Journalism As Literary Praxis

The conference will explore the potential for narrowing the historical gap between journalism and literature. At a time when the media, under the pressure of immediacy, has displaced literature from the horizon of mass readership and schools of journalism place emphasis on “communication” rather than on writing, it seems appropriate to reflect on the original relation between these two modalities of world presentation. Many of the great 19th century and early 20th century novelists were journalists, and yet, as journalism and modernism veered away from each other, the two became estranged to the point that journalism has been a bad word in the literary sphere, while narrative style was increasingly neglected in the media. The conference will ask whether it makes sense for literature departments to continue to ignore the high-quality reporting that turned out some of the best writing in the 20th century, and for the media to turn its back on a superb tradition of linguistic mastery as it struggles to meet ever more limiting conditions of time and space.

Michèle Fitoussi (Writer and former editor of "Elle", France)

Beppe Severgnini ("Il Corriere della Sera", Italy)

Joan Ramon Resina (Stanford University)

Tomàs Alcoverro ("La Vanguardia", Spain)

Giles Tremlett ("The Guardian", UK)

Andrew Donohue ("The San Diego Times")

Erika Hayasaki (U.C. Irvine)

Lorenz Jäger ("Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", Germany)

Natalie Nougayrède ("Le Monde", France)

Cécile Alduy (Stanford University)