Humanities Homework Help

These are some questions below you can answer in the essay, but not answering them all. These are just some ideas to write for the essay.

You might try organizing your writing into three or more paragraphs where the first paragraph introduces your object, the second provides an overall description of the object, and the third (and any additional) paragraph(s) introduce significant details or aspects, which you both describe and also analyze. You may also add a concluding paragraph that introduces further questions you have about the artwork that you hope to answer with your research.

Artwork is Winter Sunrise by Ansel Adam

Emphasis

1. What is emphasized? What is deemphasized?
2. What parallels or juxtapositions appear?
3. What is the viewer supposed to focus upon?
4. What is the purpose of the image?

Style

1. What is the style of the image?
2. What tone is created by the style? What contributes to this tone—color, composition, content, emphasis, medium, omission, etc.?

Medium

1. What is the medium?
2. How does the medium create emotional and/or logical appeals?
3. What emotional and/or logical appeals might have been triggered had the creator used another medium or style?
4. If looking at a photograph or a digital image of something created in another medium, how does this representation affect the image?

Genre

1. What is the genre—advertising, art, vernacular, snapshot, map, poster, graph, film, etc?
2. How do you define this genre?
3. How does the genre affect the meaning of the work or its affect on the viewer?
4. What are the normal conventions of this genre?
5. How does this conform to, or differ from those conventions?
6. How does the creator manipulate those conventions?

Framing

1. How is the image framed?
2. Does the entire subject appear inside of the frame or is there a suggestion of something beyond the frame?
3. Why is this framing used?

Identification

1. What is the viewer supposed to identify with? Why?
2. How does the creator of the image get the viewer to feel this identification?

Cultural Memory

1. What cultural and/or national memories does the creator try to trigger with this image?
2. How does the creator trigger these cultural and/or national memories?
3. Why does the creator trigger these cultural and/or national memories?
4. What logical/emotional/ethical appeals are made through triggering these cultural and/or national memories?

Narrative

1. What story is being told?
2. What does the creator want the viewer to think or feel by telling this story?
3. How does the creator tell this story?
4. Who benefits from this story? Who doesn’t? Why? How?

Point of View

1. From whose point of view is the image presented?
2. From what level?
3. What is the relationship of the bearer of the point of view to the content?
4. What does this point of view emphasize?
5. What meaning does it bring to the image?
6. Why is this point of view used?

Gaze

What gaze is being used?

Familial Gaze

1. What common notion of family does the creator want the viewer to see?
2. What does the creator want the viewer to understand about himself, herself, his/her (or another)
3. family, community, culture and/or nation?
4. Who benefits from this familial gaze?

National Gaze

1. What common ideas of nationalism does the creator want the viewer to feel?
2. How does national identity of the viewer affect the reception of this image?
3. What about national identity is invisible to those that subscribe to the same identity to which the image appeals?
4. What does the creator want the viewer to understand about their (or another) nation?
5. Who benefits from this national gaze? Who does not?

Racial Gaze

1. What common notions of race does the creator depend upon?
2. What common notions of race does the creator naturalize or challenge?
3. What does the creator want the viewer to understand about their (or another) race?
4. Who benefits from this racial gaze? Who doesn’t?

Gendered Gaze

1. What common notions of gender does the creator depend upon?
2. What common notions of gender does the creator naturalize or challenge?
3. What does the creator want the viewer to understand about their (or another) gender?
4. Who benefits from this gendered gaze? Who doesn’t?

Normalizing Gaze

1. What representation of the body is normalized or challenged in this image?
2. What does the creator want the viewer to understand about their (or another) body’s ability?
3. Who benefits from this normalizing gaze? Who doesn’t?

Omissions

1. What information/visual representation is excluded in this visual artifact?
2. How does the exclusion of information/visual representation add to or detract from the meaning/persuasive force of the image?
3. Why did the creator exclude this information/visual representation?

Privileging and/or excluding various positions or voices

1. How does the creator’s visual choices privilege or exclude different positions or voices?
2. How does this privileging/excluding add to or detract from the meaning/persuasive force of the image?

History

1. What is the history of this image?
2. What history bears upon the meaning of this image?
3. How does this history appear in the visual content of the image?
4. What is important about the relationship of this image to its history or other histories?

Theory

1. What theories or texts bear upon your reading of this image?
2. What appears in the visual content of this image that relate to this theory/text?
3. How can you see theory/text in use in the image?
4. How does theory/text point towards what is excluded from the image?
5. What does theory/text change about the meaning of the image?

Aesthetic Experience

1. What is beautiful about the image?
2. What about the image is difficult to describe in words?
3. What about the image defies meaning/reading?

Personal

1. When did you first encounter this image? Describe that experience.
2. Why did you decide to write about this image?
3. What do you want to prove about this image?
4. What work do you want this image to do?
5. What do you wish was different about this image?
6. What do you not understand about the image? What else do you want to know?