Sophie Goalson

Reading Art is a seminar that orients students to college studies and emphasizes students' advancement of college-level critical reading and thinking skills. Students learn how to read and analyze artworks using the formal vocabulary of art and design, as well as how to read about art in art history textbooks, scholarly journals, and other sources. Students improve their ability to process, retain, and apply information by using active learning strategies and graphic organizers, including a schematic note-taking system. In addition to weekly readings and exercises, students complete an in-depth synthesis project on an artwork of their choosing. Regular museum visits complement class work.

This First Year Seminar course will explore humor writing as a serious artform, and will employ analysis strategies to get at the core of the question of what makes something funny. By the end of the semester, students will be able to write analytical essays that pick apart and organize ideas around both literature and humor, and will read and explore humorous writing throughout the English canon. The psychology of humor - exactly what it is that makes something funny - is complicated and requires careful mastery. This course will examine how writers and artists have historically used humor to reach audiences deeply, emotionally, and politically. Through works by Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, Nora Ephron, Susan Orlean, Jack Handey, and Trevor Noah, we will get to the heart of what makes something funny, and how humor has changed over time. We will also look at the different formats of comedy, including satire, parody, film-writing, stand-up comedy, and more. Students should expect to write 15 to 20 pages of formal, revisable writing (4 short papers and one medium-length paper). In addition, they will do regular, rigorous in-class writing, and engage in weekly analytical conversation.

As an art form, humor is often considered menial and unrefined. In reality, the psychology of humor ¿ exactly what it is that makes something funny ¿ is complicated and requires careful mastery. This course will examine how writers and artists have historically used humor to reach audiences deeply, emotionally, and politically. Through works by Mark Twain, Franz Kafka, Calvin Trillin, Jade Chang, Percival Everett and others, we will get to the heart of what makes something funny, and how humor has changed over time. Students will build on foundational academics habits with weekly short writings. To complete the course, students must write 3 papers (one analytical, one argumentative, and one creative.

As we enter a post-pandemic world, the impact of loneliness and importance of community is clearer than ever. But at the same time, the picture of the American family is changing: the nuclear model of the 1940s and 1950s has shifted to one that is less culturally defined and more dynamic, and this constantly shifting structure calls for new definitions and careful exploration. In this course, we will dig into the standard narratives around relationship structures, and the ways in which writers and thinkers have been exploding these structures for centuries. We'll read about sacred non-romantic relationships in Plato's texts, romantic friendships of the Victorian era, queer family history from the 1960s and 1970s, and 20th century ideas of radical friendship and the queering of friendship. Authors we'll study in this course will include Plato, Tennyson, Charlotte Bronte, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Eileen Myles, Michelle Tea, Kristen Radtke, dean spade, and others. We'll also explore and discuss themes off the beaten path (but well within the forest) of queerness ¿ like asexuality, ethical nonmonagmy, polyamory, chosen family, intentional community, and more. This course will build on academic essay writing skills from FYSI to synthesize ideas and information in an effort to analyze how writers and thinkers have defined and redefined family. Students can expect to produce 20-25 pages of formal, revisable writing, including a final research project.

This course explores nonfiction narratives told in the first person. Students will read and discuss examples of memoir, personal essay, journalism, and diary comics, as well as more experimental formats. Truth, point of view, and ethics will be examined, particularly in how they work along with storytelling, tone, style, and other formal aspects of comics. The work created by the students will vary broadly based on their interests and personalities, with the general goal of self-examination.

Readings and guest artists will vary each semester. Selected readings include graphic novels and mini-comics that have been published recently by both large publishers and self-published by individual cartoonists. Skype visits allow students to ask questions of comics artists, critics, publishers, and distributors. Past guests have included artists Julia Wertz, Carta Monir, Summer Pierre, and John Porcellino, Lauren Weinstein, critic Rob Clough, and publisher Raighne of 2dcloud. Some additional artists that I often introduce are Gabrielle Bell, Vanessa Davis, Lisa Hanawalt, Sarah Gliddens, Karl Stevens, Kevin Budnik, Roz Chast, Cara Bean, and Liana Finck.

Students will reproduce 16 copies of a 24 or more page comic, which will be distributed to the class during the final critique. They will complete one or more pages each week, which will be critiqued and discussed throughout the whole semester. Students will read several books and online comics, which will be discussed in class.