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Research Project: Research Paper or Final Project

6-8 pages, regular font, double-spaced, ~1500 words, MLA format for Works Cited section.

Schedule

– Hardcopy of short proposal due in class

– Attend the Research Workshop today with Jill Luedke—meet at Tuttleman Learning Center Room 08 (Lower Level)

- Hardcopy of Bibliography due in class

– Check your progress - do you need an extension? What other obligations do you have right now? Have you been or are you getting sick? Are you in some kind of wretched, suffering state of being? Don’t wait! Talk to Dr. Ho your very reasonable professor and deal with it TODAY!

- Research Paper or Final Project due in class

- You will select an object to research and investigate in depth. In your paper you will describe the object, situate the object in terms art history and in terms of issues of race, identity, and/or the American experience; and you will assesses significance of the object in terms of meaning and/or function within its socio-political and historical context. You will compile a bibliography of at least 10 sources. You will each be completing two peer-reviews and also have a draft of your paper reviewed by two other students before the due date. You may not turn in your paper until a draft has been reviewed by two of your peers and you have made the necessary edits and changes.

1. Proposal

a. Brainstorm and make a list of what has interested you this semester.

i. Go over your notes and readings.

ii. Think about your visits to art museums or galleries.（answer: Philadelphia art museum）

iii. What works of art did you look at for your group presentation?(answer: Africa American history)

iv. Which artists and filmmakers meant the most to you in this class?

b. Narrow down your list to a few works of art that address the issues that interest you the most. For some of you the ideas or issues will guide you, and for others, the work of art will take priority.

c. Ask yourself a question about the one work of art that interests you the most.

d. Submit a proposal for your research paper or art project that addresses a question about a specific work of art. You only need to write a few sentences, but you must state your question and identify a specific work of art according to artist, title, and date.

2. Bibliography - Submit a bibliography with at least 10 sources in Chicago or MLA format. This is perhaps twice as many of the sources you actually end up citing in your paper. You may use the articles from the course readings. Here are examples of sources I will accept:

a. The work of art

b. A book that talks about the object or artist at length

c. Articles and books on theory or analysis that have already been written.

d. Many essays are published as chapters in anthologies. Anthologies are frequently very good sources since you get a nice group of essays by different scholars all on the same topic.

e. Monographs, catalogues raisonnées, and art history reference books. The first two types of books focus on an artist’s entire body of work and/or biography and give details that might not show up in a more theoretical text (like the measurements of the objects, their provenance, details about their condition, etc.).

f. Films – Think about the ones we have seen in this class. Sometimes they are documentaries, so you can use the info from them in your research. Other times they are a work of art in themselves. Perhaps you will be making connections between a film and another work of art.

g. You will be able to access many sources online. Here are databases I recommend:

i. Oxford Art Online

ii. The Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists

iii. Art Index - Offers abstracts of journals, museum bulletins and yearbooks in the fields of art, architecture, decorative arts and photography. Covers abstracts from 1929-present, full-text articles 1997-present.

iv. International Bibliography of Art - Provides coverage of scholarship on American art from the colonial era to the present, and global art since 1945

v. Bibliography of the History of Art - Offers abstracts of journal articles, books, conference proceedings, dissertations and exhibition and dealers' catalogs. Includes European and American art from late antiquity to the present. Covers 1975-2007.

vi. ARTbibliographies Modern - Provides abstracts of journal articles, books, essays, exhibition catalogs, dissertations, and exhibition reviews on all areas of modern and contemporary art including photography, sculpture and art history and theory. Covers late 1960's-present.

vii. ProQuest Research Library - Citations & full-text articles in a variety of disciplines.

viii. JSTOR - Articles from the top journals in most disciplines. Coverage is through 3 to 5 years ago.

ix. WorldCat - A catalog of the materials held by libraries worldwide.

x. Film Literature Index - Citations to articles, film reviews and book reviews from film and television journals from 30 countries. The journals range from scholarly to popular. Covers the years between 1976-2001. (The print version of this index covers 1973-2004.

xi. Film Indexes Online - The BFI's Film Index International and The AFI's Catalog. An authoritative alternative to the IMDB. Search by keyword; character name; genre; release year and more. Extensive plot summaries are included in AFI, which covers American film from 1893—1974, with additional records covering selected major films from 1975 onwards. For articles and film review citations, search for a film and see the references at the bottom.

