Faculty First Year Seminars 197CMPL2 - Why the Arts?
Fall
2013
01
1.00
Laszlo Dienes
M 2:30PM 3:20PM
UMass Amherst
40270
The goal of this seminar is to alert our young incoming students to the essential role(s) the arts play in the world, and to the value of becoming familiar with and studying those arts as one of the best ways to become a cultured, informed, educated citizen.
The method of this seminar is an open-ended, free-wheeling discussion of what the arts are, how they differ, how they can (and should) be looked at and evaluated, and why (or if) they are important for society and in human life. We would use the internet in class for constant illustration both of the different arts themselves (introducing students to great examples of the visual and performing arts, of music, architecture, film, poetry, etc.), and of the vastly different possible ways of analyzing and interpreting them (by looking at famous excerpts, quotations, and definitions from well-known articles, essays, or books by a wide variety of thinkers from Aristotle to Dienes?).
The method of this seminar is an open-ended, free-wheeling discussion of what the arts are, how they differ, how they can (and should) be looked at and evaluated, and why (or if) they are important for society and in human life. We would use the internet in class for constant illustration both of the different arts themselves (introducing students to great examples of the visual and performing arts, of music, architecture, film, poetry, etc.), and of the vastly different possible ways of analyzing and interpreting them (by looking at famous excerpts, quotations, and definitions from well-known articles, essays, or books by a wide variety of thinkers from Aristotle to Dienes?).
Freshmen Only