by Dr Davis on January 23, 2008
Writing the Art History Paper has very useful information for writing about art. In fact, some of it is so good, I feel the need to quote it here.
Be sure to analyze as you describe. The comment we’ve heard most often from Art History professors is that students often describe a work without considering the argument they ultimately intend to make. Consider carefully the purpose of your paper, then choose and organize your descriptive details so that they illustrate not only the painting, but your analysis of it.
Be aware that paragraphs in Art History papers are often constructed so that the topic sentences are at the end. Typically, students are trained in their composition courses to begin their paragraphs with a topic sentence. However, in Art History, students will often find paragraphs constructed with the topic sentences at the end. In these kinds of paragraphs, details build towards an observation or argument. When creating a paragraph that ends with it a topic sentence, you need to be especially careful that your details are well-chosen and logically expressed, and that they build towards the point you are making.
Think about the ways in which you want to structure your papers. Structure them chronologically if you are discussing an artistic movement or a specific artist’s progression; spatially if you are discussing the elements of a specific work; relationally if you are discussing a work in relation to a movement or another work; and so on.
Avoid the subjective “I.” You want your reader to feel that your point of view about a particular work comes from some formal aspect of that work, and not from some very personal response of your own. This is not to say that your personal response to a work is irrelevant; rather, it is your job as a critic or scholar to figure out what formal aspects of the work created your response, and then to explain fully how and why.
This is from Dartmouth, a very good school.
by Dr Davis on January 14, 2008
I gave an introduction to the class, without the day to day syllabus.
I covered the girl who insulted college English teachers in her English final. (Audience awareness.)
I covered the guy who used his English process paper to describe how and where he murdered and got rid of the body of a named person. (Again with the audience awareness. And especially the “I am not a priest; if you tell me you committed a crime I will be on the phone with 911 before I finish grading your paper.)
I covered the “C can be a great grade” with both my geometry C (totally undeserved except that I made an 88 on the state wide final) and my Genetics C (totally deserved. I was one of 9 students, out of 70 students, who finished the class and passed. And I had none of the three years of prerequisites.)
I introduced the students to each other and explained that knowing someone else in college would help them stay in school.
And I went over the handouts on policy and the homework which is all about them. 10 groups, 10 things good at, 2 paragraphs introducing yourself
I barely finished in the 80 minute class time.
by Dr Davis on January 6, 2008
Tightly Wound has a post on “The MLA Wonders Why You Should Teach Literature: Again.”
I am getting ready to teach a literature course. I’ve been thinking about those questions.
What is the point of teaching literature?
My answer to my students is to help them understand the culture.
But the question I answer in class most comprehensively is one that wasn’t asked.
Why is literature always depressing?
I hate to be depressed. I like it when the good guy wins. I like it when the hero emerges unscathed. I like it when the bad guy loses. But in literature that rarely happens. Why not?
This is a shortened form of my lecture on this topic:
Do you remember when you thought knock-knock jokes were the funniest things in the universe? And you would tell them again and again and just roll on the floor laughing? How many of you still love knock-knock jokes? (No show of hands, please.)
Your sense of humor has changed just over your lifetime, maybe even only over a small part of your lifetime.
What is funny changes just like that. Jokes that were hysterical when I was in college have to be explained to you because you don’t know the context.
But sad things don’t change. It’s sad if your father dies today and it was sad three thousand years ago. It’s bad if you accidentally marry your mother today. And it was thousands of years ago. It’s still horrific if you walk in and find your wife’s body after her suicide. It’s still horrific if you gouge your eyes out. It’s still horrific if one of your sons kills the other son. All those things are still sad.
That’s why we still read Oedipus Rex and Antigone.
Sad things stay the same. Funny changes.
