Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0321 - HACU Research Seminar: Archive

This course is an upper level theory and research seminar geared towards students in the Division III/senior thesis process, or in the final semester of Division II. This course has two primary purposes: 1) to provide a supportive and stimulating intellectual community in which students will produce and refine their independent project, write a working outline, and understand the state of the research on their project. 2) to explore the turn to the archive in the humanities and the arts. We will examine the prominence of the archive in contemporary theory, in fiction, in a wide variety of scholarship, and in the arts. This class will be organized in part around students' projects (in any area of humanistic inquiry as well as hybrid projects that combine written inquiry with visual arts, performance, music, or creative writing), and in part around an investigation of the archive in contemporary thought and culture. Your Div III projects or potential ideas for projects (for students in Div II) need not have anything to do with the archive as a topic of your project, although research in the arts and humanities--including the creative and investigative potential of archival research--could play a prominent role. "The archive" will be an organizing structure for common exploration and thinking about the humanities and arts.

Writing and Research Independent Work Prerequisites: Limited to Div III, final semester Div II, or Five College senior theses students in the Humanities. In this course, students are expected to spend approximately 6 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.