Class Info

If you got an invite to be an author on this blog, you should also have gotten a link to the class website where the syllabus and readings are posted. Check your email (and your UArts email) to verify that you have gotten this message.

In case you missed it, here's the content of that email message, with all links:

Welcome back for your final summer at UArts! I look forward to meeting with you on Wednesday, June 30 at 9am in room M4 for our seminar.

We will be extremely busy this term, so I want to hit the ground running.

Please take a minute to familiarize yourself with the syllabus that's posted on my teaching site:

http://web.me.com/gerard_brown/UArts_GR750/Criticism_Home.html

It lists all the relevant course information and will include a week-to-week plan after I have finished coordinating it with the rest of the faculty (I am trying to make sure we don't pile due dates on you). But it briefly describes each major assignment and gives you a sense of what you're in for.

On the top of the page, there is a link that says READINGS. Please follow that link and download the readings we will discuss in class on June 30. There are two essays in one PDF - one by dance critic Arlene Croce and another by author Joyce Carol Oates. There is a response in the third PDF by Homi Bhabha. We will spend the most of the first hour and a half of class of time discussing Croce and Oates, with a little time for Bhabha. I will be inviting each of you to join a blog for the class and would like you to post one discussion question for the readings before 5pm on Tuesday, June 29. Expect the invitation to arrive Wednesday, June 23 (look in your junk mail folders if you don't see it)

You will notice that I expect 2 1/2 - 5 hours of reading and/or writing per week in the syllabus. If you would like to get ahead of the game, please begin reading James Elkins' short book "What happened to art criticism?", available in the bookstore. Each of you will be assigned a section to summarize and analyze for the class on July 9.

Finally - I have project that we will begin on June 30 I plan to have due on July 7. The project entails a presentation and requires that you spend considerable time in the library. I think it would be vastly preferable for us to meet in the evening on July 7 at UArts so you can have the morning to work on the project in the library or computer lab. How does that sound? We'll firm up that plan when we meet next week.

Thanks in advance for your attention to this course and I look forward to working with you all - it's great to be back at University of the Arts and let's have a good summer.

Best,

gerard