Instructions for response papers.

Early in the semester I will be assigning short response papers, basically a 600- to 900-word response to some of the assigned texts. Details about each assignment are provided below. These assignments are meant to help you develop your critical thinking skills, and ideally you will be able to use these skills throughout the semester as you do the assigned readings and as you start working on the research project. Because the readings are long, I am not expecting you to respond to the entirety of the text, nor to summarize what the readings are saying. Instead, I recommend that you read the questions that you are meant to be answering first, then do the reading with these questions in mind, and when you get to the point of writing, try to answer the questions using specific examples from the readings to support your ideas.

Please refer to the notes in your syllabus about appropriate formats for written work and about plagiarism. You should be using information from the readings in your response paper, and thus you should be including parenthetical references or footnotes in Chicago-style citation in the body of the paper and a list of works cited at the end of the assignment.

If you have further questions about writing response papers, you might visit the HWS Writes website (http://www.hws.edu/academics/ctl/hws_writes.aspx).

Assignments (due at the beginnings of the class periods, via Canvas or as a printed copy).

For this response, focus on these questions: How can theories of gender be used to interpret art? How are Western and Chinese theories of gender different? Consider these two readings:

Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, “Introduction: The Expanding Discourse,” in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York: IconEditions, 1992), 1–25;

and Lisa Raphals, “Yin and Yang,” in Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 139–68.

Feb. 3 (M). Setting the terms: Western and Chinese theories of representation.

For this response, focus on this question: Why and how can we use ideas important in poetry to understand and analyze painting? Consider these three readings:

M. H. Abrams, “Figurative Language,” “Imagery,” and “Motif and Theme,” in A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed. (Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1993), 66–70, 86–87, 121;

Martin J. Powers, “Discourses of Representation in Tenth and Eleventh Century China,” in The Art of Interpreting, ed. Susan C. Scott (University Park, Pa.: The Department of Art History, The Pennsylvania State University, 1995), 88–127;

and Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, comp. and ed., Early Chinese Texts on Painting, 2nd ed. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 203–5.

For this response, focus on these questions: How do secondary sources and primary sources provide us with different kinds of information about painting? What can we learn about how gender relates to painting when the writers do not seem to be thinking about gender? Consider these two readings:

SECONDARY SOURCE: Wai-kam Ho, “Aspects of Chinese Painting from 1100 to 1350,” in Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and The Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980), xxv–xxx;

and PRIMARY SOURCES: Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, comp. and ed., Early Chinese Texts on Painting, 2nd ed. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 89–93, 100–103, 129–34, 156–58, 187–90, 196–201, 255–56.