JM4012 Journalistic Writing 2:

This course teaches different journalistic forms of writing such as short features, profiles, vox pops, reviews and press releases. Students were also encouraged to reflect on and analyze each other’s and professional work through a course web forum. The course also contained weekly writing workshops with breaking news exercises and wrap stories. For my final project I conducted a profile interview with Sarah Lavin, a hurdler for Ireland.

JM2028 Current Issues in Irish Media:

The course was a seminar module. Practicing media professionals visited the university weekly to talk to the class about their working environment and key issues affecting the media industry. In addition to weekly writing assignments, I conducted a research project regarding the troubles freelance journalists face in Syria.

EH4016 State of the Union: American Literature since 1890

The course covered American literature from the 1890s to the present day. Through a selection of texts reflecting the diverse voices of the literature, students explored the physical, cultural, and sociopolitical geographies of America. Reading accounts of the city and town, the urban and suburban, the road, the land, the reservation, or the South, students engage with questions of self and society, class and race, national identity, marginalization, counter cultureless, and globalization, as expressed within differing literary movements. Weekly writing assignments and larger projects were conducted to improve students writing skills.

JM4022 Introduction to Social Media

This course taught me to think critically about social media. Some of the elements included concepts drawn from theoretical communications, social and media studies, as well as practical approaches including hierarchical news writing and information construction. During this course I started up a blog and conducted a research project on how people used Twitter during the same-sex referendum in Ireland.