• Required Texts
• Course Description and Goals
• Procedures and Requirements
• Grading
• Calendar of Assignments

• Kerrane, Kevin, and Ben Yagoda.  The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism.  Scribner, 1998.  0684846306.
• Sims, Norman, and Mark Kramer.  Literary Journalism.  Ballantine, 1995.  0345382226.

Literary Journalism is an advanced course in writing.  The format combines seminar and workshop.  The primary goal of each of you is to produce a substantial piece of literary journalism, a 3000-word nonfiction narrative based on the on-site gathering of facts and other research.  As a genre, literary journalism has its roots in the early 18th century.  Later examples include nonfiction narratives by such novelists as Dickens, London, and Hemingway--as well as the so-called New Journalists of the 1960s.  It was the New Journalism (a term coined by Tom Wolfe) that called attention to the genre as a distinctive type of journalism.  Such literary devices and techniques as plot, description, dialogue, character development, and personal style, all in the service of fact-based exposition and sometimes argumentation, are characteristic of such classic examples of New Journalism as Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,Capote's In Cold Blood, and Mailer's The Armies of the Night.  In addition to producing a substantial work of your own, you'll both survey the genre from a historical perspective and analyze contemporary examples of the genre that may serve as models. 

• Reading Assignments.  Approximately half of the course will be devoted to reading and analyzing in class examples of literary journalism other than your own.  (The other half will consist of out-of-class conferences on work in progress and in-class workshops.)  Weekly reading assignments from the anthologies appear on the calendar. 

• Active Participation.  You'll be participating actively in this course if you attend class regularly (missing only for official, College-sponsored activities or for emergencies), meet all deadlines, and demonstrate your engagement in the course by contributing valuably to the in-class discussions and workshops and by scoring consistently well on reading quizzes.  It is unlikely that you will receive full credit for participation if you miss more than two weeks (four days) of class.  It is the Department's policy that anyone missing more than three weeks of class for any reason will fail the course.  Understand that the Department does not distinguish between excused and unexcused absences.  Miss this class more than six times and you will fail the course.  Reading quizzes will come, if they do, at the beginning of the period.  If you are late for class, you will miss the quiz.  You may make up a reading quiz only if you are absent because of required participation in a College-sponsored off-campus event, and then you may submit on the day of your return to class 10 objective questions and answers about the reading assignment that was due when you were absent.

• Preliminary Writing Assignment.  A short written assignment (750 words) is due at the end of Week 4.  This assignment should focus on a person whom you don't know (or know well), whose life is very different from your own; an unusual event; or a place, which a Centenary student isn't likely to have frequented, where something is happening.  You are the observer; ideally, your personal involvement with the subject is minimal at most.  Though you may be a character in the piece (and not merely the observer), this is not to be about you.  Your aim is to provide your readers an intimate glimpse of the person, place, or event.  If it's important to your purpose that the reader feel a certain way about the subject, rely on a selection of sensory details to arouse the feeling.  Where appropriate, involve your reader by using such literary techniques as narrative, visual description and other kinds of imagery, direct quotation, dialogue and indirect discourse, and humor.  We'll devote a week of workshop to discussing a limited number of these preliminary assignments.

• Project.  The primary writing assignment is a project of some 3000 words.  As with the earlier assignment, your subject will be a person, place, or event.  With this assignment you must choose an off-campus subject unrelated to your family.  As with the earlier assignment, the success of this one will depend mainly on your skill with literary devices and techniques, especially narrative.  However, this project should be richer in information--facts--gleaned not only in the field but also from research.  For instance, it might be possible for you to observe a hospital emergency room over the course of several nights, perhaps even conducting some tactful interviews while there.  But the project should also include information from personal interviews (at other times) with healthcare professionals and pertinent facts about the subject gathered from other legitimate sources. 

• Conferences and Workshops.  You will contract with me on the project in conference during Week 7.  You'll demonstrate your progress on the assignment in weekly conferences during Weeks 10-11.  Workshops during Weeks 12-14 will be devoted to critiques of these projects.  Each of you must make your project accessible to the class (in Blackboard or on the Web) by a due date--to be determined--in advance of the workshop; everyone else will read it then and provide a critique during the workshop. 

• Peer Editing.  Each of you will also have and serve as a peer editor, and your editorial responsibility will be to read that classmate's project with special care, offer a thorough critique, and then assist the author in evaluating the seminar's advice from the workshop and incorporating within the final version valid suggestions for improvement. 

• Final Version.  You'll make the final version of your project accessible to the class no later than Thursday, April 20.  Discussion during Preparation Week and, if needed, during the exam period will certify that each final version not only succeeds as an example of literary journalism but also represents a successful response to the earlier critique.

• Preliminary Assignment=20%
• Project=60%
• Participation=20%

Note: Read also the editors' introductions to the selections.
 

Week 1 (January 10-12) From The Art of Fact Yagoda, Preface (13) Kerrane, "Making Facts Dance" (17) Whitman, from Specimen Days (46) Crane, "When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers" (58) London, from The People of the Abyss (83)

Week 2 (January 17-19) Bernstein, "Juke Joint" (104) Hersey, from Hiroshima (111) Ross, from "Portrait of Hemingway" (129) Capote, from In Cold Blood (161) Wolfe, from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (169) Smith, "Shadow of a Nation" (218)

Week 3 (January 24-26) Tuesday: Class with Eleanor Clift Thursday: Convocation with Eleanor Clift ("An Insider's View of Washington," 11:10 AM, Kilpatrick Auditorium)

Week 4 (January 31-February 2) Thompson, from "The Scum Also Rises" (302) Mahoney, from Whoredom in Kimmage (367) Writing assignment due Thursday

Week 5 (February 7-9) Workshop

Week 6 (February 14-16) Covington, from "Snake Handling and Redemption" (391) Agee, from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (417) McPhee, from The Pine Barrens (485) From Literary Journalism Sims, "The Art of Literary Journalism" (3) Kramer, "Breakable Rules for Literary Journalism" (21)

Week 7 (February 21-23) Conferences on project

Mardi Gras Break (February 28-March 2)

Week 8 (March 7-9) Mitchell, "Lady Olga" (The Art of Fact 439) from Literary Journalism Mitchell, "The Riverman" (35) Orlean, "The American Man at Age Ten" (97) Harrington, "A Family Portrait in Black and White" (153)

Week 9 (March 14-16) LeBlanc, "Trina and Trina" (209) Kidder, "Memory" (369)

Weeks 10-11 (March 21-30) Conferences

Weeks 12-14 (April 4-18) Workshop

Weeks 14-15 (April 20-27) Revised project due by Thursday, April 20 Project assessment