| Course Title: The Sister Arts |
| Start Date: 09/09/2026 End Date: 12/22/2026 |
| Term: Fall Semester 2026 |
| Description: This course will pair four writers with four painters to explore the relationship between the visual and the verbal arts through theories of representation. The pairs are John Constable and William Wordsworth, the sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, Peter Lanyon and W.S. Graham, and the unrelated Bridget Riley and Denise Riley. By so doing, we will consider the periodizing terms Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and Postmodernism and how they mediate between individual works of art and historical context. We will be preoccupied with the practices of analyzing individual works of art in concrete detail and of constructing larger, more general, abstract claims. |
| Distribution(s): I - Humanities , WI - Writing-Intensive |
| Academic Level Of Course: Undergraduate | Credits:4.00 |
| Faculty | Phone | Email address |
| Nigel Alderman | 413-538-3224 | nalderma@mtholyoke.edu |
| Meeting Dates | Method | Meeting days | Meeting times | Building name | Room | Frequency |
| 09/09/2026 - 12/22/2026 | Seminar | Tuesday and Thursday | 09:00AM - 10:15AM | TBA | TBA | Weekly |
| Requisite Courses | ||
| Prereq: ENGL-199 or 8 credits in English. | Take previously | Required |
| Comments |
| Additional Comments |
| Course Tags | ||
| ENGL0003 | ENGL-TM: Theory and Methods | This course has been approved to count towards the English major's Theory and Methods |
| ENGL0001 | ENGL-HP: Literary History and Period | This course has been approved to count towards the English major's Literary History and Period Disciplinary Perspectives requirement. |
| Cross-listed Sections |
| None |
| Course Availability | ||||
| Section status: Open | Capacity: 18 | Enrollment: 0 | Available: 18 | Waitlist: 0 |
BOOK INFORMATION
| Book List | Required | Publisher Full Price |
| Title: Selected Poems by William Wordsworth Author: Wordsworth, William Copyright: Edition: Volume: ISBN: 9780140424423 Publisher: Penguin |
Required | 17.00 |
| Title: ay Something Back & Time Lived, Without Its Flow Author: Riley, Denise Copyright: Edition: Volume: ISBN: 9781681373997 Publisher: NYRB |
Required | 16.00 |
| Title: W.S. Graham Author: Graham, W. S. Copyright: Edition: Volume: ISBN: 9781681372761 Publisher: NYRB |
Required | 16.00 |
| Title: To the Lighthouse Author: Woolf, Virginia Copyright: 2005 Edition: Volume: ISBN: 9780156030472 Publisher: Harcourt |
Required | 15.00 |
| Additional Book Comments |
| This is NOT the complete book list for this class. |