Words and Pictures

This is a course with writing at its center and the other arts, mainly but not exclusively visual, around it. It should let you see what you can put together that has been kept apart. We will read and look at all kinds of things—children’s books, mysteries, poetry, short stories, fairy tales, graphic novels, performance pieces—and think about the ways in which people have used writing and other arts to speak to each other. In conference work, people in these classes have combined text and pictures involving cartoons, quilts, T-shirts, texts with music behind them, and so on. There will be weekly assignments that specify what emotional territory you are in but not what you make of it. This semester course has less elaborate conference work than the yearlong course.