Interdisiplinary Studies-Humanities

Introduces six major religious traditions deeply rooted in different cultures including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Examines the historical evolution, the doctrines, beliefs, practices, institutions, and cultural expressions of these religious traditions.

Examines the concept of America and to what extent it is a product of religious mindsets of particular times. Explores multi-media materials, including: Hollywood films, 20th Century folk music, literature of the west, 18th Century primary sources, 19th Century theses on American identity, and 20th Century journalism and criticism.

Focuses on the process of poetry as an ongoing creative journey. Explores the ways in which poets access the subconscious and the irrational and channel them into poems, via the elements of craft including image, metaphor, tone, sound, meter, rhythm and line. Students will keep a poetry journal and write poems in response to exercises designed to help them move beyond their initial "comfort zone."

Explores writing as a process of transforming imagination into reality. Guides students to understand the connection between writing and cartography using poetry and memoir. Course is designed to help the student become a more confident writer and editor.

Analyzes the elements of fiction; structural elements such as character, plot, point of view, and conflict will be discussed in addition to stylistic elements, such as dialogue, setting, and sensory details. Includes readings of essays and short stories by published authors and class critiques of fiction written by the students.

Student learns how to bring together the imaginative strategies of fictional story telling with new ways of narrating true, real-life events. Explores how Creative Nonfiction writing allows you to share your stories in compelling ways, helps you write effectively in professional and personal situations, and provides new ways for you to document real-life experiences as they occurred.

Explores the relationship between the physical body and human identity through such topics as body image, eating disorders, sexuality, aging, disease and its affects on the body by reading and discussion of short stories, poems, and novels. Engages students in frequent formal and informal writing, beginning with personal narratives and journal responses.

Focuses on classic, contemporary, and non-traditional literature about the environment. The course is divided into three sections: nature writing, place-based writing, and environmental writing. Readings focus on issues beyond landscape as gender, race, politics, ethics, and culture all play a part in environmental writing.

Explores the process, form, and voice of writing poetry. Offers the chance to read widely in contemporary American poetry and develop reflective prose essays on poetry, poetics, and the philosophy of poetry.

Examines the cultural and commercial contexts of film production, including the directors, the intended audience, and the audience's response. Investigates film structure, how meaning is created, and how this structure can be read and understood. Examines genres, stories, and the ways in which films and their audiences are a part of the larger structure of the culture in which they exist.

Studies the films of Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, two very different but equally creative filmmakers who explored their medium with an intensive imagination. Analyzes such films as Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, Vertigo, and Psycho, examining what makes them work and looking at the cultural and historical context of the films.

Examines movie case studies that aroused controversy. Analyzes the messages these movies communicated on the screen. Considers what the filmmakers intended to communicate, and how audiences and media critics responded to the portrayals.

Develops the skills to inspire and cultivate writing and creativity.

Enables students to reflect on what was perhaps the greatest downfall into barbarity, genocide and mass oppression. Examines first-hand accounts of both the Holocaust and crimes of the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and Cambodia. Explores historical, intellectual, cultural, and psychological roots of Nazism and Communism.

Examines architecture from a global perspective. Focuses on aesthetic, cultural, and political forces that influence design, use, and meaning. Provides students with a vocabulary for discussing architecture as well as tools for visual analysis and interpretation.

Examines the tense but fruitful relationship between photography and art. Draws upon aesthetics, history, and criticism to explore controversies about photography as art, examine the impact of photography on artistic ideas and practices, and evaluate the importance of photography and art in modern culture.

Explores one significant theme in the social sciences and/or humanities such as liberation, power, equality, diversity, rights, justice, war, happiness, love, and beauty, through the study of one significant and influential classic or contemporary book or work of art. Students engage with the subject and enhance their critical reading, writing, thinking, and discussion skills.

Investigates the idea of approaching art as a form of human evolution. Examines the art of several past and present cultures. Blends art and science to connect aesthetics to an understanding of human nature from the cognitive and biological sciences. Examines existing personal and cultural theories of art and art criticism.

Introduces painting techniques and concepts, with emphasis on the understanding of its formal language and the fundamentals of artistic expression. Explores color theory, linear perspective, pictorial composition , figure/ground relationships, visual perception, spatial concepts, and critical thinking skills.

Introduces the philosophical concept of the ethical discrimination of actions. Examines primary sources in some detail by presenting prevailing philosophical systems. Studies decision-making in the context of the contemporary world using examples such as business environment, faith and religion, and the political arena.

Explores the relationship between religious faith, forms of reasoning, and scientific explanation. Examines such questions as: What is the nature of religious faith? Is religious faith a rational, irrational, or non-rational belief? Does reasoning undermine faith or strengthen it? Are scientific and religious perspectives compatible?

Examines the anthropological origins of dance history in world cultures. Discusses the importance of dance to define and preserve the historic traditions within a culture. Explores the inherent relationship between dance and music within both the socio-cultural and folk aspects, as well as the ceremonial, religious, and ritual aspects of a culture.

Explores the historic perspective of the influence of African-American culture on theater, music and dance of 19th-20th Century U.S. Examines the socio-cultural aspects of the integration of West African slaves into America. Probes the evolution of early American theater beginning with minstrels, for example, and continues with the development of both music and dance of the Jazz Age.

Examines the places where art and medicine intersect. Explores the relationship between art and sanity and the contemplative, cathartic, and expressive possibilities of art as a healing modality. Provides students with a theoretical basis and vocabulary for discussing therapeutic art and a set of tools and exercises for creating it.

Writing begins with intuition, moves towards consciousness and strives for clarity. Such movement calls for a steady eye and an enduring approach. Accordingly, this course focuses upon resurrecting the fading art of patience, a faculty required for writing. Students will read widely, respond to assigned readings through weekly essays and share work in a workshop setting with an emphasis on revision. Writing intensive.