By Robert Peck

Frank Durham is an associate professor in the School of Journalism. His research interests include journalism history and media framing analysis. He teaches courses in journalism history, strategic communication, and cultural satire and won the CLAS 2011-2012 Collegiate Teaching Award. He is a member of the University Faculty Senate, the University Faculty Council, and the Senate Committee on Academic Values, and a founding participant in the University Office of Teaching and Learning Committee’s large lecture development program.

One challenge instructors may face in integrating writing into multidisciplinary or cross-disciplinary courses is making that writing relevant both as skill development and content development: how can instructors in diverse fields allow their students space to spend time on writing as a skill, while also keeping focus on the information load of their course and field? Professor Frank Durham of the University of Iowa has an answer in his adaptable historical interview assignment.

A mock interview

Professor Durham conceived the assignment as part of his survey course on the history of journalism and mass communication. Durham wanted an assignment that would let students engage with the discipline and its major figures while also developing their writing in an imaginative way.

His assignment asks students to conceive an interview with a historical figure from the course. The person is (or was) real, as is the information students rely on—but the dialogue between student and “interviewee” is dreamed up completely by the student.

“The trick,” Durham says, “is to get them to make up plausible dialogue with this person.”

He adds, “They really throw themselves into the assignment.”

Rooted in fact—and in the present

In his version of the paper, Durham asks students to follow a ten-question interviewing protocol to simulate realistic exchange with a historical person. Students can pick a character from any of the class’s reading in the history of journalism, and are asked to base their Q&A on the factual background of the character’s life as discussed in class.

However, the assignment also keeps students rooted in the present day by asking them to bring current events into the picture. In the assignment sheet, Durham asks the students to

…write an interview…based on an imaginary write-up of your subject's reaction to a news event from the past eight weeks. It is important to make a relevant connection between your subject and the news event, e.g. Frederick Douglass and a recent affirmative action case.

Durham identifies a rich body of research materials and research goals for students as they begin work on the project. His assignment sheet specifies that biography—not autobiography—be the main tool students use to gather information, but emphasizes that finding specifics about the subject's views and life—such as their politics or personal circumstances—is vital to the work as well:

Because the goal of the imaginary part of the exercise is for you to demonstrate how well you understand this person, in your research you will be looking for indicators of your interviewee’s political affiliation, what their main cultural concerns were, how they earned their money (what their financial concerns might be), and who they have important relationships with.

Flexible structure

Durham notes that this writing assignment has broad applicability to virtually any course, provided that figures from the history of the field in question are subbed in for historical journalists. Every discipline has major figures and current debates—with this assignment, students can explore the history of their major's key people, dig more deeply into a particular subject or time period, or find roots in the past for a present-day conflict. It's easy to imagine using Durham's assignment in historical survey courses of all kinds, but also in courses where students don't often engage the past: lab or practicum courses rooted in current-day skills could be enriched by a version of this paper that asks students to take a brief dip into the origins of their practice, seeking to find out how a figure from the past would comment on advancements made in more recent years as a pathway into major changes to the field over time.

At the heart of it all, of course, is a creative assignment that will ask writers to bend their brains to dialogue, flexing communication muscles that aren't often brought to bear in an academic context. It's relevant work, but it's unusual, too—the paper gives students space to think about the actual practice of carefully composing writing to match a particular voice, making this paper an outstanding bridge between course content and hands-on writing skills practice.

Positive reception

Durham has found that students often respond very well to his imaginary interview assignment, remembering the paper well after the course ends.

"For years I’d be in line at a pizza place and a student would walk up and say 'let me tell you about my historical interview.'"

The historical interview assignment is an adaptable, multifaceted writing assignment ideal for a university community looking to bring writing into new and different classrooms—all without losing focus on core class content that will be enriched and deepened by creative engagement with the past.