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.

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.

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 Erik Larson, Ben Macintyre 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.

Along with character and narrative, place is a key underpinning of any story. In literary journalism, location 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. 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 Paul Theroux, James Fenton, Ian Baruma, Martha Gelhorn, Maxine Hong Kingston, Michael Oondatje and Edward Said.

There’s no richer source of potent nonfiction stories than the twinned spheres of crime and justice. Yet the best of today’s criminal justice writing embraces far deeper and more complex realms than those represented by police blotters and courthouse records. This course teaches you how to discover great stories of crime and consequence, then how to form the facts, characters and telling incidents you’ve unearthed into eloquent nonfiction narratives. You’ll examine the challenges particular to immersion journalism as applied to issues of law and disorder, and learn the art of being there in order to allow your story's more subtle themes to emerge. The course also includes a variety of craft elements such as the art of interviewing difficult subjects, and the use of such organizational strategies as the classical 3-act structure in nonfiction storytelling. Since this is an advanced workshop, your goal will be to produce a major piece of writing by quarter’s end. With this in mind, you’ll examine the work of contemporary experts in the genre such as Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Ted Conover, Mark Salzman and Katherine Boo. Finally, you’ll apply what you’ve learned as you research, structure, write and revise your own full-length narrative project, all within the context of constructive group discussion and critique.

The essence of feature writing is storytelling. In this class we will study the art of storytelling. We will focus on narrative flow, character development and story structure in both newspaper and magazine features. Each week, we will study a different aspect of narrative writing, and guest speakers will describe their techniques. Because the key to fine 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 be expected to bring feature writing samples from newspapers and magazines to class and be prepared to discuss leads, transitions and why stories failed or succeeded, why stories were an excellent example or a flawed demonstration of narrative writing. By the end of the quarter, students will have written at least two stories: a profile and an in-depth feature.

This course explores the multi-dimensional facets of autobiography as literary form, and the literary expressions of this form by Asian American writers. We analyze the interstices between telling the truth of one's life as conveyed in memoir, and in autobiographical novels. Personal stories are contextualized within their authors' cultural and political histories. Just as there is no one way of representing and recreating history, so there are many ways, points of views, and perspectives in recounting a life. We discuss the interplay of autobiography with memory, and how new diasporic locations for immigrants influence looking back on the past. Such memories inspire the literary production of autobiographical stories along with the assertion/erasure of ethnic identities. Selection of literary texts includes a memoir by Meena Alexander, and Maxine Hong Kingston, as well as innovative recreations of autobiographical fictions in Joy Kogawa's novel, Obasan, and multi-genre autobiographies in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's, Dictee, and Denise Uyehara's Maps of City and Body. Our study also includes representations of family and personal history on videos about the Japanese-American internment, and about the struggles of recent immigrants in making a home in the U.S. Course Requirements: Attendance and participation, class presentation, in-class midterm, and a take-home final essay.

This course will examine various ways in which hip hop culture continues the legacy of black protest and resistance in black art forms and culture. The course will look at the following particularly: Hip Hop elements and expressions as protest; Hip Hop Entrepeneurialism; Hip Hop Media, Hip Hop Political Organizations; and Hip Hop Education.

Especially with the success of our Literary Journalism major, it seems proper to celebrate what is known as “the long 18th century,” namely the period between 1660, when Charles II was restored to the throne, and 1800. This period of writing includes a number of ‘greats’ in English letters. These include the following: the most famous diary in English (Samuel Pepys); the most influential philosophy in English (Thomas Hobbes, then John Locke and David Hume); the most significant contributions to Western science (Robert Boyle is dubbed ‘the father of modern chemistry,’ and Isaac Newton is often considered the greatest scientist of all time, while Charles II had founded the Royal Society in 1662); the first modern journals—the Tatler and Spectator; a rich literature expressing interest in the Ottomans, who represented one of the European super-powers at the time, so this goes with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s spectacularly intelligent letters from the Turkish empire; the single most famous (or infamous) collection of letters in English (Lord Chesterfield’s to his illegitimate son); the single most famous biography in English (Boswell’s life of Samuel Johnson);and the single most famous history in English, Edmund Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Hume and Johnson also wrote numerous and important essays.

In the term, we will read selections of all these texts, so we should learn a lot about the 18th century and about the literature of fact. Grades will depend on attendance, fortnightly quizzes, and a take-home mid-term and final, but will be most directly influenced by your ability to write well, as is only fitting in a class on this topic.