This course introduces students to works by some of the most influential literary journalists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Classes will be devoted to individual literary-journalistic genres: the personal essay, the profile, the polemic, the memoir, literary reportage, and cultural criticism. Students will look closely at key writers who worked across these genres: George Orwell, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates. Over the semester, students will develop and write a feature-length work of literary journalism in a genre of their choice, to be refined through peer workshop and instructor feedback.
This course introduces students to works by some of the most influential literary journalists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Classes will be devoted to individual literary-journalistic genres: the personal essay, the profile, the polemic, the memoir, literary reportage, and cultural criticism. Students will look closely at key writers who worked across these genres: George Orwell, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates. Over the semester, students will develop and write a feature-length work of literary journalism in a genre of their choice, to be refined through peer workshop and instructor feedback.
