Reading & Composition

Let’s say I asked you to tell me what you associated with the color blue. Or yellow. Say I polled the entire class. We might find ourselves to be, to some extent, in agreement on the associations or symbols: blue symbolizes sadness or vastness or loneliness; yellow symbolizes cowardice, or sickness, etc. Color symbolism is in a sense one of the most recognizable devices for communicating
meaning in literary and visual media—at the same time, our symbolic categories and associations with color remain largely under-interrogated. Our course seeks to investigate this discrepancy by coming at it from both poles (i.e., from positive theories of color and interrogations of those theories). Why are certain colors associated with certain moods, qualities of experience, dispositions, etc.? On what grounds are their symbolic meanings evoked? Are these associations things we give colors (are they constructs?) or are their associations natural, innate, subconscious (are they given?)?

The types of color theories we will explore this semester fall into roughly three categories: perception-based theories of color, theories of color as symbolic archetypes, and finally socio-political theories of color—particularly as they intersect with questions of race, gender, and sexuality. We will likewise interrogate the extent to which these three categories can be considered in isolation from one another.
As an R&C course, sustained critical engagement with the process of writing will guide our intellectual investigation of color theory. As a class, we will work together to form an understanding of the partnership between careful reading and analytical writing as well as the relationship of re-writing to writing.