GA, 3 or 4 credits
GenEd Arts courses develop artistic literacy. Courses may be
centered on one of the arts (e.g. dance, fine arts, music), may be
interdisciplinary in nature (e.g. creative writing and theater,
film and dance), or may address larger themes (e.g. creativity, the
arts and political statement, technology and the arts), but all
Arts courses make some connection to other perspectives,
disciplines, or subject areas.
Arts courses are intended to teach students how to:
- Experience and respond to a work of art or creative
process;
- Recognize or interpret a work of art or creative process in its
social, historical and cultural context;
- Describe or evaluate a work of art or creative process using
appropriate terminology;
- Appreciate the value of art in our lives and in society.
Select One Course
Art in Cultural Context
Arabic 0871, Hebrew 0871, Russian 0871
View the arts as an expression of cultural identity as it occurs
across the globe. Each semester, we will focus on a particular
world region or country, including but not limited to Russia,
Japan, and Latin America. The exploration of cultural identity
begins with an overview of the region or country's historical and
religious influences and then studies the culture's arts, including
the visual arts (painting, sculpture), musical traditions,
literature (folktales, national mythology), the vernacular arts
(crafts, storytelling), film and theater. You will take field trips
or have experiences that will allow you to encounter the region's
arts firsthand, and to develop a blended understanding of a
people's cultural identity and the larger world.
Theater 0825
Whether you have some or no experience in theater, this course
will open new doors and provide a firm understanding of the actor's
craft. We will start with improvisation exercises to explore basic
principles of acting, which will help you expand their expressive
capabilities, imagination and spontaneity, and give you greater
confidence on stage and in front of people. At the same time, you
will use your growing knowledge of the craft to analyze the work of
actors on stage and film. Finally, you will work on assigned scenes
from dramatic literature, giving you the basic tools of text
analysis, the principal tool with which an actor figures out a
text.
Music Studies 0802
Are you an active or passive listener? What kind of music do you
enjoy? How do you compare different musical styles, and what
qualities make one performance different from another? Be
challenged to rethink your entire conception of music by focusing
on how to listen to music to deepen your appreciation of what you
are hearing, and to ponder the importance of music in your life and
to society. You will not be required to become a performer
yourself, but you will become a more discriminating consumer of
music through attendance at live concerts in the local area, by
observation of in-class performances, rehearsals, and music
lessons, and through guided listening exercises in and outside of
class. Repertoire selected from Classical, Jazz, Broadway, and
World Music will engage your intellectual and emotional response as
a concert-goer, listener, researcher, critic, and communicator.
The Art of Sacred Space
Art History 0803, Greek & Roman Classics 0803, Religion
0803
Where do people go to communicate with the divine? Explore with
us where and how people of the many different cultures of the
Greco-Roman world communicated with their gods. Why are graves and
groves considered sacred space? When is a painting or sculpture
considered sacred? Whom do the gods allow to enter a sacred
building? Can a song be a prayer or a curse? How can dance sway the
gods? Why do gods love processions and the smell of burning
animals? The journey through sacred space in Greco-Roman antiquity
will engage your senses and your intellect, and will reveal a
mindset both ancient and new.
Art History 0808
Philadelphia has extraordinary resources in the arts. This
course will give you direct exposure to the visual arts, and help
you understand their relationship with music, dance, theater, and
the other artistic expressions that also form our heritage. Through
visits to museums and performances, guest speakers, lectures, films
and discussions, you will be introduced to the great monuments and
the major movements that place the visual arts of the western world
in a broad cultural framework. You will learn about the concepts
that connect the progression of ideas in artistic communication and
expression from the ancient world to modern times.
Creative Acts [I/II/H]
English 0826
This course focuses on the art of writing, finding one's voice,
and writing for different genres. In a small classroom setting, you
will work with the faculty member and other students to improve
your writing through work-shopping. Other readings will allow you
to develop your craft. By the end of the semester, you will produce
a portfolio of your work.
Theater 0807
Man is the animal who creates, but why and how? Whether we are
making art or making dinner, creativity ultimately makes a
difference in our lives and the lives of others. In this course we
will view creativity through the lens of the arts and explore the
broader manifestations of the creative spirit in a variety of
related fields and disciplines. Students will learn the fundamental
concepts of creativity and engage with artists, performers and
working professionals exploring the central role creativity plays
in their work. Explore your creativity in weekly hands-on group
sessions augmented by periodic field visits to see performances,
concerts, galleries, etc. Be creative, follow your bliss and
develop a passion for life-long learning!
Theater 0805 Theatre, dance, opera--our imaginations
give us the natural ability to accept the make-believe worlds they
create on stage. While it is the imagination that ultimately allows
us to enjoy the performing arts, imagination also plays a role in
creating these worlds. Take advantage of our rich local arts
community as you experience live performances in Philadelphia! We
will use our imaginative capacities to deepen our own experience,
while learning about the value of the arts, the controversies
surrounding them, and differences in people's perceptions of the
performing arts as compared to other forms of entertainment.
Broadcast Telecom Mass Media 0821
What is the future of your TV; what kind of programming will you
see in the next two years? What role will blogs, vlogs, podcasts,
YouTube and other social networks have in transforming television
into a medium where consumers drive content? Television is not
going away but how, where and when we interact with it is changing.
In large lecture you will learn about these changes; in small labs,
you will take the driver seat as creator of content. Your
assignment: based on careful analysis of readings, lectures and
interactions with professionals, determine how you will tell a
story that will reach an audience you define.
Dance 0806
What is jazz? Students will explore its roots and reinventions
in Ragtime, Hot Jazz, Blues, Swing, Bebop, Free Jazz, Rhythm &
Blues, and Hip Hop throughout the 20th century in America. We'll
experience its manifestations across media, screening dance films,
listening to music, viewing visual art works, and reading poetry.
