Course Descriptions

Term:  

Spring Quarter

Dept Course No and Title Instructor
LIT JRN (S24)20  INTR LIT JOURNALISMPIERSON, P.
Reading of selected texts to explore the ways in which literary journalism and related nonfiction modes formulate experience. Students write several short papers and one final project. The required prerequisite for either section of LJ 20 is satisfactory completion of the lower-division writing requirement.
LIT JRN (S24)21  REPORTING LIT JOURNDEPAUL, A.
To write convincingly and tell powerful stories that resonate, writers need to be meticulous, thorough reporters. LJ21 teaches students how to report their literary journalism articles accurately and thoroughly, focusing on the three basic means of gathering information for a story: interviewing, observing and reading. Early in the quarter, students will select a topic, or beat, as it is known in news parlance, from which they will develop contacts and story leads. Students will cover an event, conduct an interview and generate articles related to their beats, also learning ways to use Internet resources and databases to find facts and information and examining investigative and legal documents. The required prerequisite for either section of LJ 21 is satisfactory completion of the lower-division writing requirement.
LIT JRN (S24)100  ADVANCED REPORTINGDEPAUL, A.
Advanced Reporting asks students to complete a series of writing and multimedia assignments that require proficiency in varied reporting strategies such as interview, observation and research. Assignments will include profile, photo story, social problem/community reporting, and a final group digital project on a subject of our choosing. Guest speakers will offer insight into professional paths.
LIT JRN (S24)101BW  NARRATIVE WRITINGSIEGEL, B.
Narrative writing provides the foundation for much of what we call literary journalism. Writers in this field want to tell stories. They want to bring to nonfiction the sense of inner life usually found only in novels. How to write nonfiction prose that adopts the aims and techniques of the finest fiction? How to tell tales that read as if they were nonfiction short stories? These will be the central questions students in this class face. Students will look to nonfiction writers such as Gay Talese, Joan Didion and Michael Paterniti. Students will also do a good deal of their own narrative writing. This course is an advanced writing workshop: Students will regularly share their work with classmates in a constructive process of peer-review, then revise based on that feedback. By the end of the quarter, students will have produced a vignette, a character sketch and a major example of narrative writing.
LIT JRN (S24)101BW  WRITING ABOUT PLACEWILENTZ, A.
Along with character and narrative, place is a key underpinning of any story. In literary journalism, location or setting always figures largely, whether as a venue in which events are occurring or as the subject of a story in itself -- especially in travel writing and in personal narratives. Atmosphere, detail, perceptive observation and analogy about place can help a reader understand all the other elements in a story. Place includes not only a city or a country, but also, on a smaller scale, a house or a room or a garden. We'll talk about how we each experience place, and about the interplay between character, narrative and location. Successful stories in past Place workshops have centered on a gas-station minimart, a food truck, a tattoo parlor, a locksmith's shop, a deserted mountain retreat, Balboa island, the canyon of Silverado. In this workshop we will write about both larger elements of location (Los Angeles or Laguna Beach or the Long Beach docks, for example) and about smaller scale places. We will also investigate the ways in which memory of place can influence character, and the ways in which writers can make such place-memories meaningful. Some writers whose works we will consider include Katherine Boo, Paul Theroux, Martha Gelhorn, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joan Didion, Dave Eggers, D.J. Waldie.
LIT JRN (S24)101BW  WRITING IDENTITYHAYASAKI, E.
In this writing workshop students will read and report stories about human behavior, coming of age, the self, family, and the human condition. This class will study narratives that explore the forces that shape us, where we have come from, and who we might become. We will examine media and themes that consider how class, gender, race, sexuality, culture, disability, history, community, and social forces shape our identities. Students will study craft, considering the voice of writer and subject, point of view in reporting, interviewing techniques, and literary style. Students will also learn to recognize the genres of profile writing, oral history, reported essays, braided narratives, and audio storytelling. They will understand how to center points of view, and delve into the another person’s interiority using psychological interviewing techniques. They will consider how their lives, or the lives of people they are writing about, can become part of a narrative. Students will also become familiar with trauma-based reporting and the “power narrative edit” to examine structural inequities with stories. They will get some practice learning to access archives, genealogical research, history records and family artifacts as source material for nonfiction stories. Students will be expected to submit weekly writing, research and interview assignments culminating in one major final project.
