JOUR4606W

This course is designed to help students understand the literary history of longform journalism's traditions in Britain and the United States. Most of the course will focus on the 20th century, although we will consider key innovations from the 18th and 19th centuries, and students will apply what they learn to a final project that examines 21st century texts. The works in this course focus on what some have called “literary journalism,” which uses the tools of fiction—character and scenes, tropes and varying points of view—to tell stories that are reported and true (in other words, verified and not invented). To understand the power of this work, and the dilemmas it presents, we’ll consider its common origin in both journalism and the novel in the 18th century and track its development through British and American writers as they told ground-level stories about London's poor, America's 19th century urban overcrowding, city streets, the inhumanity of nuclear war, the vulnerability of celebrities, political identity, the depths of artistic self-doubt, drug subcultures of the sixties, the geological fate of huge metropolitan areas and the racism at the heart of American life during civil rights era. We'll also ask critical questions about the conventions and ethics of doing this work, considering the sometimes-compromising role of journalist-confidant as well as the privilege of powerful publishing platforms to exclude diverse voices. By understanding how literary journalism has endured or evolved, students are better able to appreciate the contributions of longform journalists today.

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