A Teacher
The Artist's Studio at Belmont University
The Artist's Studio helps train students for careers in the narrative, visual, or performing arts by providing an understanding of the context in which artistic works transcend fleeting popular interest and represent works of enduring artistic quality. Students explore aesthetic theories and critical approaches that contribute to an understanding of the expectations for professional work in an artistic field and work to deepen their own creativity through small interdisciplinary workshops, called “guilds,” focused on providing students feedback and encouragement as they pursue both individual and collaborative projects. By the end of their training in The Artist's Studio, students are prepared to produce a senior project of professional quality in their own artistic fields (such as a novel, a symphony, a screenplay, or an art show).
Courses in The Artist’s Studio are “The Critical Eye,” which explores the theoretical perspectives and critical insights utilized by the best critics of the arts, “Beauty and Truth,” which examines how great writers, painters, musicians, and other artists discover and utilize the mysteries behind artistic creativity, and “Writing Workshop,” which trains students in the frameworks and nuances of narrative structure and professional expectations for grant proposals and queries. By the end of the three course sequence, students will have learned to:
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Develop and complete artistic products characterized by powerful, moving, and effective artistic choices.
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Develop an artistic style that evidences an understanding of the critical tradition in their artistic field and a portfolio of tools and strategies for achieving a high level of aesthetic depth and quality.
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Apply critical and aesthetic tools appropriately and discuss them clearly, completely, and accurately.
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Produce a professional proposal appropriate to the student’s artistic field, through which artistic products in that field are generally promoted or sold.
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Seek out and utilize support, encouragement, assistance, advice, and critique from colleagues in their artistic efforts, as well as effectively provide the same for their colleagues.
The Romantic Allure of Falling Bombs:
Literature and Love in World War II London
British writers have long recognized the powerful emotions spawned around London by the coming of war, nighttime air raids, news of Dunkirk, sad goodbyes in Waterloo Station. We’ll read some of the best novels set in and around London during that time and through them, try to experience those feelings of fear and loneliness and see their dynamic connection to the city. Like thousands of men and women during that time, the characters in these novels are forced by circumstances to make the most of time in a city that would never be the same and has never forgotten what life...and love…was like in the face of Nazi terror. We’ll visit places reshaped by the Blitz, as well as those that inspired a generation to keep fighting, and coupled with the vicarious experiences we’ll have from our readings, we’ll perhaps come to understand the experience of being young and in love in a city at war.