Winter Quarter Arts Presentations (schedule below)

Original assignment:

Your final paper and your presentation will explore one theme that’s central in the artist that you have been studying through the careful description and interpretation of all or part of three of his or her works. (Of course, you can use other works briefly as illustrations or comparisons if you want to.)

The presentation and the paper are supposed to be like one of Snow’s chapters on Vermeer – they are supposed to help us see or hear the three pieces better, and to understand them and why they matter more deeply. (Obviously, they aren’t supposed to be as good as Snow’s book, which is the result of looking at Vermeer and writing and thinking about him for twenty years, but this is the kind of presentation and piece we’d like you to aspire to.)

Again, the presentations can use any medium you think will help – performance or video pieces about the artist’s life and work would be great. (If you do one of these projects with children, consult your seminar leader about the appropriate form for your presentation and your final paper.)

We now have an alternative to offer:

You can focus your paper and your presentation on how your particular artist uses elements of visual experience or aspects of sound to do whatever things his or her art does. (That is, you can focus on his or her style rather than on a theme.) We think this might be a more manageable framework for some people, particularly for presentations about musicians, so we hope you will consider it first, though using the original focus is also fine with us.)

The presentation is supposed to run between ten and twelve minutes. Our time is limited, so we'll be ushering you off the stage politely at the twelve minute mark. Of course you should practice your presentation; please time it when you do. If you are going to need any media equipment or special arrangements and have not already listed them on the sign up sheet Nancy passed around, please email her pronto. If you need help learning how to do any media stuff or questions about equipment, please talk to Thad. (*Please* remember to try out any media plans with the actual equipment well in advance. Please don't just show up with some computer or disk and say, "Here it is; I sure hope it works.")

Whichever approach you take, the paper is supposed to be between five and seven pages long. It is due at 9 AM on Monday March 8 - at the beginning of our first meeting in Week 10. Do the cites in MLA format, just like last quarter - Thad will resend the resource page about that in case you lost it. It is to be accompanied by a list of the books and articles you read for your project - all of them, not just the ones you end up citing in your paper - just like the last one.

Winter Quarter Arts Presentation Schedule

Week 9 Thursday, March 4, 1-3

Week 10 Thursday, March 11, 9-12