Taken during the second semester, the purpose of this course is to provide students with the opportunity to experience the arts from a hands-on perspective. ARHU106 is divided into three distinct but related sections. Students can choose which section they would like to pursue based on its theme and their interests; each year brings a different selection of ARHU106 classes. Current and past sections have included:
1) Southern Musical Traditions and Mass Media
Over the course of the semester we will look at various musical genres including Jazz, Blues, Country, Rhythm and Blues, and Rock n' Roll with a special emphasis on the advent of radio and recording during the early 20th century. Students then compose or arrange a piece of music, record it, and play it on air at the local radio station. Hear selected tracks created by the Spring 2006 Music Class!
2) Social Issues, Popular Culture and Television Screenwriting: Representations of Race, Sexuality and Space
We examine how television acts as a reflection of American life and how T.V. influences culture. Through in-depth study of cultural theory, several primary texts (including The Wire, Will & Grace, Weeds and Mad Men), we will learn how screenwriters incorporate and comment on contemporary social issues, with special attention paid to the intersection of race, sexuality and space. Students then apply screenwriting techniques to their own 22 or 44 minute teleplay.
3) Graphic Novels and Graphic Cultures (Spring 2010)
This course serves as an introduction to critical methods in popular culture studies, with a focus on the graphic novel as cultural product and practice. Together, we will explore the ways in which meanings emerge in several classic texts of the graphic novel genre. Our readings of these texts will be informed by a diversity of theoretical perspectives, including visual culture studies, poststructuralism, postmodernism and intersectionality. We will interrogate the relationships between the concepts “graphic novel” or “comic book” and “popular culture,” with each of us bringing our lived experiences to our readings and discussions. Students will create their own piece of graphic storytelling as the practical component of this course. (Patrick Grzanka)
4) The "Blogosphere" in/as Culture (Spring 2008/2009)
The internet is everywhere. It has changed how we experience everything from war to business, not to mention the trials and tribulations of Britney Spears. Weblogs- “blogs”- have been a fundamental medium through which people communicate on the internet and in culture generally. This course will examine blogs as a tool for communication and as a phenomenon that contributes to the meanings we make as a culture. We will analyze a variety of different blogs focusing on politics, religion, business, entertainment, and sports. What do blogs tell us about our culture? Can blogs be used as an educational tool to advance cultural critique and social justice work? How do blogs change how we move through the world and what ethical concerns do they raise? To help understand how blogs function, students will create and maintain a blog focusing on a topic of their choosing. By combining analyses with a practical application, this course explores how blogs have been and can be used as a vital component of both the arts and the humanities.
5) Creative Nonfiction: Personal Blogs and Essays (Spring 2010)
In the current literary market, nonfiction books and articles--memoirs, travel writing, biographies, etc.--are often in higher demand than fiction; the focus of this course is on a short form of creative nonfiction often featured in literary journals, popular magazines and on websites: the personal essay. The personal essay can be loosely defined (in a paraphrase of the Handbook of Literature definition) as an informal essay with a casual conversational style and "some autobiographical content or interest." The French Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne was the genre's first exemplar, but the form's roots go back to the letters of the Roman philosopher Seneca. Over the course of the semester we will be discussing this tradition as well as analyzing the forms and conventions of the genre through examples from the contemporary tradition in English, which includes writers as diverse as George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, E.B. White, James Baldwin, and Joan Didion. This semester
we will also be looking specifically at the ways in which the personal essay can be adapted to web venues; we will be creating and maintaining an online blog where we will be showcasing our personal writing each week in addition to writing and workshopping a longer personal essay with publication in a particular venue in mind. (Sarah Kimmet)
6) Idea, Text, Performance: Creating Drama (Spring 2010)
This course is an intense semester-long immersion in plays, play-going, and playwrighting. The goal is that, by semester's end, you will deeply understand what a play is, how to write one, and how to direct and act in one. Part 1: We shall begin by reading some very modern, idea-driven, and word-heavy plays. Plays selected will be from the most recent and successful British playwrights working on the UK stage: Jez Butterworth, Simon Stephens, Alan Bennett, David Hare, Rachel Lenkiewicz, Robin Soans, Tom Stoppard. During this first third of the course, we shall be learning by intensely staring at the techniques and craft that go into plays. How, for instance, do writers create precise emotional and rational responses in their audiences? We shall also attend several plays on the DC professional stage; we will read and analyze those plays as well. By the end of this period, students should know what a play IS. Part 2: This is the hard part. Each student will now start to type, learning to overcome his or her modesty and fear to produce a one-act play by the end of this four-week period. It's seat-belt time, in more senses than one. Each week, all the class members will workshop and critique and hone each other's work. The goal here is to learn what a play demands from its author: laser-sharp honesty and witheringly hard work. Part 3: In the final four weeks of the course, all 12 of the students‚ one-acters will be performed as rehearsed table-reads in the Ulrich Recital Hall in Tawes. Each student will direct his own 20-minute play, staring his or her classmates. The point of the course is to view drama not just as something that can be enjoyed and discussed and written about, but as an art-form that can be done by anyone with an informed and attentive will. This course attempts to provide both the will and the way.
NOTE: COURSE MEETS ONCE EVERY TWO WEEKS FOR 100 MINUTES. Several trips to see plays in Washington, D.C. will be required. (Professor Michael Olmert, Distinguished Honors Humanities Teaching Fellow)
7) Comics, Jesters, Satirists and Hacks: American Humor and its Discontents (Spring 2010)Humor pervades cultural forms, whether manifesting in literature, film, television, theatre, music, art and other print, visual and performatic cultural practices. As a vehicle for self-expression, humor edifies and instructs; it can point us towards the everyday practices of people’s lives, illumining social and political issues and showing us “where the trouble is.” Using critical methods in popular culture studies we will examine the cultural economy of comedy; in other words, the production and consumption of comic performance (i.e., variety and vaudeville, improvisational theatre, sketch comedy, stand-up comedy and one-(wo)man shows) in 20th century US culture. This interdisciplinary course will unpack the history, theories, and functions of laughter and humor while also documenting the myriad ways comic performance proliferates. We will examine styles of comic performance such as shock comedy, self-deprecating humor, satire/political humor and impersonations from such comics as Lisa Lampenelli, Dave Chappelle, Sarah Silverman, Maria Bamford, Jeff Garlin, Margaret Cho, Angelo Tsarouchas, Pablo Francisco, Kate Clinton, Jimmy Dore, Wanda Sykes and many, many more. Reading comedy as a cultural text, we will discuss public discourses about humor exploring questions such as: what does the public say about humor; who is best suited to produce humor; whose funny and why? The course will culminate with a final project allowing students to work independently or together to prepare a comic performance or text that puts into practice a theory or key term germane to popular culture studies. (Beck Krefting, Honors Humanities Doctoral Teaching Fellow)
Keystone Project: During their second semester, students continue to research their project; expand their bibliography to a minimum of 20 sources and annotate all their sources; and make necessary changes to their original project proposal.
Course Syllabus - Music (PDF) (2007)
Course Syllabus - Writing/Social Issues in Pop Culture (PDF) (2008)
Course Syllabus - Visual Arts/Graphic Novels (PDF) (2009)
Course Syllabus - Multimedia/Blogs (PDF) (2009)
Course Syllabus - Creative Nonfiction (PDF) (2009)
Course Readings - Music (PDF)
