Interpretations in the Humanities

Catalog description

Two to four (usually three) different interpretive approaches to understanding creative and/or scholarly works in the arts and humanities, as exemplified by the study of specific works organized by theme, topic, or time period(s). The interpretive approaches chosen will be applied to a variety of arts and humanities content drawn from the arts, including the visual arts and art history, the performing arts, including theater, film, and music, and the humanities, including literature, history, and philosophy. The core course will develop students' abilities to employ advanced interpretive strategies appropriate to upper-division study in a range of fields of study within the School of Humanities. Students will learn to interpret and analyze primary texts or creative works using several different methods, will exchange views with one another, and will develop skills in writing and expression through a variety of assignments. The course is designed to be taken at the junior level, because it presupposes a preliminary knowledge of the disciplines, before an interdisciplinary study can be undertaken. It is a writing-intensive course that requires substantial writing and revision. This course is designed to familiarize students with several different approaches to understanding creative and scholarly works in a range of humanities areas; to expose them to the viewpoints of others and encourage dialogue among students; to reinforce the interdisciplinary connections among arts and humanities fields; and to improve students' abilities to formulate, express, and defend their own interpretations using the approaches studied. Individual instructors select the particular interpretive methods to be studied, along with appropriate primary works or texts and examples of the scholarly or critical methods chosen. Instructors will typically organize their sections around specific themes, periods, or topics, which will vary from time to time. Ideally, students should take the course in the junior year.