Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late.
When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a
heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you
exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before
any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you
all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide
that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar.
Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns
himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your
opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the
discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do
depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
--Kenneth
Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (1941)
But what if it’s not a parlor that you are entering, but a
gallery, or a museum, or Bryant Park? What’s going on in the design world? What
are industrial designers talking about? How many fine artists are feeling the
pressure to abandon oil paints? Should fashion designers cut out the
leather?
This essay will ask you to find out what is going on.
For this essay you will identify and research an art and
design debate. You will seek out a particular debate to respond to—and the
easiest way to ensure that you are engaging in a debate is to respond to
specific writers. You will then write a persuasive essay that takes a stand in
that discussion—you will, as Burke writes, “put in your oar.” You will present
the conversation for your reader and
enter the conversation.
In order to help you research and to draft the essay, you
will complete three Building Blocks. I am including the descriptions of these
below (scroll down).
A summary of the debate
should appear early in the essay. Your reader should know what is at stake.
You are encouraged to use your own perspective as a way into the conversation.
That is, your personal experiences can supplement your sources. Be sure to try
to employ specific rhetorical strategies (the three appeals, anecdotes,
literary techniques, and so on) when drafting your essay.
Your essay should address counterarguments, or naysayers,
and these perspectives might come from your sources. When addressing your
opposition’s point of view, be careful to cue your reader so that it doesn’t
seem like suddenly you have changed your mind. We will be discussing strategies
and templates for maintaining control of an argument. We will also discuss
various organizational strategies for the essay.
The Guidelines:
• The essay
should be at least 1500 words.
• Follow MLA
guidelines: use in-text citations and include a Works Cited Page that contains a total of four sources.
• This should
be a thesis-driven essay, one that develops a substantiated, thought-out position on an issue related to your art
and design area of interest, or issues that consider
creativity in more general terms. However, you have the option of using a traditional, front-loaded thesis
statement, or a delayed thesis.
• Your topic
and research should be relevant to studies at CCAD (no papers regarding the legalization of
marijuana, or the drinking age, or college football, or judo, etc.)
• You are
encouraged to find an art and design topic that does engage a socio- political issue, though these essays
won’t be graded more favorably. For example, a
fashion student might explore issues of green design. A fine art student might explore precautionary methods that might
make for a healthier studio environment (proper
ventilation, etc.)
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