South Bend Stories

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In “South Bend Stories” students will produce reported narratives across a variety of nonfiction genres, including prose writing and documentary filmmaking. This course draws its inspiration and subject matter from the city of South Bend and the greater Michiana region, as you will work with classmates and community partners to tell stories of local interest and significance. Topics may include close-up looks at a wide range of ideas—family, sport, education, history, etc.—but the ultimate goal is to describe real-world truth at the “felt-life level,” revealing something of what it means to be alive in this particular time and place. We wish to highlight the daily lives, cultural events, natural and built spaces, and social issues of South Bend. Projects are collaborative, with students working in teams. With guidance, you will look for stories, request access and permission to tell those stories, and gather material en route to crafting meaningful narratives. Each group will produce several different stories, though subjects and forms will often converse with one another. For instance, storytelling teams may create short moving-image documentaries, works of prose journalism, photo essays, audio narratives, creative nonfiction essays, or more avant-garde documentary projects, etc. The class will interrogate the boundaries between subgenres of these factual artforms. Students will decide which types of stories they will produce. Telling others’ stories is a profoundly ethical act. It is also a creative process that allows us to grow as individuals and as a community. This challenging process demands your respect and your time as a media-maker. The class will regularly engage in discussions about media ethics and accountability, in the traditions of journalism and documentary filmmaking courses. Students must be prepared to use resources to travel beyond campus and engage with people who are not students and may not be affiliated with the university. Additionally, you must act ethically as a storyteller and collaborator. Further, you must solve a range of challenges—conceptual, logistical, and narratological—while being prepared to spend time with your subjects outside of class time and often according to others’ schedules.