Your project will take the form of a final paper of about 1200 words. This paper

Your project will take the form of a final paper of about 1200 words. This paper will present your story of your chosen object – a story by no means complete but historically informed and compelling. Starting from a careful visual analysis, you will consider class discussions and readings as well as additional relevant scholarly sources to pursue one or more particular issues or themes. Ideally, you will be working through a dialogue or sorts between the visual evidence and discursive art historical sources, starting from the former and the questions it sparks, considering the latter in order to find preliminary answers to your questions, and then returning to the visual evidence to see if those answers hold or need to be refined (or dismissed). This procedure may be repeated many times, and the point here is not to follow it to the letter but to practice the type of critical inquiry that trains a keen observer and and an incisive thinker.