Your paper should be analytic and interpretiverather than merely descriptive. You will base your argument upon specific details from the works of art and artist’s biography, but you must do more than offer an accurate description of the content. You must move beyond observation to analytic interpretation of what you have observed. Otherwise, you will have no more than detailed notes for a paper you haven’t yet written. Description and summary, however detailed and accurate, are not a logically organized interpretive argument.
As you begin thinking about possible topics, ask yourself the following questions: Do the works in question have an overall message (or purpose), and if so, what is it? What point is the artist trying to make? Is s/he (artist) trying to advance a particular agenda? How does the aspect of the work(s) you are writing about fit into the work’s overall message or the author’s overall agenda or intent? WHY might the artist have chosen to treat the topic you are writing on in this way? These questions will help you develop an interpretive framework for your analysis; they will remind you that you should consider not only the WHAT (provide an accurate description of content) but the HOW and the WHY.
Enjoy your project. Choose a topic that is meaningful to you.
Students must follow the style guidelines of the Modern Language Association. Students must use a minimum of five secondary sources, which must be scholarly books or articles. Sources found on the internet do not count toward the five unless they’re reproductions of books are articles that have been published elsewhere, or are from scholarly peer-reviewed e-journals.
About Antonio Henrique Amaral
