Cultural Reporting and Criticism

Journalism is not just about reporting on individual "news events." More and more, it's about getting a handle on the complicated reality that frames those events - the ever-shifting patterns of culture that determine how we live and what we make of our lives. As the mainstream media expand their cultural coverage and alternative publications and websites proliferate, there has never been more need for engaging, knowledgeable cultural reporting and analysis.

In 1995, cultural critic and longtime Village Voice writer Ellen Willis responded to the rapid growth of this field by launching a concentration in Cultural Reporting and Criticism within the Institute's M.A. program. CRC is unique: the only graduate journalism program in the country specifically designed to prepare the next generation of cultural reporters and critics.

The arts and popular culture; the immense variety of social groups, from gay families to Pakistani cabdrivers to obsessive gamers; the explosion of social controversies, from the role of identity politics in the Obama presidential campaign to Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case; the rise of religious fundamentalism, at home and abroad; the changing nature of war; the role of the critic in the age of the Internet: all this is fodder for the cultural journalist. Cultural journalism is for writers with an itch to understand connections—between news event and context, present and past, art and society, public and private. Over the last tumultuous decade, the need for such explorations has only intensified.

The CRC concentration is unique, too, in its emphasis on criticism. We are inspired not by the turgid academic criticism that is taught at some universities, but by the Partisan Review/New Yorker tradition: that is, well-informed, thought-provoking criticism that addresses a wide, non-specialized audience and that can intervene in a broader cultural conversation. The critics and journalists we study (pictured to the right) include James Agee, Hannah Arendt, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Greil Marcus, Laura Kipnis, Salman Rushdie, Philip Gourevitch, Henry Louis Gates, Joan Acocella, David Remnick, and Pauline Kael.

CRC students are trained to write in a variety of formats, including the critical essay, the profile, the review, the long-form narrative, the op/ed piece, and even the blog post. Graduates of the program work in every form of media, from traditional print journalism to radio, television and the web. We publish in, and work at, a wide range of publications, from the Washington Post to Bookforum, The Revealer and The Forward to Bust and the AV Club. CRC alumni are currently working at publications such as the New York Review of Books (senior editor), the New York Times (reporter, Los Angeles bureau), the Wall Street Journal (senior editor), the New Yorker (writer, "Book Blog"), Harper's (assistant editor), New York magazine (deputy culture editor, website), Slate (contributing writer), Salon (deputy culture editor), NPR (producer), CBS (producer, news division), the Nation (chief copy editor and assistant editor), Saveur (associate editor), Artforum (assistant editor), Spin (senior editor and writer), Bloomberg BusinessWeek (reporter), and the Huffington Post (women's editor).

If you are drawn to the big picture—if you suspect that neither conventional journalism training nor academic specialization is right for you—CRC may be what you're looking for. Our curriculum emphasizes the integration of journalistic skills with a distinctive individual writer's voice. The CRC program is deeply collaborative, and stresses close working relationships between professors and students and the creation of a supportive intellectual community.

SPECIAL GUEST CRITIC, FALL 2011:
GREIL MARCUS

For over four decades, acclaimed critic Greil Marcus has been writing about American music, culture, and politics. His work has appeared in, among other publications, Rolling Stone (where he was the magazine's first reviews editor), Creem, The Village Voice, Artforum, Esquire, the New York Times, salon.com, and The Believer. His 1975 book Mystery Train is considered a classic of music criticism, placing rock music in the broader context of the American struggle for democracy. His other books include Lipstick Traces, Dead Elvis, The Dustbin of History, and Invisible Republic. Marcus is a co-editor of A New Literary History of America, which has just been published by Harvard University Press. He has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, and The New School, and has lectured widely throughout the United States and Europe.

NEWS:

CRC director Susie Linfield's book "The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence" is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and for the Infinity Writing Award from the International Center of Photography. Click here to see select reviews.