Writing and the Arts

INQUIRY DESCRIPTION            

WRT 205 courses in Writing and the Arts will ask students to consider such questions as What are the genre conventions for arts writing?, How does arts writing invite a particular way of seeing, understanding, and interacting with art?, and What’s at stake in arts writing, and for whom? Students will read deeply and critically in the arts, encounter art firsthand, research current trends and controversies in the arts, practice analysis through primary research methods such as observation and interviewing, and compose their own arts projects across platforms, genres, and media.

Below are two possible trajectories on which to approach this inquiry. Detailed explanations of each trajectory, readings, and assignment sheets are offered in links below.¹

Trajectory 1

Trajectory 2

These trajectories were developed in consultation with leaders and members of the 2016–2017 inquiry working group and the 2017–2018 Lower Division Committee. Special thanks to Anne Fitzsimmons and Jonna Gilfus for providing the basis for Trajectory 1 and Steve Thorley for providing the basis for Trajectory 2.

TRAJECTORY 1

This WRT 205 class encourages students to recognize and value research in various forms, from the opening days of the semester until the closing portfolio, by requiring them to engage with researchable questions as writers andreaders and come to recognize all the ways in which research circulates in arts writing genres. 

In Project #1, instructors choose one of the following assignments: Students write a short essay analyzing an arts experience drawing on one secondary source or analyze a small set of arts writing genres they locate and research. The three arts encounters run simultaneously with the first two projects. Students compose three short texts (about 500 words each) in which they describe, contextualize, and analyze a new art encounter of their choice. 

In Project #2, students conduct and compose an arts Interview using media of their choice—audio, video, and/or print—rhetorically situating the interview for a public audience and drawing on at least one secondary source to deepen their analysis.

In Project #3, students select one of the three arts encounters and transform it into an arts review, drawing on primary and secondary research to establish their ethos as reviewers. 

In Project #4, students research an arts controversy and create an insiders’ guide to explain it to a public audience.

Students post every project to a website of their choice (Expressions, WordPress, Tumblr, etc.) to support a semester-long conversation about what their audiences need to know and to practice representing their research across genres. Teachers might assign reflections after each project or wait until the end of the semester and assign an overall reflection. Throughout the course, regardless of the form it takes, students are encouraged to reflect on their composing processes, their engagement with research, and the assignment goals. 

The class has shared texts that vary in genre and medium and that reflect current perspectives and conversations across the arts. Below are sample texts that have been used in the past for this course. Instructors will want to consider new texts and current art events to explore. 

Along with the WRT 205 foundational readings provided here, below are readings that may be useful for this trajectory:

Cole, Teju. “A True Picture of Black Skin.” Known and Strange Things. Faber and Faber, 2017. [pdf]

Dunbar, Erica Armstrong. “Washington's New African-American Museum Shows How Black History Shaped the American Experience.” The Nation, 30 Nov. 2016, www.thenation.com/article/washingtons-new-african-american-museum-shows-how-black-history-shaped-the-american-experience/.

Gross, Terry. “For the Handsome Family, Music Is a Safe Place to Express 'Terrifying Things.'” NPR, 19 Sept. 2016, www.npr.org/2016/09/19/494551824/for-the-handsome-family-music-is-a-safe-place-to-express-terrifying-things

Hajdu, David. “Bruce Springsteen's Redemption Song.” The Nation, 5 Dec. 2016, thenation.com/article/bruce-springsteens-redemption-song. [pdf]

Levy, Ariel. “Catherine Opie, All-American Subversive.” The New Yorker, 10 July 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/catherine-opie-all-american-subversive.

McKenna, Klea. “Nikki Grattan on Interviewing Artists.” In the Make, 18 Feb. 2013, http://inthemake.com/nikki-grattan-on-interviewing-artists/

Mellor, Carl. “Dazzling Quilts Highlight Memorable Show.” Syracuse New Times, 8 Mar. 2017, syracusenewtimes.com/dazzling-quilts-highlight-memorable-show. 

