Alexander W Jochaniewicz

Reading Art is a seminar that orients students to college studies and emphasizes students' advancement of college-level critical reading and thinking skills. Students learn how to read and analyze artworks using the formal vocabulary of art and design, as well as how to read about art in art history textbooks, scholarly journals, and other sources. Students improve their ability to process, retain, and apply information by using active learning strategies and graphic organizers, including a schematic note-taking system. In addition to weekly readings and exercises, students complete an in-depth synthesis project on an artwork of their choosing. Regular museum visits complement class work.

This course will chronologically survey American poetry from its earliest periods to recent times. Students will be introduced to a wide spectrum of the finest poetry ever to be written, including (among others) poems from Phyllis Wheatley, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amit Majmudar, Terrance Hayes, Sherman Alexie, Garrett Hongo, and Natalie Diaz. Individual interpretations will be emphasized and slow-and-close reading will be emphasized, both in class and in formal writing assignments. In addition, students will be introduced to methods of literary study, appropriate terminology, and (art) historical contexts to help orient scholarship¿including how poets across time and space operate and innovate within literary conventions. Students will also write about poetry in both personal responses and formal analyses and will practice the process of writing, including prewriting, drafting, peer reviewing, and revising. FYSe develops college-level writing skills, prepares one for FYS II and upper level Liberal Arts courses, and allows one to improve expressing their ideas in writing.

True stories change people, and no other genre does this quite like Creative Nonfiction. While difficult to define, Creative Nonfiction is both experimental and traditional, blending fact with fiction, purpose with style¿an alchemy of poetry, fiction, and drama mixed with nonfiction¿the memoir, the chronicle, the essay¿to reveal what really happened, to me, to them. Entertaining and informative, yes¿personal, perhaps¿transformative, always. Reading Creative Nonfiction¿and writing it¿will change you, forever¿even if only by a single degree, like cracking a combination lock, slowly spinning the dial, your ear pressed against the vault, silently listening for that unmistakable¿click. This course will build upon what was learnt and practiced in First Year Seminar I with an emphasis in research and persuasion. Students can expect reading some killer works of literature and engaging in various stages in the writing process, including topic proposals and individual conferences, researching and reviewing scholarship, presentations and preliminary drafts, and peer reviewing and revising. The first half of the course will be geared towards reading various examples of Creative Nonfiction, examining elements of style and craftsmanship¿and the second half of the course will be more focused on a larger Creative Nonfiction project of the student¿s own discernment. Students should expect to write 20-25 pages of revisable writing, including shorter works of analysis, reflection, and scholarship review, as well as a longer final project. Overall, students will learn to embrace the writing process and establish writerly habits, while developing guided critical reading, thinking, and writing skills necessary for their success in upper-level course work.

The Foundations Writing Workshop is a process-based writing course that serves as students' initiation to the foundations of academic writing in a school of art and design. Students engage in the writing process, learn strategies for exploring topics, and develop their knowledge of the concepts and terminology of art and design through the practice of various kinds of written compositions. Analysis of essays and active participation in writing-critiques are integral components of the Workshop.