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Stories We Tell Course Pairing

Basic Digital Photography: Reading and Telling Photographic Stories  (PT 270)

In this course, we will explore how we read and tell photographic stories. Some stories are told with a single photograph, while others are expressed with multiples, each image building upon the other to construct meaning. We will investigate the grammar of photographic expression and how we may best use those tools to interpret and craft photographic stories, much as one would read and write them. Paired with Professors Miller's English Literature class, we will collectively examine how literature and photography align and diverge in their approaches to storytelling. Is one, for example, more likely to be used for documentation while the other for fiction? Where do those biases originate and what happens to storytelling when they unravel? Through these examinations students will gain an understanding of fundamental photographic techniques, acquire visual composition skills, learn photographic discernment, and develop creative, photographic solutions to visual storytelling problems.

Faculty Biography

Professor Dan Schlapbach received a BS from Washington University and an MFA from Indiana University and is a Professor of Visual and Performing Arts/Photography at Loyola University. Mr. Schlapbach's research and teaching interests include 19th century photographic processes and digital imaging and how these processes inform each other. He exhibits his works regionally and nationally and received Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2009 and 2011.   

The Art of Reading (EN 101)

Cultivates reading, writing, thinking, and oral communication skills by investigating the kinds of attention that literary texts, in multiple genres, ask of readers. The course is writing intensive. Topics reflect the range of faculty expertise and interests and are selected to invite student curiosity.

Faculty Biography

Dr. Nicholas Andrew Miller is Associate Professor of English and Director of Film Studies at Loyola University Maryland. His areas of teaching and scholarly interest include film animation, early cinema, the intersections between modernist print and visual cultures, and twentieth-century Irish and British literature. He is currently at work on an interdisciplinary study of transformation in modernist visual culture titled Metaphor and Metamorphosis: Animating the Modern Imagination. He is the author of Modernism, Ireland, and the Erotics of Memory (Cambridge, 2002).

Mentor Biography

Sara Scalzo Manson is director for the Office of Student Engagement. Student Engagement is responsible for orientation, leadership development, Student Government, weekend programming and oversight of student clubs & organizations. Sara began her career at Loyola in 2001 in Residential Life before transitioning to her department. She received her M.Ed. in Higher Education Administration and Student Personnel from Kent State University (OH) and a B.A. in Music from Baldwin Wallace University (OH). She has a strong passion for Jesuit education and particularly working with students.

Virtual Advisor

PT 270 satisfies the Fine Arts core requirement for all students. EN 101 satisfies the Literature core requirement for all students.