Course-Related Links: 
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia The Kitchen, New York City UbuWeb PennSound Kelly Writers House Philadelphia Museum of Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC PS1, NYC Film Forum, NYC The Joyce Theater, NYC WFMU WPS1 People Like Us
The Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) and the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) are collaborating in 2005-06 on an exciting new course that brings contemporary art and contemporary writing together. Teaching the course is the exciting and innovative New York-based poet, editor and critic Kenneth Goldsmith.
English 165 (Fall 2005) / English 166 (Spring 2006)
Writing Through Culture and Art
This year-long seminar will explore the intersections of several modes of writing -- critical (evaluative), creative, functional -- that pertain to the world of contemporary art and culture. In the first semester the students will study modes of writing that related to art: art-historical writing, art-critical writing, literary and especially experimental writing, functional writing (e.g. the press release, the artist's statement, grant writing). And students will keep some sort of journal or account of their own writing in response to visits to galleries, installations, performances, films, dance, theatre, etc. In the second semester, students will begin to work closely with the ICA's professional design staff on a publication project that will be created and designed to highlight the varieties of ways in which writers-about-art do their work. The working thesis serving as the basis of this magazine project is: Culture can be known through art, and perhaps vice versa; and writing is the conduit to this knowledge. The purpose of the course itself is to teach the diversity of ways people write about art and to underscore the idea that even the most experimental or "difficult" art is not separate from culture. (The course will continue, as English 166, in the spring semester of 2006--meeting at the same time and place.)
Enrollment in the course is strictly limited. Students will be enrolled only by permit of the instructor and are asked to send a one- or two-paragraph statement by email to "kg at ubu dot com" or click here describing why they want to participate in this project and what academic (or perhaps non-academic) experience makes them especially eligible."
English 165/166 will normally meet on Thursdays from 1:30-4:30. Special sessions, reconvened around Philadelphia and New York City, will be scheduled along the way.