Essay Options
From Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Readers:
"For this assignment, write an essay explaining what, as you read Berger, it is that gets in the way when we look at paintings and what it is that we might do to overcome the barriers to vision (and to history)...." p. 134
"Write an essay in which you describe possible "approaches" to a painting in a museum, approches that could provide for a better understanding or a more comnplete "recovery" of that painting than would be possible to a casual viewer..." p. 135
DMC Studio
Want to create a multimedia presentation as part of your assignment?
Within the Digital Media Commons (DMC) is the DMC Studio which provides support for recording, digitizing, and editing audio, video, and image resources for a presentation.
Biographical Materials
Read about the life and work of John Berger or Walker Percy
Primary Sources
Review question: What is a Primary Source?
ARTstor is a digital library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, photography, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images.
Woman Pouring Milk - Vermeer
To view additional images of Woman Pouring Milk and other images included in the essay, check ARTstor
Subject Guides
The Library offers a number of discipline-based Subject Guides to help you locate resources. Which Guides might assist you?
Some possibilities include:
What other topics are covered in this essay?
Searching for books and articles
Articles
Review question: What is a scholarly article?
Try Scholar OneSearch for a Google-style approach to searching.
Not sure where else to look? Look for selected article search tools in Research Guides by Subject.
Take a Break
Watson and the Shark at the MFA is based on a true story.
Use Google Scholar @ NU
to locate the JAMA journal article about this painting, considered the earliest documentation of a shark attack on a human:
put this search into Google Scholar @ NU
to get the article
Overview/Concepts
Learn more about the concepts of perception, aesthetics and the effect of culture and history on interpretation.
Some possibilities include:
International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences