Course Description and Goals

This course will serve as an introduction to thinking and writing critically about contemporary art and visual culture, including elements of digital literacy. On a primary level, the goal of this course is to strengthen students’ skills in the areas of writing and research. This will be accomplished through workshop-style writing exercises and in-class presentations, research assignments, and thoughtful “close-reading” of critical writing. Students will learn to recognize and craft essays that move beyond description into the realm of original argumentation, and they should expect that their own writings will be held to a similar level of scrutiny as those on our reading list.

The readings and assignments will be organized around three closely-linked themes: the relationship of art and technology, the relationships between words and images, and the relationship between orality and literacy. Becoming familiar with the nuances of these relationships will be a complex (and hopefully exciting) process that will involve looking at the shifting functions of authors and their writing about/in art, ranging from rhetorical operations to writing as art, poetics, narration, criticism, and historiography. Writing assignments will require students to be conversant in each of these areas of practice, while the ultimate emphasis will be placed upon the construction of an original argument, the crafting and revision of essays, and the ultimate development of a well-researched, historically-informed piece of critical writing.