Recommendations for the Arts Criticism Course

First off, our Communications department and Arts department needs this course. Let me say it again, with emphasis. We need this course. I'll explain why.

I entered college as a journalism major. I always knew that I loved to write, and, particularly, I knew that the arts
was really my shiz, so to speak. I knew that this was the stuff I cared about and wanted to write about. Groovy!
Journalism it is.

After taking several Comm. courses, I realized that many of my professors weren’t really interested in hearing my
opinion. Journalism is about bias-free writing, as it should be, but as I switched to a Creative Writing major and
opted for a Communications minor, I still struggled with my hopes to write more opinion-driven pieces, particularly
for music, visual arts and the like. I would say that in all of my minor courses, except for this one, I felt that my
writing voice was pretty inauthentic, mainly because I know the type of things I’d like to write, and really, this
was it.

That all being said, I think that if, anything, our Communications department needs more courses like this.
Sure, strict journalism is obviously really important, and I have many friends who really enjoy that niche.
But for someone like myself, I’m interested in more magazine-style writing, and I think that our Communications
department is somewhat lacking that. Speaking of bias, I realize that I definitely have some while writing this--
a whole lot! Remember when I mentioned I’m a Creative Writing major?

As a critic of the course, the best part was the critiques themselves! I am so glad that, for the most part, we had
free-reign when selecting what we wanted to write about. I think that, especially since this is an Arts course, also,
that creative license is important. That being said, the art history information of this course was really helpful to
give context to how we are engaging with writers before and after us, but at the same time, I felt that we breezed
over a lot of material really quickly, versus perhaps slowing down and studying less critics but more
in-depth. At times, I felt a little overwhelmed with the amount of criticism we were engaging with in such a quick
time period especially since, again, this isn’t a fully-fledged arts history course.

Those are the main things I’d like to say, I think, so I’ll go ahead and end it here. Thank you, Dr. Perrault and
Dr. Waits, for a really interesting course. I think that other students, too, should have the opportunity to write about
the arts in this way, and I really hope that they do.

Georgetown-- am I right?

Sincerely,
Mary Elizabeth M.