This course is on the challenges of thinking and writing about refugees from Africa and the Middle East to Europe in the 21st Century. The course will range across genres and platforms - journalism, fiction, and non-fiction creative writing. A central concern are the ethical, theoretical, and aesthetic problems presented by the condition of stateless. Why is the refugee story the most compelling contemporary story? How do we write about people who have been deprived of the security of geography, history, and rights? And how can people who are defined by placelessness and invisibility be made visible without compromising their humanity?

The great challenge to writing about history is recreating what cannot be witnessed in real time. As time passes, societies question their accepted narratives. Time makes it easier to see what is missing from the stories we tell ourselves. This seminar will teach students how to look back--to find stories in our past, and get them down on paper. Emphasis will be placed on structure, research, interviewing and writing. Students will read masterpieces of historical nonfiction, and work on a long-form project that reexamines a narrative of their choosing.

In this seminar students will learn the sophisticated reporting, research and writing techniques that investigative reporters use to root out corruption in public and private institutions. While learning to produce compelling news pieces, students will discover how these tools can be used to advantage in other fields and in everyday life. In addition to exploring new models of journalism (crowdsourcing, social networking, etc.), they will meet with some of the nation's most successful investigative journalists.

This course will examine the interplay of politics, foreign policy and the press in the 2024 election cycle and in recent political history. American elections largely turn on domestic issues, but global concerns and perceived threats have played a role in almost every election from Vietnam to the "war on terror," and in trade and immigration. We will also explore media coverage and the political impact of current global issues including the war in Ukraine and the rise of China. Students will follow the 2024 campaign and global news to produce regular original dispatches, and will learn the craft of writing features, news analyses and op-eds.

This seminar will focus on refugee crises and human rights issues at a time of extreme turmoil, as the world reckons with geopolitical and social upheavals and a war in Europe. A fall-break trip to Berlin, Germany, will give students the opportunity to report from the field. The course will combine fundamentals of journalism and narrative reporting with historical studies and data and analysis of immigration policy and the prosecution of crimes against humanity. Students will investigate the impact of migration and universal jurisdiction while producing original reporting in various journalistic forms, including news, profiles and features.

Storytelling shapes the public narratives around wars, and journalists face massive challenges in witnessing and communicating complex global conflicts. Focusing on empathy and rigorously independent thought, this course will examine tried and tested lessons of celebrated 20th-century war reporting as well as newer techniques and perspectives that ready reporters for the intricate landscape of contemporary conflicts. Students will learn foundational journalistic skills and approaches used to produce sensitive, compelling reporting in the face of online warfare and misinformation campaigns.

American law protects racist hate speech, pornography, and (much) lying. Other countries permit more restrictions on harmful speech, should we? Or will that undermine truth-seeking, political competition, and other values? Should speech be regulated instead by social norms, social media companies, and universities? Is "cancel culture" a problem? And what should we - as political communities and universities - honor and memorialize? How should we balance recognition of heritage and inclusion of people from diverse cultures and historically marginalized groups? Seminars will include debates. Active weekly participation required of all.

This course will teach STEM & non-STEM majors how to write about research in STEM fields with clarity and a bit of flair. Goal will be to learn to convey technical topics to non-experts in a compelling, enjoyable way while staying true to the underlying facts, context and concepts. We'll do this through readings, class discussion, encounters with professional writers and journalists of all sorts, across several different media. Most important of all, students will practice what they learn in frequent writing assignments that will be critiqued extensively by an experienced science journalist.