LIT JRN (S24)103  TRAVEL LIT JWILENTZ, A.
In this class we will begin by looking at the origins of travel literature, and the idea of penetrating the geography of the “other.” We’ll start with the travels, some 750 years ago, of the Venetian merchant Marco Polo in China. We’ll continue by talking about the Dutch East India Company and the opening of both Asia and the Americas to European exploration, trade, and travel. We’ll talk about the British upper class’ “grand tours” of the Middle East and Europe, and what the wide world offered to a people living on the small emerald isle. Looking to this country, we’ll talk about Mark Twain’s adventures in the Wild West, as it was then called. We will discuss aspects of the travel-writing tradition, including its imperial roots, its exotification of indigenous populations, and its relation to ethnography, anthropology, tourism and economic exploitation. We’ll ask the big question that Granta magazine, the British literary journal, asked in its Winter 2017 issue: given the new and harsh assessments of the reach and destructive power of white and Western privilege, “Is Travel Writing Dead?” As literary journalism students, we will be particularly interested in narrative strategies that allow a long piece of narrative prose to be generated and sustained. We’ll talk about insiders and outsiders, naïfs and sophisticates, and innocence and experience, as those categories relate to travel writing. Books we will read to raise our confidence that travel writing is still beautiful and possible will include Every Day is for the Thief, by Teju Cole, Catfish & Mandala, by Andrew Pham, Orange County, by Gustavo Arellano, The Places In Between, by Rory Stewart, The Lady and the Monk, by Pico Iyer, and A Field Guide to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit, as well as shorter handouts and excerpts. This will be an intensive and pleasurable reading course, with a lot of conversation and give and take. There will be a midterm and a final exam, as well as several quizzes. A short paper may be required.
LIT JRN (S24)103  STORYTELLING PATHSHAYASAKI, E.
This class will begin with understanding the power of story. What makes a true story powerful? What makes it true? How does the craft create a compelling story? How can stories be used for good? Or evil? This class will focus on stories as a foundation for media and communications. Students will study different forms of nonfiction stories: longform reporting, personal essays, opinion writing and cultural criticism; audio storytelling, social media narratives, film, virtual reality, and interactive digital media. How do journalists, public relations and communications specialists, citizen reporters, and Hollywood writers employ story and craft to get their message across? We will engage with the work of cross-platform storytellers, and students will be expected to practice their own interviewing, research, reporting and writing, adapting these skills and techniques for the digital communications age. Along the way, we will also consider how social dynamics, power, and privilege affect the stories we consume. Students will be expected to submit weekly reading critiques as well as several small assignments and two longform projects.
LIT JRN (S24)103  JUSTICE & INJUSTICECORWIN, M.
THE JOURNALISM OF JUSTICE AND INJUSTICE

A cardinal rule of journalism is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. In this class we will study writers who shine a spotlight on injustice and how this spotlight can sometimes bring about justice. A writer uncovers a series of murders for financial gain on a Native American reservation. Corruption in a major religion in revealed. A quiet genocide takes place a Los Angeles neighborhood and no one seems to care. A man in Alabama commits numerous murders but is never convicted. Guest speakers will provide different perspectives on the criminal justice system. There will be a midterm, a final paper, and occasional quizzes.
LIT JRN (S24)199  INDEPENDENT STUDYSTAFF
No detailed description available.
LIT JRN (S24)199  INDEPENDENT STUDYSTAFF
No detailed description available.
LIT JRN (S24)199  INDEPENDENT STUDYSTAFF
No detailed description available.
LIT JRN (S24)199  INDEPENDENT STUDYSTAFF
No detailed description available.
LIT JRN (S24)199  INDEPENDENT STUDYSTAFF
No detailed description available.
LIT JRN (S24)199  INDEPENDENT STUDYSTAFF
No detailed description available.