Liberal Studies Program

Arts and Literature

Description

Courses in the Arts and Literature Domain ask students to extend their knowledge and experience of the arts by developing their critical and reflective abilities.  In these courses, students will interpret and analyze particular creative works, investigate the relations of from and meaning, and through critical and/or creative activity come to experience art with greater openness, insight, and enjoyment.  These courses focus on works of art of literature as such, though the process of analysis may also include social and cultural issues.  Work in this domain includes literature, the visual arts, media arts, music, and theater.

Meeting Liberal Studies Program Goals, Learning Outcomes, and Writing Expectations:

The central goals of the Liberal Studies Program are reflectiveness, value consciousness, critical and creative thinking, and a multicultural perspective.  Courses in Arts and Literature develop critical and creative thinking about the composition, understanding, and evaluation of artistic works.  They encourage reflectiveness by helping students to articulate their responses to works and by locating these responses within broader aesthetic and cultural traditions.  They implicitly address fundamental questions of human value, among them creativity and discipline.

Learning Outcomes:

  1. Students will be able to identify and describe specific forms or genres in at least two different disciplines.

  2. Students will be able to explain, in well-written prose, what a work of art is about and/or how it was produced (i.e. they should be able to articulate and explain the "content" of that work and/or its methodology of production).

  3. Students will be able to comment on the relationship between form and content in a work. How does the 14-line sonnet both enable and inhibit its practitioner, for example? What are the generic expectations of a particular form? How does an artist complicate, enrich, or subvert such expectations?

  4. Students will be able to assess the formal aspects of their subject and put those qualities into words, using, when appropriate, specialized vocabulary employed in class and readings.

  5. Where appropriate, students will be able to consider the original audience that witnessed a work of art and consider how their expectations differ from our own. This may include, in music, the elements of form, rhythm and style; or, in art, the vocabulary for visual material (how it was made and how it looks). They will be able to articulate a subject as well as write about it, explaining how aesthetic elements comprise a particular style in the arts.

Writing Expectations

A minimum of 5-7 pages of writing for courses in the Arts and Literature domain (including studio courses) is required.

Student Requirements

Students will complete three courses in this learning domain with no more than two courses coming from the same department or program.

Criteria for Inclusion

  1. Courses in this domain deal with works of literature of works in the visual arts, media arts, the performing arts, music, or theater.

  2. Courses in Art and Literature are primarily concerned with understanding and evaluating art.  They engage students in the analysis and criticism of the works on the course list and by extension provide ways to approach other works; they consider the formal character of a work of art, its unity and coherence, the character and effect of its particular elements or devices, and the conventions that govern the artist’s selection and manipulation or material.  These courses may also consider social and cultural contexts, as appropriate.

  3. The course content focuses on literature or art as such, and on particular works of art.  Courses in this domain will undoubtedly be informed by theoretical propositions, but they should not deal solely with aesthetic theory.  Similarly, they may examine cultural and historical contexts, but should not be primarily studies of historical documents or social issues.

  4. Courses in this domain will provide opportunities for students to express their considered reactions to particular works.  Students should be asked to evaluate works of art not only orally in the give-and-take of classroom discussion, but also in writing, in circumstances that foster both the expression of a position and the reconsideration and re-expression of that position.  Assignments should encourage thoughtful, individual critical responses.  These courses may also make use of group projects, laboratory experiences, and other pedagogical approaches as appropriate.
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