Cross-Listed Journalism Course – Fall 2023

If you are interested in taking an in-person journalism course in Fall 2023, we are offering a cross-listed course with English & Communications that meets on Wednesday evenings. Please note that this is a high-level undergraduate course, and the instructor is willing to make adjustments for those seeking graduate credit. Please contact Heather Foster for an override. This course would count as an elective.

ENG 465/COM 473:  Digital Journalism
Wednesdays, 6:30 pm to 9:15 pm
Merion Hall 150
Instructor: Patricia Madej

In this intermediate-level course, students will learn the fundamentals of digital journalism. The course is designed to develop and enhance skills in digital storytelling and ideation, alternate story formatting, headline writing, SEO, and audience analytics. Students will gain knowledge about the digital newsroom, newsletters, analytics, interactives and product. Additionally, students will produce assignments that include writing for different platforms, reformatting complicated articles, generating headlines that could be used for A/B testing, and writing their own newsletters and social copy. ENG 261-Introduction to News Reporting is highly recommended for this course.

Instructor Patricia Madej is the senior digital editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer who is interested in all the ways journalists can make their work more accessible and engaging to online readers. She has also been on the transportation beat, a homepage producer, and breaking and trending reporter. She lives in South Philly with her husband, Sean, and cat, Cowboy, and can usually be found biking around the city.

SJU Writing Studies Fall 2023 Course Offerings

Registration begins April 11!

ENG 550: The Practice of Writing
Online Mondays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Melissa Goldthwaite
CRN: 40686 (Core Course)

This course is designed as an Introduction to the Writing Studies Program, and it allows students to explore a variety of genres while they explore career options within the writing/publishing world. Students will consider the work of various writers and will play the role of columnist, essayist, poet, fiction writer, and editor. At the end of the course, students will reflect on these different roles and begin brainstorming a possible thesis project in one area.


 ENG 620: Special Topics – Reading & Writing the Novel
Online Tuesdays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. April Lindner
CRN: 40687 (Areas I & II)

 

In this class you will explore the professional concerns of the novelist as you write the opening chapters for a novel of your own. Much of our in-class time will be spent workshopping. To further explore the possibilities of the novel, we will read books that take a range of narrative approaches. You will also choose a novel that takes a similar approach to your own project and present on it to the class. Finally, you’ll keep a journal in which you respond to the assigned reading. At semester’s end, you’ll put together a final portfolio of your revised chapters and, as your final exam, you will draw up an outline, giving you a roadmap to continue on with your novel in progress.


ENG 668: Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Online Wednesdays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Melissa Goldthwaite
CRN: 40688 (Area III)

Creative Nonfiction will explore literary diaries and journals, memoir, the personal essay, cultural criticism, and literary journalism. We’ll analyze and practice different forms of creative nonfiction with attention to both student and professional writing. This class will provide a context in which students can learn the conventions of the genre—from finding a topic to creating a structure, from scene making to fact finding and more; participate in the process of discovery and research; and work with others in crafting, drafting, revising, and seeking a larger audience through publication. Assignments include discussion of assigned readings, keeping a writer’s notebook, participating in weekly writing exercises, and writing, workshopping, and revising short (2-pages), medium (5-7 pages), and longer (20-pages) creative nonfiction pieces.


ENG 684: Health Writing
Online Thursdays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Ann Green
CRN: 40689 (Area III)

 

In “Health Care Writing,” we’ll explore how race, class, gender, sexuality, ability/disability, mental health diagnoses, and substance use disorder are depicted in “medical writing,” broadly defined. By reading the writing of caregivers, medical professionals, and patients, we will consider how intersectionality and ability/disability, racism, sexism, and homophobia have affected how all of us engage with the medical system. We’ll particularly focus on the medicalization/crisis of the Black body and also consider how gender impacts access to care and perceptions of the female body. Participants will write about their own experience with bodies/medicine, explore what medical writing as a profession looks like, be invited to engage in a community-engaged learning project, and conceive of and execute a final project relevant to the course topic and the participant’s goals for his/her/their writing.

SJU Writing Studies Summer 2023 Courses

Here’s a peek at what’s coming in summer 2023.

Summer I: CRN 20146

 

ENG 600: Poetry Today (Area I)
Online Tuesdays & Thursdays, 6:00 pm – 8:00 p.m. & asynchronous classes
Instructor:  Dr. Kay Gomes

 

This course will serve as an exploration of the current poetry scene in America, beginning with Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, and reading through the High Modernist period to present day. We will focus in particular on how 20th and 21st century poets seek to define a distinct American poetics through experimental form and narrative structure. We will undertake a close study of the schools and theoretical concepts that define these centuries. Movements covered will include Imagism, the New York School, the Harlem Renaissance, the Neo-Confessional, the Contemporary lyric, and Language Poetry. We will practice our own creative imitations in an effort to understand how to “make it new” as Ezra Pound suggested the modern American poet ought to do. We will have a ball. Note: This class will meet synchronously on Thursdays only; Tuesdays, there will be asynchronous work scheduled.


Summer II: CRN 20324

 

ENG 635: The Writing Teacher Writing (Area II)
Online synchronous classes Tuesdays & Thursdays, 6:00 pm – 8:00 p.m.
Instructor:  Dr. Owen Gilman

 

Development of a strong, clear, and natural voice is the goal for writers in any profession, and exercise in writing–from freewriting to development of sustained multiple draft projects–is especially important for teachers working to guide students in moving toward achieving what Peter Elbow calls “vernacular eloquence,” the title of his most recent book. This course involves frequent freewriting, reading drafts out loud, and in-depth reflections on Elbow’s 50 years of practice as a writing teacher writing.