{"id":211652,"date":"2017-01-23T09:34:47","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T14:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=211652"},"modified":"2017-01-24T12:52:52","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T17:52:52","slug":"5000-years-of-writing-prompts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/5000-years-of-writing-prompts\/","title":{"rendered":"‘5,000 years of writing prompts’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat do you see?\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Cappetta, assistant curator of academic programs at the University of Rochester\u2019s Memorial Art Gallery<\/a><\/strong>, poses the question to the group of eight students seated in front of him. The students are enrolled in a composition course taught by Stella Wang \u201900 (PhD), a lecturer in writing at the College. They are surrounded by portraits\u2014some that seem familiar and traditional, others less so.<\/p>\n

Without any background information, the students inspect the painting in question\u2014American artist Kehinde Wiley\u2019s After Memling’s Portrait of a Man with a Letter<\/em>\u2014and then share their observations.<\/p>\n

The 2013 painting is based on a work by Northern Renaissance painter Hans Memling (1430\u20131494). Memling placed his subject\u2014most likely a Flemish merchant\u2014against a pastoral scene, while Wiley depicts a 21st-century African-American man in a similar pose and setting.<\/p>\n

Marta Kontny \u201917, a senior from Bytom, Poland, points out that you don\u2019t typically see portraits of a black person posing in front of a pastoral backdrop, questioning the artist\u2019s intent for doing so.<\/p>\n

Sarah Pursell \u201920, a freshman from Allentown, Pennsylvania, brings up the contrast between the white clothing worn by the subject in Wiley\u2019s painting and the dark attire in many of the portraits from earlier centuries that surround the Wiley piece at the gallery.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah
Sarah Pursell ’20 listens to the discussion during a class visit to the museum. (University photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Other students share different observations, and a discussion about the artist and the piece develops.<\/p>\n

The exercise is part of a partnership between the College\u2019s Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program<\/a><\/strong> and the art museum that started during the 2015\u201316 academic year. Deborah Rossen-Knill, associate professor and director of the program, worked with the museum to help establish the partnership.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Memorial Art Gallery and the Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program work together well because the critical viewer\u2019s stance aligns with the critical research writer\u2019s stance,\u201d Rossen-Knill says. \u201cThe goal is to help students develop this critical stance across different contexts and ways of communicating.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTeaching with objects can be a great way to get students to think about something they haven\u2019t thought about before,\u201d says Marlene Hamann-Whitmore, the McPherson Director of Academic Programs at the museum, who helped launch the partnership. \u201cWe basically have 5,000 years of writing prompts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wang is one of several instructors in the Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program who have taken advantage of the partnership. Cappetta notes that he works with instructors to customize the visit to their and their students\u2019 needs. The pair chose to have her students focus on the Wiley portrait to open up a discussion of code-meshing\u2014a writing strategy that Wang describes as \u201cblending of languages, local varieties, or registers\u201d\u2014in a visual context.<\/p>\n

According to Wang, writers and artists alike adopt code-meshing \u201cto both work with and transcend the \u2018norm\u2019 for purposes of communication and argument.\u201d Students apply what they\u2019ve learned in one of their class assignments. In addition to a traditional research paper, students create a related project using code-meshing to reach an audience that would benefit from the findings.<\/p>\n

Wang also sees benefits to the visit that go beyond any particular assignment. Talking about a piece of artwork \u201chelps students think about the needs and expectations of the audience,\u201d Wang says.<\/p>\n

The collaboration is based loosely on the successful Art and Observation initiative, a longstanding partnership between the School of Medicine and Dentistry and the gallery that aims to help medical workers\u2014physicians, nurses, hospital chaplains\u2014provide better care to patients.<\/p>\n

The Art and Observation initiative inspired wide-ranging efforts to expose students to the educational resources the museum provides. In November, Eastman School of Music freshmen enrolled in the Eastman Colloquium\u2014a course on the sounds, meanings, and uses of music within a variety of contexts\u2014explored the connections between music and visual art during a visit there. Art history, history, and English classes have also used the museum as a resource.<\/p>\n

Hamann-Whitmore sees something special in engaging the freshmen who make up most of Wang\u2019s class.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re new to the University, they haven\u2019t set their patterns to which part of the city they\u2019re comfortable in,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re remaking themselves, which is what one gets to do when one goes to college. It\u2019s a great time to show them that the Memorial Art Gallery is a really a pretty wonderful place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a partnership between the University’s Memorial Art Gallery and the College’s Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program, art objects become teaching tools to help students think and communicate critically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13092],"tags":[936,16072,31812],"class_list":["post-211652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-arts","tag-memorial-art-gallery","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-writing-speaking-and-argument-program"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n'5,000 years of writing prompts'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/5000-years-of-writing-prompts\/\" \/>\n<meta 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