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.

An attempt, a venture, an experiment, a weighing - the essayist discovers new insight into the common, the peculiar, the sacred, the profane - drawing lines between the trivial and profound, the essayist tries: while difficult to define, this genre instructs, entertains, questions and refines. Students of this course will examine this genre of literature and will practice it, too: being introduced to a wide range of authors, writing on topics familiar and foreign, from the personal to the argumentative, from the art historical to the humorous, students will practice this craft by critically analyzing the work of others and writing different types of essays in a workshop environment that emphasizes the writing process, from generating ideas, to oral presentations, to drafting and peer review, to re-seeing and revising. FYS I 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.

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.

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.