2026 - Spring

Topics in Literary Journalism: History and the Novel

Course Number: JOUR-GA 1050.001

Day & Time: Thu | 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM

Location: 20 Cooper Square

Instructor: Susie Linfield

Syllabus: Download

In this course we’ll read a series of novels based on historic events and/or broader historic situations. We’ll begin with World War One and end with the Arab Spring of the early 21^st century; along the way we will study, among others, the Nazi occupation in Holland, McCarthyism, post-apartheid South Africa. and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our core readings will be novels, but for each, we will supplement with extensive historic and journalistic sources. One of our major aims will be to analyze each mode of inquiry (fiction, history, journalism) and discover the ways in which they complement–and, sometimes, conflict–with each other as we attempt to discover the truth of these complex and painful events. We’ll also investigate what the novelist owes to historic truth and how the novelist (or historian, or journalist) can imagine “the other”: an issue of particular contestation right now. Written and oral reports will be required.

Note: Cross-listed with Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement as CEH-GA 1057