Transfer Student Research Seminar: Abundance

(4 Credits)

Every three minutes Americans take more photographs than the entire 19th century produced. We have some 100,000 words of text pass through our eyes and ears each day (that's one quarter of War and Peace). This course investigates the history and changing shape of ideas about abundance as an aesthetic principle, from sonnets to autofiction and conceptual art. Philosophers, writers, and artists include David Foster Wallace, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Jean Baudrillard, Zadie Smith, and others. Students write three essays and multiple short assignments.