5-Week class taught online via Zoom

Mondays, March 17 - April 14, 2025
7-9 pm ET (NYC time)
$180 Paid Patreon Members / $190 General Admission

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will be recorded for those who cannot attend live

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.

Images: 1) Chamber of Art and Curiosities, Frans II Francken, 1636 2) Cabinet of Curiosities, Domenico Remps, c. 1690