JOUR 452 –  “Great Books of Journalism”  – is an unusual class in that it is structured like a book club.

The class will read eight books over the semester and one night a week will sit down in a comfortable seminar setting and talk about them—how they are structured, reported, narrated, written. The books are all classics of journalism and nonfiction. They range from books about political power and corruption, to endemic poverty, to oranges, to front-line soldiers in Iraq, to traveling the back roads of America, to living with the poorest of the poor in India. They range from historical investigative, to first-person poetic documentary, to matter-of-fact third-person descriptive, to deep personal reporter immersion, to combinations of all of these approaches. They reveal journalism on a far wider and grander stage than most ever imagine.

Students write a  700-word essay on each book. No final exam but students  write a longer final essay on all the books.

There are no prerequisites and the class is open to all majors.

 

Best,

Julian

 

 

Dr. Julian Parrott

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Student Services

College of Media