Reading & Composition

Reading & Composition

Seeing Color
Course Number: 
R1A.005
Course Catalog Number: 
30919
Course Type or Level: 
Instructor: 
Cory Merrill
Days: 
Tu/Th
Time: 
2-3:30
Semester: 
Location: 
Remote

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 what the colors symbolize: blue symbolizes sadness or vastness or loneliness; yellow symbolizes cowardice or sickness, etc. Color symbolism is in one respect one of the most recognizable devices for communicating meaning in literary and visual media; on another level, our symbolic categories and associations with color remain largely under-interrogated. This 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 qualities of experience, moods, dispositions, etc.? On what grounds are their symbolic meanings evoked? Are these associations things we give colors (are they constructed?) 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.

Literary materials to include:
Excerpts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14 th C.)
Excerpts from Wolfram von Escenbach, Red Knight episode, Parzival (c. 1225)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)
Nella Larsen, Passing (1929)
Theoretical materials to include:
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Theory of Colors” (1810)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Remarks on Color” (1950)
Visual Materials to include:
Victor Fleming, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Sidney Lumet, The Wiz (1978)
Krzysztof Kieslowski, Trois couleurs Trilogy (1994)