First-Year Writing Sem: Aesthetics On Trial

Catalog description

While cultures often like to see themselves reflected in the arts, groundbreaking art is frequently accompanied by controversy. In literature, Vladimir Nabokov was faced with charges of obscenity with Lolita. In photography, artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Diane Arbus challenged the role of the visual arts as innocent representation. In film, Leni Riefenstahl blurred the lines between aesthetics, politics, and ethics by directing Triumph of the Will for Hitler, while Pier Paolo Pasolini, in Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom, created what one critic has called “the most repulsive, nauseating, yet most beautiful and perhaps most important film ever to exist.” Richard Wagner, whose musical genius and historical impact is undisputed, has also been called out for anti-Semitism and misogyny, as have painters like Picasso and Balthus, among many others. Through critical writing, discussion, and research, we will consider such cases and investigate questions such as: What is the proper relationship between ethics and aesthetics? At what point, if any, should ethical transgression count against a work’s aesthetic value? How do we define obscenity in the arts? Is art inherently political? What should we make of “cancel culture?” In addition to frequent in-class writing exercises, two short argumentative essays and one longer literary-critical essay will be assigned.