Dead Theses Society's "the visual analysis paper" course is a beginning-to-finish guide to writing a "visual analysis"paper for an art history course at the university level. You will learn how to a) choose an ideal work of art as the subject, b)make observations on the art, c) organize your observations to support a thesis, d) structure your paper, and e)put your observations into words to create a clear and concise argument. You will also learn important mistakes to avoid with this specific assignment, before you lose the points. While this course is suited to university-level course assignments, any writer can take on a "visual analysis" paper–even without the guidance of a formal art history course. The beauty of the assignment is the dependence on the writer's own observations; the goal is specifically to limit herself to what can be seen in the work of art, with only limited background knowledge of place, time, and style.

In this course Ireveal all my tips and tricks for succeeding at this type of assignment. We work directly with two of my past papers for art history courses at Yale, and delve into the editing decisions I made at the time and how Iwould improve my argument now. We'll look at an "visual analysis"at one of the etchings by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn, entitled Jan Cornelius Sylvius, Preacher. We'll then dissect the problems of this paper and the necessary solutions and work through a second visual analysis of Paul Revere's print, Buried with Him by Baptism.