A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

Joanna Anos

Associate Professor, Adjunct

Bio

BA, 1985 Northwestern University; MFA in Writing 2001, SAIC. Journal Publications (poetry): Blast Furnace (online); Full Circle; Luna; Denver Quarterly; New Millennium Writings; TriQuarterly; Southwest Review; Greensboro Review; The American Scholar. National and International Juried Group Exhibitions (printmaking and drawing): Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT; Site: Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY; Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, MN; Heuser Art Gallery, Bradley University, Peoria, IL; Anderson Gallery, Drake University, Des Moines, IA; Remarque/New Grounds Print Workshop, Albuquerque, NM. Awards: Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry.

Personal Statement

My goal as a teacher is to guide students toward the recognition and realization of their own intellectual potential. I desire students to learn to ask good questions rather than seek right answers, to embrace, rather than turn away from, complication and complexity, and to have patience with not knowing, since it is the place from which knowing begins.

 

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

At the heart of the writing project is the writing process: from sketching to planning, free writing to drafting, envisioning to revisioning. Writing requires both the creative and critical mind; it asks for patience with not knowing and provides us with the means--if we allow ourselves to follow where it may lead--to get from nowhere to somewhere, from not having the words to finding our voice. Process is primary in this writing seminar: students will explore their own and others' ways of making, read artists' writings about art, write in a variety of short forms, including the essay, and pursue a longer, multi-part writing project.

Class Number

1546

Credits

3

Description

To have curiosity is to be inquisitive, to wonder and to want to know. To be a curiosity, on the other hand, is to be a novelty or rarity, something odd or unusual or strange. In this writing intensive course, students explore curiosities, practice wonder, and pursue questioning. Readings include verbal and visual texts: essays and articles, photographs and artifacts. Students write and revise several essays of modest length, including analyses of visual texts and their own “curated collection” of curiosities.

Class Number

1437

Credits

3

Description

Bird talk is talk about birds, about flight and flying, migration, metamorphosis, and song; about bird-beings and human beings, who want to be birds or, at least, bird-like, and about artists whose art is avian inspired. Readings for this writing course include essays and a selection of myths, tales, and poems; visual texts include bird-art at the Art Institute. Students write and revise several essays, including a comparative textual analysis and a verbal-visual “field guide” of their own design.

Class Number

2316

Credits

3