BC 300: The Art of Human Experience

Overview

A society often reveals its values, beliefs, and uncertainties through its great works of art, literature, and music. By studying the humanities, we can understand more fully how people throughout history and in modern times have sought to understand themselves and the world around them.

This course focuses on Western peoples and culture. It will explore how a variety of humanistic disciplines, including visual art, literature, music, and cinema provide a window into a society’s attempt to address fundamental questions about life, death, belief, morality, choice, freedom, and the development of the individual self. It will emphasize how the humanities enable a culture to explore its origins and envision its future. Each module will focus on one particular theme as it is present across a variety of humanistic disciplines, and will discuss how individual works both reflect and criticize the cultures in which they were created.

Throughout the course, you will be working on a course project that will result in a final research paper on a topic in the humanities that interests you. You will explore one theme, issue, or question about the human condition and how that theme, issue, or question is reflected in the works of two different disciplines.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Discuss complex works of art through analysis of style, structure, and cultural context.
• Recognize parallel trends of development in literature, art, music, and selected works of popular culture.
• Analyze the connections between different themes, historical events, and works of art, not in isolation but as they relate to each other.
• Apply techniques of critical thinking, analysis, and research in exploring the ways in which the humanities both confront and reflect a culture and individual’s conception of self.
• Analyze works of art and discuss how they reflect the human condition and the knowledge of self.
• Use the Internet as a research tool that can expand and enhance a study of the humanities.

Course Requirements

The text for this class includes a listening CD, Sounds of the Humanities for The Art of Being Human, that is required for completing assignments.

Required Texts
BC 300 texts are available from the JIU/MBS bookstore