HUMN-303 Full Course (All week discussions , Course Project)

Week 1 Discussion

What is the value of studying the humanities in a business
or technical curriculum? How might a topic such as ancient art enhance
contemporary life?

Choose a work of art from the reading in Chapter 1. Discuss
how the work is a reflection of the ancient culture that created it. Also, did
anything particularly surprise or impress you about the work of art or the
ancient people who created it?

Week2 Discussion

The architecture of the Greeks and Romans has influenced
people for centuries. When the founding fathers of America began to design
Washington, DC, how were they influenced by the Greeks and Romans?

Ancient peoples were often much more advanced than modern
people understand. Choose one example of a Greek or Roman advancement that
improved their societies. How did this advancement affect the culture of the
Greeks or Romans? Has this advancement evolved and is it in use,in some
capacity, in the modern world?

Week 3 Discussion

This Week, we took a brief look at Shakespeare’s The
Tempest (see the Assignments section). This five-act play opens with a
storm at sea (a tempest) and throughout, Shakespeare has planted allusions to
apparitions and magic, such as the character Ariel who, at times, appears to be
invisible to the other characters. It is a given that the special effects, such
as those often used in films, to actually give the stage the appearance of a
deadly tempest or actually make Ariel an invisible presence are not achievable
on the stage. To fill in this gap, audiences suspend disbelief.

 

In this thread, let’s discuss the power and limitations of
theatrical imagination. Please feel free to draw from productions you have
seen. (The old high school productions count, too!) Why are we willing to
suspend disbelief when we see a play, yet we demand so much more from a film
production? Do you think that the limitation on special effects and alternative
demand on the audience member to suspend disbelief is a weakness or a strength
of the theatrical experience? Would you rather see The Tempest on
stage or in film? Why?

This Week, we are exploring the items below.

• Excerpt
  fromBeowulf(also available as an audio in the lecture)

• Act
  II Scene I from Shakespeare’sThe Tempest

This Week, we have looked at several works of art that
utilized allegorical themes. One of the most common uses of imagery in the
medieval and Renaissance periods is allegory. What is an allegory? Describe how
at least one of the examples of art in this Week’s lecture or one of this Week’s
readings is allegorical in nature. Why, in your opinion, was allegory so
prevalent during these periods? Is it still important in contemporary
literature? Why or why not?

Week 4 Discussion

Line, color, hue, balance, form and perspective were some of
the key concepts covered in this Week’s tutorial. Use the example of a painting
by Peter Paul Rubens and discuss how one or more of this Week’s key concepts
are featured in the painting.

Identify the painting by title, and include citations for
any material you’ve researched.

Given the information from this Week’s reading on the
Enlightenment, the New Rationalism, and the Scientific Revolution, how did
advancements in science and reasoning change the lives of people at this time?
In addition, what effects did the Industrial Revolution have on the world?

Week 5 Discussion

In the 19th century, the camera was a revolutionary
invention. Did the invention of the camera change the arts? Why or why not?

 

Is there a relationship between movements such as realism
andimpressionism and the camera?

 

For this Week’s Discussion, chooserealism orimpressionism as
a basis for your posts and discuss how your choice is manifested in any area of
the humanities (i.e., painting, sculpture, literature, music, etc.), and give
an example from any discipline in the humanities to illustrate howrealism or
impressionism influenced the work of art. Please be sure to give an analysis of
how the work of art was influenced by the movement.

Week 6 Discussion

This Week, we looked at several examples of early modernist
art such as Cubism, Fauvism,futurism, andexpressionism. Let’s discuss the
relationships between these aesthetic categories and the sociopolitical climate
of the period.

 

How did the sociopolitical climate of the time period,
including the two world wars, influence artists?

Let’s connect the themes of the three readings and the
lecture for this Week to talk about how the ways feminist literature has
influenced contemporary thinking?

In your first post, share what you see the main themes or issues that were
important the writer of at least one of the following feminist works:

The Outsideby Susan Glaspell (audio available in the
lecture)

A Societyby Virginia Woolf

The Solitude of Selfby Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Be sure to reference the specific elements of at least one
of the readings or audio in your response. We’ll follow up as a class to
connect these historical issues to present-day Discussions of women and
society.

Week 7 Discussion

Although controversial art is not a topic exclusive to the
20th century, the distribution of information regarding controversial art has
increased with the proliferation of media. Please discuss an example of a 20th
century controversial work of art from any discipline of the humanities (music,
literature, sculpture, film, etc.) and an accompanying statement from the
artist(s). Based on your example, to what extent does controversial art make a
social contribution? Are governments ever justified in censoring art?

