inclusion of the essay in the academy as a genre to be read and written. Indeed, without this inclusion, a whole education about language may be jeopardized.

What Do I Know? contributes to a fairly new conversation about the essay and its place within and beyond the academy, a conversation led by humanities and composition scholars who are actively engaged in their own writing and in the teaching of writing.

What Do I Know? takes the essay out of its narrow niche in the academy as a "service" genre and into a larger space. At its best, working with essays can inspire readers, writers, and teachers to go beyond the traditional categories of knowledge and discourse sanctioned by the academy and to compose "specimens of the art of wondering."