2026 - Fall

Specialized Reporting: Research for Writers

Course Number: JOUR-GA 1182.023

Day & Time: Tue | 10:00am-1:30pm

Location: 20 Cooper Square, Room 653

Writers are nosy. We want to know what happened, and then we want to know why, and how, and where, and what it smelled like. Good writing demands details. Finding these details… well, that can be the fun part. Research for writers involves poking through archives, asking people for stories, and looking at alternate interpretations of historical events. It involves answering all kinds of questions for ourselves and our readers: If W.E.B DuBois were a character in a story, what would he wear? On Juneteenth, what was the weather like in Beaumont? Can a sonnet be biographical, and if so are the facts correct? In this class, you will learn the research methods employed by scholars, journalists, and super-sleuths. We will read writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Joan Didion, and Colson Whitehead to examine how authors use research in their fiction and nonfiction. We may talk to oral historians, archivists, or museum curators about how to mine the past for ideas. Be prepared to choose a topic early in the semester and research it thoroughly. Your final project, a work of literary nonfiction, will be informed by your discoveries.