What were some of the influences of thepopart phenomenon?
Should we consider the creative elements

Question

Course Project: Advancements in the Humanities

Objectives

 

This course will take you through huge chunks of human
history from the Paleolithic era through the Vietnam War and into our
postmodern world. In Week 7, you will be asked to deliver a five- to seven-page
research paper on any subject within the humanities of your choosing, providing
you have cleared it with your professor. Your research paper will require a
minimum of three sources and a maximum of five sources. You must document your
research scrupulously—both in text and in a reference page as specified by the
APA style sheet. Scrupulous documentation plus high originality, analysis,
insight, and fresh applications of ideas are highly prized. Mere reporting,
describing, and finding others’ ideas are discouraged, and copying and pasting
is just wrong. Your paper is to be 70–80% original and 20–30% resourced
(documented via turnitin.com).

Guidelines

 

Your final grade includes points accumulated for your

• outline/proposal;
• Discussions;
• an
  annotated bibliography;
• a
  Final Paper; and
• a
  Final Exam.

The following are guidelines to assist you in completing the
course successfully.

Guidelines for the Outline/Proposal: An outline is a
convenience to help you tack down the topics you hope to cover in a Final
Paper, and a proposal is the extended and full description of your project (as
best you know it at the time of writing). Understand that you are making a best
effort to describe your project early on, but allow yourself to be open to
growth and change as you conduct research and focus your intentions.

Guidelines for the Annotated Bibliography: Good
annotations make for excellent papers. You are required to have three (but no
more than five) scholarly resources. A scholarly resource is written by an
academician with a Ph.D. or other terminal degree, is published in a
multivolume, peer-reviewed journal, and has ample references of its own. Your
annotations should succeed in the following.

1. It should establish the title, author, journal, and page
numbers.
2. It should briefly summarize the article, book, or chapter.
3. It should analyze the text—say what the implications are, what assumptions
are held, what historical context is represented, and the like.
4. It should locate at least one quotation to be used in your paper.
5. It should evaluate—say whether you agree, disagree, and why.

Guidelines for the Final Paper: The essay must be
five to seven double-spaced pages in length (not including the title or
reference pages). Include a minimum of three and a maximum of five scholarly
sources. The margins should be no more than one in. (right and left). The essay
should be composed in 12-point Times New Roman or Arial font. All of the
sources must be documented and cited using APA format.

Sample Assignments

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Here are some sample assignments, which you may elect to use
or not use.

