Short Paper Assignments

As stated in the general syllabus, there will be three paper assignments for this class. It is important to develop your writing skills, for they will be one of the most valuable tools you will possess in life. That being said, these papers are intended to be interesting explorations into the art world that allows you to put your talents and tastes to work.

From the pantheon of artworks created after the year 1400 CE, you shall choose a single piece and write a paper both describing it with a visual analysis and discussing its importance to art history or art theory. The item can be of any medium (fine art, architecture, craft, etc) and can come from any culture, but it cannot be more than 600 years old. This process shall be done three times, with the final product being three different papers about three different artworks.

Each of the three papers is to be a minimum of two full single-sided pages of original (not quoted) content, typed, double-spaced, using 12 pitch Times New Roman font, with 1-inch margins on the all sides (the standard format for most Microsoft Word documents). In addition to the text of the paper, you will need to include a title page with your name, the class information, and the paper’s title. Furthermore, at the end of the paper you will also have to provide a bibliography of at least three (3) scholarly books, articles, or web sites that you consulted to write the paper. These should either deal with the subject directly or be germane to its discussion. Each of these resources should be referenced using either footnotes or endnotes, and the entire paper (bibliography, citations, and text) should be written using the humanities-based format outlined by the Chicago Manual of Style.

The papers will need to be submitted through the Canvas system in their appropriate assignment modules by 11:59 PM on the due dates indicated, and the files should be named with the student’s last name and the respective paper number (ex. “Villalobos 01.docx). Failure to turn in a paper on time will result in a ten-point deduction from the paper’s final grade for every calendar day that it is late. This includes papers that are turned in at midnight, so be sure to be timely.

Notes and Hints for the Paper Assignments

• Do not use any quotations within the work – the entire text should be in your own words. Copying from other sources without giving citations constitutes plagiarism; this is still the case even if you copy a statement and change its vocabulary or verbiage. If you are unclear as to the definition of plagiarism or the forms it takes, please see me before you turn in your papers.

• If you need to reference the Chicago Manual of Style (humanities format, notes and bibliography system) for your bibliography, I recommend looking at the Chicago web site quick guide ( A sample paper is posted in Canvas under the “Syllabus” section for you to consult.

• When trying to determine if a web site is scholarly (i.e. able to be used for the paper), it is generally prudent to err on the side of caution. Sites linked to academic institutions (*.edu) or non-profit institutions (*.org) are much more likely to be scholarly than “private” web sites (*.com). If you are in doubt about the authority of the site, don’t use it!

• Do not use Wikipedia.com. Although most Wiki-type sites are accurate in their information, they are not considered to be scholarly and, as such, are ineligible for use in the paper. Papers using Wikipedia or any similar Wiki- sites will immediately lose points for an incorrect bibliography.

• A major point: I am a stickler for good grammar / punctuation / spelling. I do take points off for these sorts of errors, as they are readily correctable. Use your spell check and grammar check features on your computer when writing. Read your finished product, reread it sometime later, and have another person read it a third time before turning it in to catch any errors that may exist.

• I am more than willing to review and edit drafts of your paper before you give it to me as a final submission. You may send drafts to my Maricopa email (). Please allow at least one day for me to make corrections and send the draft back to you. I will not accept drafts of any papers in the 24 hours before a paper is due, so please take that into account when preparing your work.

• Finally, these assignments are intended to make you think about art beyond a textbook. If you know of a particular process that you wish to write about that is not on the list or are concerned about the feasibility of writing on a certain artist or artwork, please contact me. I am happy to guide and assist you as I can!

Top Ten Most Common Mistakes Made in Papers(as compiled from ten years of teaching)

1. Whenever an artwork title, book title, or journal title appears, it should be italicized. The only time that this is not the case is when we refer to an artwork by a common name that is not its title (ex. Picasso’s Guernica vs. the Pyramids of Giza). If you are in doubt, try putting the name into Google and see if the results come back italicized or not.

2. Know the difference between plural and possessive, especially in regard to pronouns (ex. “its” vs. “it’s”) and dates (ex. “In the 1540s…” vs. “In the 1540’s…”).

3. Footnote superscript numbers should occur outside of the punctuation, not inside of it (ex. “…said Adam Chang.1” and not “…said Adam Chang1.”)

4. All fonts, including those in the footnotes, bibliography, and page numbers should be Times New Roman. The default for many newer versions of Microsoft Word is Calibri, and this will need to be changed in all parts of the document.

5. Confirm that homonyms are not being misused in your writing (ex. “their” vs. “there”).

6. Avoid using the first- and second-person voice in your writing (ex. “I” and “you”), and try to stay in the objective third-person.

7. The names of some artists are tricky to spell (ex. Georgia O’Keeffe, Nam June Paik, Kazimir Malevich). Make sure that you are doing so correctly and that your autocorrect is not changing them to something else.

8. Know where to insert commas in a sentence. Commas appear wherever there is a break during narration (ex. “After lunch, I felt that it was odd…”). If you are unsure of whether the comma is in the right place, try slowly reading the sentence aloud back to yourself. The comma should go where you briefly pause.

9. When naming research paper files for submission, please do so with your last name and the number of the appropriate assignment at the end (ex. "Villalobos 01.docx" for the first research paper). Do not simply send in a file entitled “Research Paper” or with another generic name.

10. Do not forget to proofread your work at least twice, and ideally on two separate occasions, before submitting. Each time that you proofread, you will catch mistakes that you missed on the last pass. No one writes a perfect paper on the first attempt, so review your work extensively before turning it in!

NB: Just write about one paper and not three please.
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