Documental Art refuses the limits of journalism, the archive, and also literary genre, but by combining these approaches, a nuanced, more immediate investigation can be achieved. Muriel Rukeyser, whose long poem The Book of the Dead we will study, famously said, “'poetry can extend the document.” We will investigate how writers across genres use nonliterary documents and other means to reframe and re-contextualize subjects often considered outside the scope of literature. Documentary film, photography, visual art and theory will point toward other nontraditional approaches to archival and living material, and will provide a foundation for the ethics of documental art. Students will be writing and researching topics of their choice throughout the semester to create a chapbook-length work of documentary literature.

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