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Liberal Arts Courses and Course Descriptions
Lower Division Required Core Courses:
WRS 1001 – Writing Seminar
Current course options:
Writing Seminar: Thingamabobs—Hacking Into the Void, One Essay at a Time
This theme-based, reading-, writing-, and research-intensive course is designed to sharpen student skills in close
reading, college-level writing, research, and critical thinking and reasoning. Students will also hone their research
skills, learning to maximize their abilities to access all available information sources, evaluate sources, synthesize
information, fairly acknowledge opposing opinions, and cite sources properly, using the Chicago Manual of Style.
Requirements include three researched papers, weekly writing exercises, peer draft evaluations, and one-on-one
conferences with their instructor. Global/comparative readings will total 400-500 pages with a minimum of 24
pages (6,000 words) of student writing. This is a required course for all KCAI students. Required text: Kate L.
Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, ninth edition.
"No ideas but in things." --William Carlos Williams.
As artists, it’s our job to see what’s present but still unseen and underexplored in the things around us. Things
remind us, if we become hyper aware of them, that is, if we give them enough thought, that our world is full of
associations we’ve yet to notice, yet to describe, yet to bring into view. One way to explore this kind of thinking,
outside of the creation of art, is through the essay. Whether the thing is a color we’ve only looked past and tossed
aside like a garnish, or a mechanical defecating duck wanting to prove it’s alive, or a single pebble placed in a
pocket—a reminder of some particular day—these things model for us what the essay itself does: a means to
creep into systems once thought seemingly impenetrable and securely defined. Readings and course materials
include, but are not limited to, excerpts from Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You,
essays on color from Cabinet Magazine, artist documentaries from ART21, excerpts from Maggie Nelson’s
Bluets, Annie Dillard’s “The Transfiguration,” Joan Didion’s “On Morality,” the comedy of Monty Python,
Martin Heidegger’s “The Thing,” the animated films of the Brothers Quay, Francis Ponge’s “Introduction to a
Pebble,” Jennifer Riskin’s “The Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life,” and excerpts
from Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons.
Writing Seminar: Home and Away
This theme-based, reading-, writing-, and research-intensive course is designed to sharpen student skills in close
reading, college-level writing, research, and critical thinking and reasoning. Students will also hone their research
skills, learning to maximize their abilities to access all available information sources, evaluate sources, synthesize
information, fairly acknowledge opposing opinions, and cite sources properly, using the Chicago Manual of Style.
Requirements include three researched papers, weekly writing exercises, peer draft evaluations, and one-on-one
conferences with their instructor. Global/comparative readings will total 400-500 pages with a minimum of 24
pages (6,000 words) of student writing. This is a required course for all KCAI students. Required text: Kate L.
Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, ninth edition.
In our increasingly global society, humans are constantly on the move––the average American will move 11.7
times in their life. In this class, we will explore our own sense of place and how politics, socioeconomics, gender,
and colonialism factor into how we define home, with a focus on the place we live now: the American Midwest.