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Course Description

Summary

This scriptorium, a “place for writing,” serves as a class for writers interested in improving their academic essay-writing skills. We will read to write and write to read. Much of our time will be occupied with writing and revising—essai means “trial” or “attempt”—as we work to create new habits and strategies for our analytical writing. As we practice various essay structures with the aim of developing a persuasive, well-supported thesis, we will also revise collaboratively, improve our research skills, and study grammar and style. Our aim is to learn to write with complexity, imagination, and clarity, as we read model examples of form and content in the field of Visual Culture. How do we organize and understand our perceptions of the world? How do we look at objects? At paintings and photographs, advertisements and films? What do we see, and not see, when we visit a new place, or when we encounter an animal or a monster? And, importantly, how do we perceive ourselves and others? Readings may include texts by Berger, Barthes, Rankine, Mulvey, Hall, Lorde, Keats, Douglas, Said, Butler, hooks, Chang, Halberstam, Gilman, Scarry, Plato, Sontag.