| LIT JRN (F16) | 103 READINGS IN LITJ | BURKE, C |
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| LIT JRN (F16) | 101BW FEATURE WRITING | CORWIN, M. |
| The essence of feature writing is storytelling. In this class we will study the art of storytelling. We will focus on ledes, transitions, narrative flow, character development and story structure. Each week, we will study a different aspect of narrative writing. Several guest speakers, accomplished newspaper and magazine writers, will visit the class and describe their techniques. Because the key to literary journalism is great reporting, we will emphasize the practical elements of feature writing and will study interviewing and reporting techniques. Students will hone their craft by writing. Aspiring feature writers, however, cannot improve their writing simply by writing. Extensive reading is a must. As a result, reading features stories and analyzing feature writing will be an important part of this class. Students will write two stories: a profile and an in-depth feature. |
| LIT JRN (F16) | 21 REPORTING LIT JOURN | DEPAUL, 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 (F16) | 21 REPORTING LIT JOURN | DEPAUL, 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 (F16) | 101BW CROSSING BORDERS | KATZ, J. |
| Good journalism is, at heart, a form of translation: the process of discovering and deciphering and ultimately reconstructing the world in a way that makes the unfamiliar more comprehensible. This workshop will focus on stories that explore “foreign” terrain, that seek to navigate and illuminate the bewildering cultural landscape of Southern California. Students will be invited to insinuate themselves into a community not their own—one, perhaps, that is concealed or misunderstood or even demonized—and immerse themselves in its vocabulary and traditions. They will be encouraged to emerge with a narrative that is at once daring, humane, curious, and nonjudgmental, that explains something new without condescending to or exoticizing the subject. The reading list will be anchored by Ted Conover’s Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America’s Illegal Migrants, a quite literal interpretation of the course’s title. Other classic and contemporary works of creative nonfiction also will be considered. |
| LIT JRN (F16) | 101BW ART OF RECONSTRCTN | SIEGEL, B. |
| In some quarters, the practice of “reconstructing” a story is seen as suspect if not impossible. How can you write about events if you weren’t present when they happened? How can you know what other people think or feel? Doesn’t reconstruction border on fiction? In this workshop, students will explore such questions and learn just how literary journalists manage to practice the art of reconstruction in entirely ethical, accurate ways. Students will read exemplary models of reconstructed narrative by writers such as Jon Krakauer, Laura Hillenbrand and Michael Paterniti. They will see why reconstruction plays such a crucial, honorable role in the field of literary journalism. They will also do a good deal of their own reconstruction (learning, along the way, what Tom Wolfe meant when he said that “entering people’s minds” was just “one more doorbell a reporter had to push.”) 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 major example of reconstructed narrative writing. |
| LIT JRN (F16) | 20 INTR LIT JOURNALISM | STAFF |
| 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 (F16) | 20 INTR LIT JOURNALISM | STAFF |
| 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. |
