Art History in the First Person

This seminar considers the use of the first person voice in a wide range of writings about art, film, and performance from fiction to criticism to scholarship. Insofar as graduate students have typically been discouraged from using the first person voice in their scholarly work, we will question the benefits and drawbacks of doing so in particular cases. To what ends have different writers put the first person voice and how do they integrate it with others strategies of written expression? How might we distinguish among different forms of speaking from the position of "I"? What kind of "I" is at stake - personal, professional, intellectual, imaginary, or otherwise?