Cover: A Guide to Writing in Art and Art History with 2021 MLA Update, 1st Edition by Stephen Bernhardt; Nancy Sommers

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A Guide to Writing in Art and Art History with 2021 MLA Update

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First  Edition©2021  Stephen Bernhardt; Nancy Sommers

ISBN:9781319455866

About

This ebook has been updated to provide you with the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021).

A Guide to Writing in Art and Art History, part of the Writer’s Help Guidebook Series, offers writing and research support for students writing in the discipline. This compact yet comprehensive guidebook provides the value students want with the essential instruction they need to complete writing tasks successfully. Students will find advice on how to think, read, research, and design and write papers and projects like an art professional.

Coverage includes the following topics, all focused on the specific needs of writers in art and art history:

  • Writing process
  • Conventions in the discipline
  • Integrating and evaluating sources
  • Documentation style required in the discipline--with plenty of models
  • Sample student writing

E-book

Read online (or offline) with all the highlighting and notetaking tools you need to be successful in this course.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: A Guide to Writing in Art and Art History
Thinking like an art professional
Questions art professionals ask
Kinds of evidence art professionals use
Ethical practices in art

Looking at works of art
Responding to a work of art
Understanding point of view
Developing the techniques of description

Researching art
Using databases to find scholarly publications
Primary and secondary sources
Academic journals
Books and online resources

Reading the art literature
Active reading
How to read scholarly books on art
How to read a scholarly article
Checklists for evaluating sources

Designing and writing papers and projects in art
Considering your purpose
Understanding your audience and your writing situation
Checklist for assessing the writing situation
Organizing and drafting
Revising and editing

Writing conventions in art
Word choice
Phrasing for clarity, concision, and directness
Writing effective sentences
Special considerations in writing about art

Integrating, citing, and documenting sources in art
Avoiding plagiarism and recognizing intellectual property
Quoting, summarizing, and paraphrasing sources
Captions and lists of illustrations
MLA style for documenting sources in art
Chicago style for documenting sources in art

Genres of writing in art
Short description of a work of art
Copy for a museum label
Personal response to a work of art
Comparison of two works of art
Formal analysis of a work of art
Contextual analysis
Review of an art exhibition
Research paper
Artist statement

Glossary of vocabulary in art
Additional resources for art and art history
Practice activities
Practice activity: Writing a thesis statement for a research paper
Practice activity: Determining appropriate topics for research
Practice activity: Arguing against and defending
Practice activity: Writing a blog entry using compare and contrast
Practice activity: Timed writing
Practice activity: Writing description vs. analysis
Practice activity: Using databases for basic research in art
Practice activity: Using databases to find scholarly articles
Practice activity: Evaluating a scholarly journal
Practice activity: Locating and evaluating scholarly articles
Practice activity: Using special collections
Practice activity: Evaluating online information
Practice activity: Citing sources in Chicago style
Practice activity: Paraphrasing and citing in Chicago style
Answers to selected activities

Sample student writing: Art and art history
Blog post: Anonymous (Lakota) Pipe Bag, Nineteenth Century
Formal analysis: Vermeer’s The Milkmaid: Illuminating the Dignity of Everyday Labor
Research paper: Manet and the Modern Language of Flowers
Wall text: Delaunay, Homage to Blériot

More help with documentation: MLA and Chicago styles
MLA works cited list: Additional examples
Chicago-style notes and bibliography: Additional examples

Editing strategies
Subject-verb agreement
Pronoun agreement, reference, and case
Strong verbs
Sentence fragments
Run-on sentences
Distracting shifts
Parallel structure
Clear, uncluttered sentences
Sentence emphasis
Commas
Apostrophes
Quotation marks

Stephen A. Bernhardt

Stephen A. Bernhardt is Professor of English and the Andrew B. Kirkpatrick Chair in Writing at the University of Delaware, where he teaches composition, grammar, and technical writing. His professional interests include computers in composition/distance education, writing across the curriculum, professional and technical communication, and visual rhetoric. He has also taught at New Mexico State University and at Southern Illinois University. The author of many journal articles and technical reports, Bernhardt is also the author of Writing at Work (1997) and coeditor of Expanding Literacies: English Teaching and the New Workplace (1998). Bernhardt designed the research plan and reworked content for Writers Help.

Nancy Sommers

Nancy Sommers, who has taught composition and directed composition programs for thirty years, now teaches in Harvard's Graduate School of Education. She led Harvard's Expository Writing Program for twenty years, directing the first-year writing program and establishing Harvard's WAC program. A two-time Braddock Award winner, Sommers is well known for her research and publications on student writing. Her articles “Revision Strategies of Student and Experienced Writers” and “Responding to Student Writing” are two of the most widely read and anthologized articles in the field of composition. Recently she has been exploring different audiences through publishing in popular media. Sommers is the lead author on Hacker handbooks, all published by Bedford/St. Martin’s, and editor of Tiny Teaching Stories on Macmillan Learning's Bits Blog.