spring 2005

word & image

morris eaves

spring 2005
morris eaves
guidelines
syllabus

Words and images light up different parts of our bodies and minds-different parts of our brains, our thoughts, our lives, and our societies. We receive language and pictures through sensory channels that are sometimes different (ears, eyes), sometimes the same ("texts" and "images" are often printed together on the same page or displayed together on the same website). The differences have registered in the way we remember and study them: in different academic "disciplines" and even in different departments of the university (English, for one, and Art History). As you would expect, then, these two ways of perceiving the world and communicating what we think about it have a long and tangled history of cooperation and conflict in the visual and literary arts. This seminar will sample some of the high points of this collusion along with some of the low points: in "shaped" poems, "graphic" novels in the comic-book tradition, movies, and in the strange and bizarre "illuminated books" of William Blake-exciting and thought-provoking evidence of what has been called "the problem of pictures." Work in the course will concentrate on short but intense stints of reading/looking, research, and writing. Word & Image is designed as a research seminar. open only to junior and senior English majors.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:05-12:20
Morey 304
CRN 47703

department of english, university of rochester