Foundations in the Humanities: Understanding the Human Experience

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to great ideas, themes, creations, and values in the arts and humanities, emphasizing the development of students' basic interpretive and close reading skills as applied to historically significant works in the various disciplines. The course introduces students to interpretive skills for analyzing and understanding historically significant works in the visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture), the performing arts (theater, film, dance, music), history, literature, and philosophy. Students demonstrate their basic understanding of the disciplines encompassed in the course by interpreting key works in the various fields. The course stresses introducing students to these fields, as well as interdisciplinary connections between them, through broadly synthetic interpretations of important works within their cultural settings. The course will develop students' understanding of different historical periods by examining a variety of cultures, traditions, and aesthetic movements. The course promotes critical conversation among students, for example, by providing lectures that introduce and frame topics for discussion (this pedagogical practice is suggested as one possible approach, not as a requirement). The course also stresses the improvement of students' writing and critical thinking skills through such means as essay exams, group work, oral reports, and/or term papers, as deemed appropriate by the instructor.