Paper Topic #2
The assignment: You are a professor of medieval art at a major university, and you have been asked to write a review of Lawrence Nees, Early Medieval Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) for a journal in your field. Your ca. 4-5-page, double-spaced, typed review is due Thursday, April 28th, at the beginning of class.

Here are some general guidelines for writing the review, and an example you may use as a model:
1. Your first paragraph should state the scope of the book, and it should explain what, according to the author, distinguishes his approach to early medieval art from the approaches of other scholars/studies.
2. Next, summarize the focus and argument(s) of each chapter. How is the book organized? What topics and themes does the author address, and what are his main points? Provide a few (2-3) examples that demonstrate how the author analyzes works of early medieval art in relation to a particular topic or topics.

3. In additional paragraphs, consider the following aspects of the book, based on your knowledge of early medieval art:

--What types of sources and analytic methods does the author use in his analysis? Historical sources from the medieval period? Visual or iconographic analysis? Something else?
--Did you like the selection of works discussed, and why? Were there any works you would have omitted from the discussion, and were there any works you would have included in the book that were omitted by the author? If so, which ones, and why?
--Did you feel the author analyzed the works deeply enough, or could his analyses have been more detailed? Or, would less analysis have been sufficient in some cases? Provide at least one example of a work or topic that you feel deserved more (or less) analysis.
--What did you think of the actual content of the author’s analyses? Were there any works you would have analyzed differently, or about which you would have provided additional or different information? Provide at least one example.
--Did you like the author’s choice of themes for discussion, or did you think he omitted any important ones? Think of the different issues we have discussed in the class when addressing this question.

4. In your concluding paragraph, consider the following questions:

--What (if anything) did you learn from this book that you hadn’t known before? What new insights do you feel this book provides into the history of early medieval art?
--For what type of audience do you think this book is appropriate: the general reader (i.e., someone with no background in medieval art or art history)? A more knowledgeable reader with some background in these subjects? The specialist/expert in the field?
--Did you like the author’s writing style? Why or why not?
--If you were teaching a course on the history of early medieval art, would you assign this book to your students?

 
NOTE: Direct quotations and references to ideas or information from books, your class notes, or other sources should be properly documented with footnotes or endnotes.