Traditionally, writers have engaged with the visual arts, music and other aesthetic forms through ekphrasis. From Virginia Woolf's Oh! To Be A Painter or John Berger's Ways of Seeing to Hanif Abdurraqib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, wonderful art and music criticism has influenced new phenomenologies and methods of writing. But in this class, we will aim not to write about, analyze or describe works from other disciplines, so much as to find a way to feel and write through our individual experiences of their specific structures and forms. As poet Douglas Kearney recounts Fred Moten saying in a Callaloo interview: "I listen to some music I love and it inspires me to write a poem. My poem is not going to be that music. And if my poem attempts to imitate that music, it's not going to be worth a lot. But if it's an attempt to get at what's essential to that music, perhaps it will approach the secret of that music, but only by way of that secret's poetic reproduction." What is the essence of an artwork, or comic, or song, and is it even possible to reproduce that essence—even in part—through writing? This nontraditional, intergenre class seeks to collaboratively explore the possibilities of that question. We will look at the work of diverse makers of painting, sculpture, photography, film, music and performance as a means of developing new and innovative approaches to composition. Some excursions to museums and institutions off campus will be required.

Visit Workday to view this information.