Four session class via streaming video links
Admission: $120 Paid Patreon Members/ $135 General Admission
Please note: Orders fulfilled weekly on Wednesdays
Some people think research is boring — a process of slogging through seemingly never-ending facts that are usually dry as dust. But what if research is actually a fascinating practice that can be used to re-enchant our world? What if it’s actually something that can enrich both your own experience of reality and help you create projects that enrich the lives of others?
In this class, we’ll look at research techniques utilized by journalists, storytellers, fiction writers, documentarians, and others to create magical works that come alive on the page, in your ears, or onscreen. We’ll discuss finding and using libraries, archives, scholarly resources, and newspapers, as well as best practices for interviewing, organizing your research, and vetting your sources.
We’ll also cover the rituals of research (i.e., how to create a research plan), organizing your research, and how to create narratives that make research come alive. Students will have the chance to participate in optional assignments, and will leave class with the outline of a research project and a strategy for completing it. While many of the techniques and examples discussed in this class will focus on historical research, they are appropriate for those conducting more modern research projects too.
Bess Lovejoy is the author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses and Northwest Know-How: Haunts. Her research-based projects have also appeared in Atlas Obscura, Smithsonian Magazine, TIME, Lapham’s Quarterly, the Public Domain Review, podcasts for iHeart Radio, the Schott’s Almanac series, and elsewhere.
Praise for Bess’ in person class:
The community of fellow researchers, the absolute wealth of resources for searching things out online, and the best is that Bess is an amazing teacher who keeps everything engaging. I have taken a lot of classes online that dive into dullness very quickly, and that never happened with this class. I would take another class with her in a heartbeat!
The class had a plethora of amazing information. I can’t wait to go through the materials at my leisure. I thought the most valuable thing was Bess’s experience and the questions she asked and just her wildly curious outlook.
I got what I came for and MORE. I appreciated the HUGE amount of resources we were given. I also appreciate the use cases and shortcuts that were as well. It takes years of research to be able to accumulate that much knowledge and a certain kind of person to be able to hand it over to everyone. To me, that shows a depth of character that is rare in this day and age.
Four session class via streaming video links
Admission: $120 Paid Patreon Members/ $135 General Admission
Please note: Orders fulfilled weekly on Wednesdays
Some people think research is boring — a process of slogging through seemingly never-ending facts that are usually dry as dust. But what if research is actually a fascinating practice that can be used to re-enchant our world? What if it’s actually something that can enrich both your own experience of reality and help you create projects that enrich the lives of others?
In this class, we’ll look at research techniques utilized by journalists, storytellers, fiction writers, documentarians, and others to create magical works that come alive on the page, in your ears, or onscreen. We’ll discuss finding and using libraries, archives, scholarly resources, and newspapers, as well as best practices for interviewing, organizing your research, and vetting your sources.
We’ll also cover the rituals of research (i.e., how to create a research plan), organizing your research, and how to create narratives that make research come alive. Students will have the chance to participate in optional assignments, and will leave class with the outline of a research project and a strategy for completing it. While many of the techniques and examples discussed in this class will focus on historical research, they are appropriate for those conducting more modern research projects too.
Bess Lovejoy is the author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses and Northwest Know-How: Haunts. Her research-based projects have also appeared in Atlas Obscura, Smithsonian Magazine, TIME, Lapham’s Quarterly, the Public Domain Review, podcasts for iHeart Radio, the Schott’s Almanac series, and elsewhere.
Praise for Bess’ in person class:
The community of fellow researchers, the absolute wealth of resources for searching things out online, and the best is that Bess is an amazing teacher who keeps everything engaging. I have taken a lot of classes online that dive into dullness very quickly, and that never happened with this class. I would take another class with her in a heartbeat!
The class had a plethora of amazing information. I can’t wait to go through the materials at my leisure. I thought the most valuable thing was Bess’s experience and the questions she asked and just her wildly curious outlook.
I got what I came for and MORE. I appreciated the HUGE amount of resources we were given. I also appreciate the use cases and shortcuts that were as well. It takes years of research to be able to accumulate that much knowledge and a certain kind of person to be able to hand it over to everyone. To me, that shows a depth of character that is rare in this day and age.
