MISSION STATEMENT

 

//.COMmentary.com/  is the Criticism and Theory MA Program’s online newsletter. Its objectives are as follows:

*to stimulate critical discourse through cultural commentary

*to provide a forum that re-examines and perhaps redefines what constitutes critical and theoretical discourse within the rigors and more formal structures of the program

*to develop the creative, stylistic and analytical skills of the students by embracing the dictum “brevity is better”.

*to present the MA Program’s ongoing critical and aesthetic philosophies and formal propositions to a greater community of students, teachers, artists, writers and thinkers.

 

How Is It Structured?

The newsletter is comprised of one preliminary section, entitled COMMENTARIES, and four regular COLUMNS, all of which address issues in the field of contemporary criticism.

//.COMmentary.com/ grounds its conception and its content in the group of short commentaries generated in each issue.

Different writers compose carefully crafted, brief commentaries responding to a common prompt, a question, or thematic particular to that month’s issue.

 
The COMMENTARIES section presents itself as a compilation, a symposium, an orchestrated meditation engendered by an event that all writers have experienced.

 

COMMENTARIES

                   - a response by various writers to a common question or topic posed in each                      issue

                   - a short piece of writing full of control, conviction and composure

                   - both a symposium of writers and a set of disparate nodes of writing

                   - dispatches, snippets, satellites

 

                                                         
All four COLUMNS are slightly longer pieces of writing.They are critical reviews whose response is guided by the column’s title. The four columns are titled and defined as follows:

 

SIGHT

1. responds to an IMAGE, picture, still shot, object, landscape, etc.
2. lends itself to discussions of design, composition, formal issues of art
3. must be geared to address the visual, in a specific, illustrated, concrete way
4. think of sighting a gun: the process of honing in, targeting something visually in a concentrated and considered way: in-depth sighting

 

SITE

1. responds to SPACE, both physical and mental space
2. deals with aspects of location and geography, as in the site of a crime or the site of commerce
3. is generally grounded in a specific site, place
4. in a related way, lends itself to discussions of politics: site in a geo-political sense

 
CITE

1. responds to WRITING and reading, both specific texts and of the processes as concepts
2. works with quotation and citation as critical actions
3. encounters language (and generates language) as a construction to be mined

 

ZEIT

1. addresses topics of a temporal nature, things located in TIME
2. is formally associated with a date (or dates)
3. traces transient occurrences, as well as transience itself
4. in concerning itself with eras and events, both in the present and historically, it approaches a description of a zeitgeist

 

Goals

As the newsletter develops, we will invite other writers and thinkers into the critical forum.  Field professionals, such as alumnae, artists and designers, art critics and thinkers across the board, will be asked to contribute work to the website thereby increasing readership and exposing new audiences to the academic platform of the department.  We hope to maintain an ongoing archive of these projects and collaborations for research purposes.

The newsletter will eventually espouse a presence in print. Ultimately, the end goal of the publisher and executive editor-in-chief, Rosetta Brooks, is to place the student’s paragraphs (the tight theoretical gems,) in the pages of other critical publications and academic journals.  Like satellites in orbit, dotCOMmentary.com’s short texts will appear in other forums, reaching out into other spheres of thought and discourse.  Through this process, the department’s graduating students will have an available example of published work as they begin their professional careers as writers and thinkers.

 

 

Publisher/Executive Editor
Rosetta Brooks

Editor
Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer

Managing Editor
Hala Auji

Editor at Large
Terri Timlin

Designer/Webmaster
Aaron Bocanegra