The Craft of Writing

T/TH 5:00 – 6:30 PM, Wheeler 200 ///

This course aims to develop students’ critical thinking, reading, and writing skills through close analysis of works of visual art and philosophy, with a particular emphasis on the twentieth-century artistic practice of South America. Through a focus on geometric abstraction in Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil, we will work on close analysis across various mediums, national boundaries, and decades of work. Emphasizing the ideological underpinnings of these various movements, we will then try to recontextualize South American abstraction within the philosophical writings that influenced their aesthetic choices and guided the drafting of their manifestos. We hope this course will force students to rethink any assumption they might have over the content  or form of Latin American modern art, along with better understanding the truly global nature of aesthetic and philosophical production.

Moving between foundational texts from aesthetic philosophy and modern works of art, this course will facilitate proficiency approaching visual, literary, and theoretical works. As such, students are expected to consider what close reading means when applied to a variety of aesthetic forms. As the first half of a year-long writing curriculum, we will focus on the development of exegetical writing. This means that a clear understanding of the courses’ texts is essential to successful essay writing.