Course Description
Summary
This scriptorium, a “place for writing,” functions 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 write in 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 learning goals include practicing to write with complexity, imagination, and clarity, as we read model examples of form and content on the theme of Beauty. How is Beauty defined, created, reified, critiqued, rejected, or renewed? Who gets to determine what is beautiful and what is not? How does cultural and historical context affect what is deemed beautiful? What is the structure of the perception of Beauty? How does Beauty affect us and change us? We will study essential texts about the subject of Beauty, which may include the following authors: Adorno, Mieke Bal, Balzac, Barthes, Berger, Judith Butler, Octavia Butler, Arthur C. Danto, Bram Dijkstra, Umberto Eco, Stuart Hall, H.D., Saidiya Hartman, Cathy Park Hong, Keats, Robin Coste Lewis, Clarice Lispector, Ovid, Claudia Rankine, Elaine Scarry, Shakespeare, Sontag.
