Art in Non-Western Societies: Final Make-Up Assignment
The additional requirements for this larger paper are explained in the Body of the Text section below.
Required Length: The paper must be at least ten (10) pages long; double spaced in Times or Arial 12 point font; with an additional page for Bibliography.
Body of the Text
Introduction: Like any other essay, this alternate assignment must begin with a general overview of the chosen culture or period and the art thereof. If the artist who made the artwork you chose is known, you must also relate this artist to the culture and/or period in which they lived and worked. When you pick an object or group of objects to be the subject of your paper and the focus of your thesis (see Thesis section below), describe how it/they relate to their chosen culture or period. So this section is about the art, the artist and the time/culture they come from in the most general terms.
This is the history and anthropology part of your paper.
Preliminary Object Description: Give a brief, clear description of each object before you discuss it in depth. What is going on in the image? What is the image about? This is so that readers can picture the object(s) in their mind. Even when using photographs and other illustrations to support your essay, your descriptions should enable the reader to envision the object. Then you can commence with a more detailed visual and iconographic analysis and evaluation of the objects or save it for later in your paper.
This is the preliminary visual studies part of your paper.
Research the Provenience/Provenance of the Museum Object(s): Find out when, where, and from whom the museum acquired your chosen objects. You can find out the answers to these questions on the museum labels next to the objects and on the museum website (by looking up the accession number provided on the museum labels). If the provenience information is not on the museum website, museum libraries also have a lot of information on the history of the objects in their collections.
This is the museology (museum studies) part of your paper.
Review of the Existing Research: Consult at least five books on the topic you have chosen. You must analyze and critique the existing literature on the type of artwork you have chosen. This is not simply to reflect what the books on your topic say but to judge how they state the information and to address any inconsistencies, omissions that you find, outstanding points, sharp contrasts in approach between different authors on the same topic, etc. Thus you must critically evaluate what you read instead of just obediently copying it. This kind of critical thinking about books and articles will be required by your senior year and probably in your work career. Start working on it now.
This is the historiography part of your paper.
Thesis: Your job in this paper is not simply to regurgitate the research of other authors. You must make a contribution of your own to the existing intelligence on the artwork you have chosen. After briefly describing the object(s), giving historical backgrounds on them and critiquing the existing literature, you must proceed to the main body of the paper. Just before you do this, tell the reader what you are going to talk about and why. Most importantly, tell what you are trying to illustrate and prove about the artworks you have chosen.
This is the thesis of your paper. Your thesis will probably emerge while you do research or even while you are writing, so you might have to go back and insert it into your paper and adjust the whole paper to it. Manage your time.
Main Body: This section of your paper is much like the main body of your previous museum assignment in which you discussed the appearance of the object, its iconographic meanings and other points required by the Checklist for Writing a Paper. This is where you state your observations, findings, theories, interpretations and conclusions about the artwork(s). As with your main paper. pay close attention to the museum objects, what the research says about this kind of object (seldom will you find a whole book about the precise object you have chosen, so books about the period and the kind of artwork will have to do), and do not ignore the way the museum displays the artwork(s). Evaluate the quality of your objects by comparing them to similar objects in the museum and in your research sources. Follow all the points of the Checklist in the analysis of the artworks.
This is the main visual/art historical analysis of your paper.
Illustrations: Photographs may be included at the end of the assignment. Visitors are usually allowed to take pictures at major museums provided they do not use flash and provided that the exhibit they are photographing is part of the museum’s permanent collection (visiting collections are not owned by the museum so they can’t give you copyright permission to photograph those objects). If you included images in your paper they must be put after the 10-page essay, must be labeled with a figure number and cited in the text by that figure number.
This section of your paper must be labeled “Illustrations.”
Conclusion: Your paper cannot end suddenly just when you have reached ten pages! Know what a conclusion is and how to use it and how it relates to your thesis, i.e. to state in general terms what you have discovered and shown about the objects and the ideas you have proven about them. Thus, you must digest all the information you have discovered at the museum, at the library and from thinking on your own and draw a conclusion that is related to your thesis.
This is the final analysis and summary of your thesis.
Bibliography: Your Bibliography must consist of an all the major books on your topic in the college library, plus any other books you might have consulted at public libraries and museum libraries. Books on Asian art are more reliable than the journal articles that end up in college journal subscriptions like EBSCO, JStor etc., so privilege books over articles in your searches. You can compile this list comfortably by first visiting these libraries online, and then visiting them in person afterwards. You may have noticed that the requirements of your paper send you to different parts of the library other than Art. History, Anthropology, Archaeology and other areas can be quite helpful in compiling information about a place or time period. But privilege the art history books over all others in your search and in compiling your bibliographic list.
Websites (i.e., only .edu and .org; no .com) can be consulted ONLY for the techniques by which artforms are made; no other purpose. Your textbook is not acceptable as one of your minimum five sources.
This is the part of the paper where you tell us where you sourced and cited your information.
Writing Style: You should write the paper in Chicago or MLA style. Either is acceptable. APA is discouraged. For Chicago, consult the Chicago Manual of Style or Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers, which are available at most libraries. If MLA is the established style of your discipline/major consult the style guide used by your department. Whichever style you choose—adhere to it throughout this assignment.
You may use parenthetical or footnote citations in your paper. Choose one and stick to it.
Restriction on quotes: Quotes from research sources must be kept to a bare minimum (no more than two short quotes or two sentences or less are allowed per page and no more than eight are allowed in the whole paper) and each quote must be cited properly, i.e. the quote must be followed by a citation in parentheses like the following: “(Leidy, 1984: pg.97)” and made to correspond with the full listing of the book in the Bibliography. You do not need to quote for basic facts. State them in your own words. Use quotes only when the original author phrases something in a particularly poignant way. Otherwise, you are graded on your ability to understand and explain what you read, not on your ability to edit quotes together. Not just quotes, but all facts (e.g., dates, historical and biographical details) must also be cited in parentheses. If you learned it from a book, cite it.
You make your paper ethical (i.e., intellectually trustworthy and honest) by telling us precisely where you got specific pieces of information.
You are warned, as with the previous museum assignment, that slavishly quoting the Checklist will have an adverse affect on your paper. The Checklist was given to you as a tally of items that should appear in your paper somewhere. It is not a questionnaire to fill out like an application. Write naturally, and then go back and make sure all points of the assignment have been fulfilled.
Recommendations: Each of the sections of this paper is at least a day’s work or more. This is why you have an entire month to work on this assignment. Conceiving of the whole paper (i.e., the thesis) at once might prove difficult until you have almost finished the paper. When you have reached the conclusion, go back over the whole paper and make sure it reads like an integrated whole. You might lend the paper to colleagues or other instructors/Writing Center counselors to pick out any problems it may still have.
Allow at least three days (preferably a week) after the paper is finished to re-think, correct and edit for mistakes, omissions and redundancies (little problems such as those can sometimes add up, costing you as much as a whole grade). Papers often become shorter when they are edited so you probably need to write a paper that is twelve or thirteen pages long just to hit the ten page minimum after editing.
Put your spell-check and grammar-check ON as you write the paper but read the entire paper over at the end for mistakes not detected by the computer (there are many mistakes that can get past your computer).
Use Footnotes or Endnotes to explain minor points and vocabulary words/special terms as you tackle bigger issues in your main text.
Visit the Writing Center if you expect to have problems with language or expressing your ideas on this assignment.
