University of Chicago Writing Program
WRITING ARTS REVIEWS

Writing Arts Reviews (Humanities 271 / English 116, formerly Writing Journalistic Criticism) is a practicum course in (as the name suggests) writing reviews of film, theatre, music, and the visual arts. The course will be  offered through the University of Chicago Writing Program in Spring Quarter, 2001. It will be taught by Hank Sartin, who has taught extensively both in the College and at the University of Notre Dame and is a widely published journalist and film critic.  He is currently the film critic of the Chicago Free Press and the managing editor of publications at the Chicago International Film Festival.

The course is part of a cluster of advanced Writing Program courses that includes Larry McEnerney's Writing Styles, Tracy Weiner's Writing Science and Technology, and Kathy Cochran's Writing Styles. Although the courses certainly can be taken individually or out of sequence -- the only prerequisite is the completion of a Humanities Common Core sequence -- students with a practical interest in writing are encouraged to take them as a group.

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Course description

 

Course description and goals

Writing Arts Reviews

This course will develop skills in writing criticism of the arts for the popular press. Students will write every week to develop their skills at both making a critical assessment of the arts (painting, theatre, film, music, performance art, etc.) and writing about their opinions in a style suited to publication in newspapers, magazines, and other popular venues.

In addition to producing our own writing, we will examine examples of journalistic criticism drawn from a wide range of publications, both "high brow" (e.g. The New Yorker) and more popular (e.g. Entertainment Weekly). We will discuss the goals of criticism in print media, and consider and practice some strategies used in criticism.

This course is designed to help students interested in journalism develop some skills at critical writing for the print media. It is also designed to make students more conscious of the craft and conventions of reviewing, making them more discriminating readers of media criticism.

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Site designed and maintained by Tracy Weiner.  Please direct technical questions or comments to her at writing-program@uchicago.edu; questions about the Writing Program's courses may be directed to Tracy Weiner or Kathy Cochran at the same address.

This page has last been revised in February, 2001