Design by Words Writing Workshop

Design by words Workshop on Reading and Writing with Fabrizio Gallanti and Marina Lathouri In this one-week intensive workshop reading and writing are considered as a tool to share and communicate ideas in a clear and direct way. The objective is to introduce the students to formats and techniques of academic writing, with particular emphasis on the strategies to advance, develop and express ideas at an early stage of work.

Each day consists of the reading and discussion of a writing example, and then the writing and reading in public of a book proposal. The practice of reading, during which words, voices and still images weave into a space of exchange will evoke a different entry into the problem of the voice.

For such purpose, five readings are suggested, and two projects to be developed over the course of the week and to be evaluated and discussed on a daily basis.

Julian Barnes, Levels of Life, London 2013 Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millenium, 1988 David Foster Wallace, ‘Authority and the American Usage’, in: Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, 2005 Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces Clear and Simple As the Truth: Writing Classic Prose, by Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner Reading project: Titles, subtitles, and blurbs Each participant will have to identify and bring to class, at least 5 examples of academic publications (books or articles). Fields can vary, architecture, urban studies, arts history, sociology, etc. They will analyze the title, subtitle and the abstract (or in some cases the back cover blurb). Through visual presentation they will organize interpretations and judgments about the combination of these elements, selecting among the examples, two specific ones, which would be considered as the best and the worst.

Writing project: Letter to a publisher Each student will produce a one-page book proposal with the intention to contact an academic publisher and/or journal, proposing the content of the research as suitable for publication. The key element would be a one-sentence summary, a brief overview and the explanation of the reasons why such book would be needed and for which audience. On the base of the topic identified, an annotated bibliography of 7 books and/or articles is to support the research and discourse of the proposed book.