Writing Nonfiction: Pop Culture

Catalog description

This is a writing class in which the subjects can range from Lord of the Rings to Stranger Things, from hip hop to TikTok, from ESPN to DKNY, from Disney World to the multiverse-in other words, anything associated with commercial culture and all its trappings (movies, TV, radio, cyberspace, advertising, toys, games, etc.). Students will be able to pursue their own particular areas of interest. Some of the writing will be journalistic, some essayistic, some critical, and some personal-but all of it will have the goal of being vivid, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Classes will be primarily devoted to workshopping of students' works-in-progress. Additional readings will come primarily from magazines and websites that cover the pop culture world: Rolling Stone, Paste, Vogue, Bitch, Entertainment Weekly, Oxford American, Spin, O: The Oprah Magazine, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, and so on. Each student will be expected to produce a total of about 20 pages of revised, polished writing.