TOPICS: AMERICAN LITERARY JOURNALISM in Spring 2023 (CL2091B)

This course has been created to address the needs of students who wish to read, analyze, and write literary journalism, a narrative form that combines the reportorial and truth-telling covenants of traditional journalism with techniques most commonly associated with fiction. It is a genre that transcends the constrictions of daily journalism. Perhaps it is only with the license of literary journalism that one can hope to grasp the unimaginable moments that have become our everyday reality.

The course will introduce students to the major writers, publications, controversies and questions that have emerged in the 200-year history of American literary journalism. We will examine as models a multitude of writers, ranging from Walt Whitman to Stephen Crane, John Hersey, Agnes Smedley, Lillian Ross, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, Nicole Le Blanc, James Baldwin, Truman Capote and Claudia Rankine. Among other forms, we will study narratives, memoirs, profiles, prose poems, histories and personal essays, in subject areas as varied as science, politics, justice, travel, sports, food and popular culture. Throughout the course, we will explore the constant tensions between “factual evidence” and the writer’s imagination that conjures such evidence into a story. Asking how such stories work as narratives, as cultural critiques, and as entertainment, we will note how literary journalism can legitimately be credited with fostering modes of public reflection crucial to civic society and social justice. Evaluation will be based on class participation, several reflective and analytical essays, and a piece of literary journalism.