Penn now allows you to minor in journalism
Since I’ve graduated, thanks to the great leadership of Al Filreis, Penn keeps on beefing up it’s creative writing program and offering students a variety of courses that help prepare students for real life careers.
More about Penn’s new “journalism” minor after the jump!
DT stories on Penn alumni journalists HERE
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Students who wish to minor in Journalistic Writing should meet with the Director of the Creative Writing Program, Gregory Djanikian, at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at 3808 Walnut St. (215-573-CPCW, [email protected]).The minor in Journalistic Writing consists of six courses. Of these, one will be a required course in long-form journalism, English 160, which will focus on the most revolutionary period in contemporary journalism–the 1960s, when writers such as Tom Wolfe, Michael Herr, Gay Talese, Anthony Lukas, Norman Mailer, and Thomas B. Morgan vastly expanded the possibilities of non-fiction and adapted certain aspects of the novel (scenes, dialogue, structure) in order to better tell true-life stories, and
five others will be workshops in journalistic writing and may be chosen from the following: English courses numbered 117, 135, 145, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, and 170. Urban Studies 252 may be used as one of the five courses. Some sections of WRIT 125, a Critical Writing Seminar for experienced writers, will be taught by a journalist. Students can request to have such a course count toward the minor.For a sampling of Creative Writing workshops currently offered, click here.
Creative Writing has had a long tradition at Penn. The Creative Writing faculty (standing, adjunct, visiting) has included some of the most important writers of our time including those who have been brilliant nonfiction writers and documentarians, among them John Wideman, Nora Magid, Paul Fussell, Jerre Mangione, and Loren Eisley.
The current faculty members who teach journalistic and nonfiction writing include Max Apple (nonfiction writing), Lorene Cary (nonfiction), Anthony DeCurtis (popular culture reviewing and feature writing), Lise Funderburg (nonfiction), Paul Hendrickson (nonfiction), Marion Kant (travel writing), Rich Nichols (journalism), Dick Polman (journalism), Robert Strauss (journalism), Peter Tarr (science writing), and Kitsi Watterson (nonfiction).
The emergence of a lively culture of writers at Penn in recent years, with the advent of the Kelly Writers House in 1995-96, has put contemporary writing, including journalistic writing, in the foreground among Penn students. The Kelly Writers House Fellows seminar, an advanced undergraduate seminar in English, features three super-eminent writers each spring. This is just one of many collaborations between and among the Writers House, the English department’s undergraduate literature major, and the Creative Writing Program. The founding of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, a site for further collaboration among all of Penn’s writing programs, makes a new minor in Journalistic Writing even more attractive.
DT stories on Penn alumni journalists HERE