xii. FIAF Index to Film Periodicals Plus - Index offering access to academic and popular film journals from 1972 to the present, including the following databases: Index to Film Periodicals; Treasures from Film Archives; Documentation Collections; and FIAF affiliates' publications

3. Paper Components

a. Formal Analysis – “Data Collection (observation and collection of visual facts)”

i. Take photos of the work and of what’s around it. Include some detail photos and different views (different distances, angles, lighting, etc.). Include these with your paper.

ii. What is my first response to the work? Trust yourself.

iii. Sketch the work.

iv. What do the physical properties and the form contribute? Take into account

1. The material – is the paint thick or thin? Is the marble polished and reflective? Texture?

2. The size – how do you feel standing before this object? Scale?

3. The color – realistic? Symbolic?

4. The composition (arrangement of forms) – balanced? Symmetrical? Densely patterned?

5. Location and context of site (especially in public art)

6. Where is the best place to stand and look at the work? Do you need to move when you look at this work?

7. Light: Role of light in the work? Role of light on the work?

8. What is the title? Does it say something about the work?

9. Who or what can we identify in the work? How does this figure or form relate to other elements in the work? Why is this figure or form place here and not there? What would happen if you moved or took out a form?

10. What is the chief interest in the work?

v. Focus on creating a logical order so that your reader doesn’t get lost. Think about your description in terms of a spatial map of the artwork.

1. Summarize what is going on overall in the work before moving on to describe the details of the object

2. Describe the composition - Describe components in an order that makes sense. Maybe the components lead to a focal point. Maybe the components tell a story or forward an argument. Maybe there is no visual/formal focus.

3. Break down the artwork into its major sections, EX: foreground, middle-ground, and background. Or discuss one side of the work and then move across the object and discuss the other side.

4. Use spatially-orienting prepositional phrases like “on the left side one sees,” “to the lower right the artist has depicted,” “in the foreground there are,” “within the top third,” “at the center,” “between the,” “towards the,” “above this section,” etc.

5. Check your work: If you were to give your written formal analysis to a friend who had never seen the object, s/he would be able to describe or draw the object for you, or at least pick it out of a lineup.

b. Theory/criticism - Situate the object in a theoretical, historical, or social context of the object, artist, or time period. How does the object relate to ideas about race, identity, and experience (culture, politics, religion, gender, or class)?

i. The theory or criticism should arise out of the art, rather than be superimposed on it, which means that the formal facts you present in the formal analysis should “prove” or testify to your argument.

ii. Keep an image of the object in view as you write.

iii. How do the formal or stylistic qualities of the object reflect or affect the time in which they were made?

iv. How does the art connect with the ideas or theories of a particular person, e.g. Derrida, Du Bois, Trinh, Zukin, Hayden, Fraser, Wu, London, Ongiri, Mulvey…?

v. Compare the object with another in order to illustrate a necessary point. You will need to talk about other works by the same artist who made your object. Do not just list their similar and different qualities. Instead, suggest what those differences or similarities mean and analyze them on some level.

c. What did you learn? Did the research/writing process answer your proposal question? Often the best part of a student’s paper comes in the conclusion and the rest is relatively unfocused. If this is the case, then go back and rewrite the necessary parts of the paper.

d. Trim down and edit the formal analysis, so it only contains points relevant to the theory/criticism section. EX: If it turns out that lighting has nothing to do with the focus of your argument, then leave it out.

e. Check that you don’t use the verb “is” too often. Use active verbs.

f. Keep it simple.

4. Peer Review - Have your paper edited by at least two of your peers. If you liked working with some of the people in your group, then you should definitely ask them to be peer editors. You may have as many peer reviewers as you wish, but as least two are mandatory. We will be discussing the details of peer review in a few weeks.

5. Checklist - What You Will Turn In

a. Essay

b. Numbered and labeled images: at least five photos, sketches, detail views, close-ups, images of other works of art that you mention or discuss in comparison, etc.

c. Works Cited

d. Hardcopies of your earlier drafts with comments, marks, and editing from peer reviews (at least two reviews by different classmates).