Attention Journalism majors: Ask your advisor about The Ottaway Seminar, a course offered each spring that features a nationally known visiting journalist who shares their expertise and experience and teaches students about the problems and issues that face reporters and the press. Former professors have included foreign correspondents, literary journalists, photo journalists and high-ranking editors.
In Spring 2022, the James H. Ottaway Sr. Endowed Professorship will be taught by Bart Gellman, Staff Writer for The Atlantic. He will be teaching a seminar titled the Literature of Fact. In order to take this course, students must be a junior or senior journalism major.
Gellman will be participating in a Q&A on campus on Monday, Feb. 7, at 6 p.m. and he will deliver his campus-wide talk, “Secrets, Leaks and the National Security State,” on Tuesday, April 5 at 6 p.m.
Barton Gellman, a staff writer at The Atlantic, is the author most recently of Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State and the bestselling Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. Before joining The Atlantic, Gellman spent 21 years at The Washington Post, where he served tours as legal, diplomatic, military and Middle East correspondent.
Gellman anchored the team that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the National Security Agency and Edward Snowden. He was previously awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series on Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2002, he was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. Other professional honors include two George Polk Awards, two Overseas Press Club awards, two Emmy awards for a PBS Frontline documentary, Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Gellman graduated with highest honors from Princeton University and earned a master’s degree in politics at University College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He lives in New York City.