Interdisciplinary Arts 0276 - Photos, Facts,Fictions 1920-29

This is a research course for intellectuals who are artists and artists who are intellectuals. The course will focus on the Nineteen Twenties as an era whose excesses and preoccupations were dances of death performed at the edge of a mass grave containing the bodies of the seven million soldiers and fifty million civilians, who died in the war and in the pandemic that followed. To carry-out their investigations, students will (1) sift through massive collections of on-line archival photographs; (2) read a variety of primary and secondary written sources (newspapers, novels, and biographies);(3) use whatever array of written and visual documents they discover to build image/text sequences that, like scenes in a documentary film, tell true stories in artful and analytic ways. Midterm and Final projects will require immersive, self-initiated research. Hard work and originality will be rewarded.

Multiple Cultural Perspectives Independent Work In this course, students are expected to spend at least eight to ten hours a week of preparation and work outside of class time. This time includes reading, writing, research.