1. Compare
   the culture that produced the Venus de Willendorf with the culture that
   produces the Barbie doll. What common themes do you see in the Paleolithic
   culture that we share or have rejected in modern culture? Consider whether
   we worship Barbie, and if so, how? Consider society’s view of women in the
   Barbie era compared to that which the artifactual record suggests was the
   view of Paleolithic women.
2. Regard
   Plato’s view of the ideal from his Allegory of the Cave and
   compare it to Aristotle’s essay, Rhetoric. Plato believed that
   artistic language was downright evil, because it could persuade
   weak-minded people to enact unethical behaviors. He believed, for example,
   that the bed the artist made was closer to the ideal in that even though
   it was a shadow of the ideal, it at least had function. However, the bed
   that the artist made was furthest from the ideal and was a shadow of a
   shadow and lacking even functional utility. Aristotle, on the other hand,
   believed that the only way to get to the ideal was through the
   abstractions of language and that the artist’s bed captured the essence of
   bed far better than the carpenter’s bed; that is, to live in a reasoned
   and logos-centric attitude of thought was to be closest to the ideal.
3. What
   does the term the Dark Ages mean? In what ways
   were the Dark Ages dark? In what ways was this society inadvertently
   preparing to emerge in modernity through the preservation of classical
   literature and scripture? What particular impact did Ireland have in the
   world that would emerge from the Dark Ages? Consider the literature
   produced in early Old English, a Germanic language with a Celtic
   imagination, expressed in Arthurian legend. What do these breathtaking
   legends of knights and honor have to do with our modern sense of ethics?
   What is the chivalric code?
4. The
   early modern (what used to be called the Renaissance) period followed the
   Middle Ages (which followed the presumably Dark Ages) and is a
   time––indeed, a very long time––in which there was a rebirth (the literal
   meaning of the word Renaissance) of classical culture. In this rebirth,
   classical literature and scripture flourished. And those who will have
   studied the Dark Ages may recognize that it was those secluded Irish monks
   who copiously hand copied and illuminated scripture and classical
   literature that they then reintroduced via Scotland and England into the
   rest of Europe (effectively jump-starting the university system). And thus
   a Renaissance began in the temperate climate of Italy and mushroomed
   northward and culminated (for the study of Western civilization’s
   purposes) in Renaissance England. Renaissance England produced one of the
   greatest authors in the history of the Western world—Shakespeare. Although
   many of us find his language to be distant, his take on relationships, the
   appropriateness of sovereignty, and such issues as murder and revenge and
   law and justice are viewed in modern terms. Examine Hamletas a
   revenge tragedy. In what ways did Shakespeare set Hamlet up
   for conflict, that is, to avenge his dead father’s honor against the
   unspeakable crime of fratricide, while commenting on the barbarity of
   revenge?
5. Find
   a modern revenge drama and detail the ways in which the drama you chose
   and Hamlet inform each other. In other words, looking at
   literature is not a one-way street, as if the past only has impact on the
   present. Quite the contrary, the past and present are in dialogue with
   each other. Look at how modern revenge motifs help us to understand some
   of Hamlet’s moral misgivings and the complexities of his choices. For the
   truly ambitious, you might connect both Hamlet and a
   modern revenge drama to archetypal literature, such as the descent into
   hell and the return seen in literature of antiquity.
6. Consider
   the psychological and physical traumas faced by women who had no control
   over their reproductive organs. In what way is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a
   psychological representation of her fear of childbirth?
7. Read
   T. S. Eliot’s great modernist poem “The Waste Land” and his
   essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. To what extent do
   you think Eliot is successful in demonstrating poetry that emerges not
   from emotional states but from rather cunning and completely self-aware
   states that emphasize not the catharsis of the poet’s emotions but are
   geared to producing catharsis in the audience?
8. Throughout
   American history, music becomes critically important. Look at the music
   that led up to civil rights. You may wish to select specific musical
   pieces, such as Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”––a song written by a New
   York Jewish man who gave the song to Holiday. You also might consider
   Irving Berlin’s “Suppertime,” which was made famous on Broadway by Ethel
   Waters. Both songs explore the practice of lynching African American men.
   These collaborations, particularly between Jewish intellectuals and early
   African American social activists, are critically important and grow in
   intensity, leading to the freedom singers of the late 1950s and 1960s.
   These include Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and many
   more who joined hands with Martin Luther King, Mahalia Jackson, Harry
   Belafonte, Odetta, and many others. Civil rights could never have occurred
   without interracial collaborations. Even Harry Truman, a Missouri-raised
   man of his historical context, was able to rise above his social and
   political encoding and began the civil rights movement in America through
   the legislation he introduced.
9. Consider
   the impact of the Vietnam War on American culture. In the decades prior to
   the 1980s, two issues beset American culture: civil rights and the Vietnam
   War. Both were televised directly into living rooms on all three channels.
   On college campuses throughout the world, but especially on American
   campuses, antiwar protests were routine. Hippies often were thought to
   conduct themselves on the premises of antiwar, free sex, and lots of
   drugs. The music that emerged from this era is still famously current and
   listened to today. It was an era of convertibles, gas guzzlers, freedom, and
   endless summers. Then that generation grew into adults––your parents and
   grandparents. Writing with sensitivity to the nuances of the era, what
   happened to the dream?

Whether you elect to compose on one of the suggestions
outlined here, on some modification of a question, or on some independently
arrived at idea (in concert with your professor), you will need to plan for the
following milestones.

Milestones

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Please refer to the Guidelines above for specific
details.

Annotations (150 points)

A good annotated bibliography provides the publication
details, describes the key points of the source, uncovers controversies
introduced by the source, and evaluates the merits of the source. Each of your
three (minimal) to five (maximal) annotations should be approximately 200–250
words. This is due Week 4.

Outline and Proposal (100 points)

Following the annotations, you will be ready to plan your
paper. An outline (one and one half pages) and a proposal (two to three pages)
of your intended project are due. Quality proposals and outlines will not
merely describe or find information but will have a strong and original point of
view. The highest points are conferred for originality, the locating and
detailing of controversies, and for nuanced papers that sensitively explore
topics with deft subtlety. This is due Week 2.

Final Paper (200 points)

See details under the Guidelines above. This is due Week
7.

Grading Rubrics

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Week2

Course Project: Outline and Proposal

Create an outline and proposal for the research you will
conduct. Please see the Course Project section under Course Home for details on
this assignment.

Select a project from among those suggested or discuss a
special topic with your professor.

Submit your assignment to the Dropbox located on the silver
tab at the top of this page. For instructions on how to use the Dropbox, read
thesestep-by-step
Instructionsor watch this

Week4

Course Project: Annotated Bibliography

A good annotated bibliography provides the publication
details, describes the key points of the source, uncovers controversies
introduced by the source, and evaluates the merits of the source.

Each of your three (minimum) to five (maximum) annotations
should be approximately 200–250 words.

Create an introduction by reshaping your proposal based on
your professor’s feedback. Be sure to include a strong thesis and then annotate
each source you intend to use. This is due in Week 4.