The Senior Slump Syllabus

I’m slumping in school. I’m burned out. Tired of classes. Bored in lectures. I have some general requirements left, but I can’t take them now. I’ll save them for next semester. This is a regrouping period — a time I need to take classes I’m inspired by regardless of academic need.

Here are the courses I’m taking. Feel free to salivate, for this is enviable college coursework.

Class 1: The Art of Profile Writing (Dick Polman)

I’ve been a fanboi of the profile genre for some time, and I have written about it twice on this blog (here and here). Dick Polman, one of my favorite writers and teachers (as well as my potential Thesis advisor), leads the course. Here is the course description:

One of the toughest challenges for any journalist is to master the art of profile-writing. In this new course, students will read and critique some of the classic profile articles of the past 40 years, and, most importantly, write profile articles of their own. Writing about people is often very rewarding, but rarely easy. In this course, students will debate the questions that have plagued and energized journalists for generations: How do you persuade somebody that he or she is a worthy topic for a profile? How do you ask sensitive questions? If the person is a celebrity, how do you avoid being manipulated into writing a “puff piece”? Do you tape the interviews or just take notes? How do you structure a profile in order to keep the reader’s attention? Is it even possible to capture the essence of a person on the written page? Are you a friend to the profile subject – or a manipulator? A journalist at The New Yorker recently said that a writer’s relationship with the profile subject is “a kind of love affair.” On the other hand, a famous author once said that a profile writer is typically “gaining their trust and betraying without remorse.” Which is closer to the truth? Students, in addition to writing their own profiles, will kick around these questions while reading some of the best contemporary profile writers, including Susan Orlean, Gay Talese, David Remnick, Mark Bowden, and Judy Bachrach. The instructor will also offer several of his own.

Class 2: The Call of the Wild (Rachael Nichols)

On the heels of my trip to Alaska, I thought this course would be a good pick:

Jack London’s novel, published in 1903, was tremendously popular—but it was not alone. It was written in a climate of intense interest in the U.S. wilderness; only a few decades earlier Theodore Roosevelt had worked to establish Yellowstone as the country’s first national park. While some attempted to memorialize the wild in writing, others hunted for specimens to display in the new museums of natural history in New York and D.C. All, however, feared the wilderness was in danger and in need of protection. This class will chart a history of conservation in the United States, with an emphasis on the turn of the century, to consider the lasting appeal the wilderness has had as a site of economic and cultural capital, and the various ways people have sought to sustain it. We will read works by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Theodore Roosevelt, John Burroughs, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jack London, Sarah Winnemucca, and Willa Cather. This class will focus on analytical reasoning skills and argumentation, both written and oral. Looking at a range of material, from novels to newspapers, we will experiment with different genres of persuasive writing. Class requirements include weekly blog posts, several short papers and one final long paper.

Class 3: Advanced Journalistic Writing (Dick Polman)

Another course by Dick Polman. It should be a solid one:

This is a how-to course for talented aspiring writers–how to write well in the real world; how to hook the reader and sustain interest; how to develop the journalistic skills that enable a writer to gather, sift and report information. The instructor will share his own real-world experience, as a full-time working journalist for the past three decades. He will be joined on occasion by eminent journalists- including several star journalists from the New York Times–who will address the class and appear at mandatory forums to be held at the Kelly Writers House.

Even though students will read and critique some famous practitioners of non-fiction writing-among them, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Michael Herr, Truman Capote and Richard Ben Cramer–along with contemporary newspaper storytellers that include the instructor (a national correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer), the emphasis will be on the students’ own writing.

The goal is to inspire students to tap their own potential, gain fresh insights, and feel comfortable enough to share their assigned work-both short and long pieces-with others in the class over the span of the semester. Students will write all kinds of non-fiction pieces, from personal memoirs to long-form features about anything from the Philadelphia scene to campus issues and events. The topics are less important than the craftsmanship; anything can be a great read if it’s written and reported well.,P. Journalistic issues, both practical and ethical, will also be addressed–among them: how to decide who to interview, and how to handle an interviewee; how to use (and not use) the Internet; when to use (or not use) anonymous sources.

Class 4: Transatlantic Romanticism (Jeff Edwards)

This class looks good, though I think the instructor, Dr. Edwards, and I will disagree often. Gauging from the first two sessions, he and I have different conceptions of Romantic literature — mine is more narrow and traditional; his strikes me as a wider and more a product of the modern-day academic avant garde — though his enthusiasm for the texts is contagious and he’s humble in discussion and debate. Here’s the info:

Between the 1760s and the 1860s an Atlantic-rim literary phenomenon termed Romanticism occurred. This was not simply a British movement led by a handful of men (Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth), but a vast conversation between men and women, Europeans and Americans, blacks and whites. In this class, we will immerse ourselves in the conversations and debates taking place during this time concerning revolution and reform, civilization and nature, gender formation, and slavery and abolition. Among the writers we will read are the five mentioned above, as well as Mary Wollstonecraft, Olympe de Gouges, Margaret Fuller, Quobna Ottobah Cuoano, Phillis Wheately, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Apess, Joanna Baillie, Samsom Occom, Mary Prince, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Lydia Sigourney.