Middleman, Rachel, and Glenn Ligon. “History with a Small ‘h’: A Conversation with Glenn Ligon.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Duke University Press, 10 May 2006, muse.jhu.edu/article/197481/summary. [pdf]

Miller, Brenda, and Suzanne Paola. “Chapter 5: Writing the Arts.” Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction. McGraw-Hill, 2004. [pdf]

Moody, Rick. “Chapter 1. Guilty Pleasures.” On Celestial Music: and Other Adventures in Listening. Little, Brown and Co., 2012. 131-157. [pdf]
 
Schulten, Michael Gonchar and Katherine. “Thinking Critically: Reading and Writing Culture Reviews: Advice on How to Write a Review by Three New York Times Critics.” The New York Times, 22 Oct. 2015, learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/thinking-critically-reading-and-writing-culture-reviews/?_r=0.

Wells, Pete. “As Not Seen on TV.” The New York Times, 14 Nov. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant-review-guys-american-kitchen-bar-in-times-square.html.

Syllabus and assignment sheets can be found here. 

TRAJECTORY 2

This trajectory invites students to consider two contested and interwoven terms: “art” and “culture.” Often spoken of as if they were the same thing, these two terms are actually open to diverse and evolving interpretations. Students research art-making and culture-making all over the world, in the past and in the present, looking at high, low, and middlebrow culture in concert halls and museums, on Netflix and at the movies, spilling out of iPhones, and in the streets. They then turn to a sustained inquiry on a research topic of their choice related to art and culture. 

Project #1
Early in the course, students inventory what they know about art and culture as well as writing and research. They brainstorm topics about which they want and need to know more  about as individuals, members of a disciplinary community, and citizens in a democratic culture. They learn to draw on a variety of primary and secondary sources and share their findings with the class. This project culminates in a portfolio that includes a written essay in which students reflect on the research they’ve done and propose what they hope to investigate for the rest of the course. 

Project #2 
The second project, “Art Encounters: Experiencing the Art and Culture Around Us,” runs through the first eight weeks of the semester. Students write about different art experiences and come to see how the arts are all around us, from SU’s campus to our city to the wider world of media. The instructor and the students develop a “menu” of possible individual and collective activities, potentially ranging from an art exhibition at the Everson Museum downtown to a show at the SUArts Galleries in the Shaffer Art building to a music event. Students respond to prompts, conduct research using primary and secondary sources, and report back to the class’s “communication community” about what they have seen and what it means to them.

Project #3 
The third project, “Researching as an Emerging Expert: What’s Going On in the Worlds of Art and Culture and What Do I Want/Need to Know?”, asks students to choose an area of inquiry on an issue of consequence to their lives as artists, art lovers, members of a disciplinary community, and/or simply consumers of the arts. Students research the issue while exploring how people write and research in fields associated with a given art form or cultural phenomenon, what matters and what counts as evidence and expertise. As they perform this research, drawing on primary and secondary sources, they reflect on how their findings relate to the larger themes and threads of the class as well as how those findings change what we know about writing and research. The project culminates in a source collection and an “issues briefing” in which students present to the class what they looked for and what they found, how they processed the source materials, and how those materials helped them make sense of their issue. 

Project #4 
The fourth project, “The Time Capsule Project: What ‘Matters’ About Our Art and Culture, and What Do We Want People of the Future to Know/Think/Feel About It?,” builds on what students have learned individually and collectively throughout the course, taking the pulse of our culture and making decisions about what should be preserved and what messages should be sent to the future about who we are and how/why we “make” and “make special” the things that we do. The intended audience is a community of WRT 205 students 100 years in the future. Students select a range of art artifacts to place in their capsules, then conduct research on and write about those objects and their significance to create a portrait of their world for a future generation. The final product will be a multimedia presentation that shares their research and explains their contributions to the capsule, including their rationales for selecting the items in their collections. This project encourages students to think individually and collaboratively about issues that they have been wrestling with all semester. 

Project #5 
The final project is an electronic portfolio featuring work from throughout the semester, including process-oriented work as well as “products” from student projects. It will also include reflective work performed during the semester and a culminating reflective essay written at the end of the course. 

Readings from Ellen Dissanayake’s What Is Art For? (University of Washington Press, 1990) may be useful to instructors. 

Syllabus and assignment sheets can be found here.