Then we'll move into the studio to experience first-hand its
rhythms, moods, dynamics, creative expression and improvisation. A
key theme will be how the individual and the collective nurture
each other in jazz. Intellectually, we'll examine the historical
and social backdrop and analyze the essential components of
jazz.
American Studies 0801
What and where is the real Philadelphia? How can we get past the
cliches to better understand and experience the city's historic and
legendary sense of itself? For more than three centuries,
Philadelphia's unique identity has been defined and redefined by a
prodigious and prolific creative community: painters, sculptors,
writers, performers, architects, planners, thinkers, and more.
We'll explore Philadelphia's evolving sense of itself through a
broad range of examples of creative works from the 17th through the
20th centuries. And through this prism of expression, and the
institutions that present and protect it, we'll develop a deep
understanding of Philadelphia as one of the nation's most creative
cities.
Music Studies 0804
What is it about the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon? From the concert
hall to the stage and silver screen, no other author's works have
inspired more adaptations than those of William Shakespeare. In
this new century, as the "cult of originality" continues to grow at
an exponential rate and celebrity is sought as an end in itself
(see Hilton, Paris), why have the works of a man whose very
identity is shrouded in mystery remained so popular? This course
will explore Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and
Juliet, and their adaptation by composers and choreographers.
Students will then get a chance to "bend the Bard" on their
own!
English 0822
Love and political ambition and violence and evil and laughter
and wit and racial antagonism and the battle between the sexes and
the joy and misery of being human--Shakespeare's plays are about
all of that. Discover how they work in film and video. Learn to
read films and understand what actors, directors, composers, set
designers, cinematographers, etc. do to bring the bard's plays to
life. We will view Merchant of Venice, Richard
III, Othello, Much Ado about Nothing, and
Romeo and Juliet and study how these plays got from the
page to the screen. We will look at actors of the present
day--Pacino, McKellen, Hopkins, Hoskins, Fishburne, Branagh,
Thompson, DiCaprio, Danes, etc. and also at giants of the past,
like Laurence Olivier, to see how actors create their roles. This
course includes group work in reviewing film techniques, innovative
writing instruction, and an introduction to research. You will have
access to whole plays and to selected clips streamed to your
computer.
Shall We Dance: Dance as Narrative in American Film
Dance 0831
Investigate the role dance plays and has played in informing and
acknowledging social trends in the twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries. Connections are made between dance and immigration,
industry, politics, fashion, social change, class and gender,
nationalism, education and popular culture. Dance both perpetuates
and challenges social and cultural issues of power, class, gender,
sexual orientation, and age, and acts as a mirror of our society.
We will study popular perceptions of dance, dance in Hollywood, and
dance as a reflection of social change, dance as social ritual,
dance and contemporary notions of the "Impossible Body." You will
not be dancing in the course, but will learn through lecture,
discussion and film/videotape viewing.
Significance of the Arts
Philosophy 0847
As we blend philosophical inquiry into the nature of several of
the arts and the roles they play in society with analysis of
particular artistic practices, we shall critically examine
questions like these: Is the main goal of art to imitate or
represent the world? If so, do painting, sculpture, architecture,
photography, movies, music, dance, theater, performance art,
literature, handicrafts, fashion, bodily ornamentation and the
like, provide knowledge about ourselves and the world around us?
What is--or should be--the relationship between art and some of the
other great domains of human thought, action, and concerns such as
religion or the realm of social and political relations, especially
matters concerning gender, sexuality, class, race, morality, and
community? Do the arts or artistic institutions have specific
social functions? For example, is there a connection between
museums, imperialism, and nationalism? Are films embedded in
networks of commodity production? Are there specifically urban or
global dimension to these questions?
Greek & Roman Classics 0811
Through close readings of surviving texts, through viewings of
modern productions of ancient theatrical works, and through your
own recreations of Greek performative media, we will examine and
experience ancient Greek drama both as a product of its own
historical period and as a living art form. We will ask fundamental
questions about the nature and purpose of theater in the ancient
world: is this art just entertainment or does it engage and comment
on the problems of Athens? How and why did this society invent
theater in the Western world? We will also investigate the
relationship of Greek drama to the modern world: why do new
versions of plays about Oedipus, Antigone and Dionysus keep popping
up in places as diverse as New York, Utah, South Africa and China?
How can ancient drama be staged now in a way that is both
responsible to the surviving texts and stimulating to contemporary
audiences?
English 0975
As he recently commented on the sad state of globalized affairs
in which "the cosmopolitanism of international film making is
matched by the parochialism of American film culture," New York
Times film critic A.O. Scott asked, "The whole world is
watching, why aren't Americans?" This course will use Scott's
question as a point of departure to investigate the ostensible
reasons why Americans, or in our case, Philadelphians, aren't
watching "transnational cinema"--international films that gain
distribution outside of their country of production, and that
depict transnational movements of people, capital, and social
values. Are transnational films playing at a theatre near you?
Perhaps they are, but if not, why not? Which 'foreign films' are
allowed to cross the border into our country? How, when, and where
do we get to 'see the world' and why does that matter in today's
globalized, interconnected world? Learn 'how to see the world'--not
as a one-dimensional quaint or exotic representation of the
"other"--but instead through the ways in which these films engage
critical contemporary issues of nation, transnation, and
globalization in an increasingly interconnected transnational
public sphere.
Music Studies 0809
Have you ever wondered why musical compositions from different
parts of the world sound so dissimilar? Why does Japanese music
employ silence as a structural element and Chinese melodies use
only five notes? Discover how an artist's creative imagination is
molded by the cultural values of the society at large. Listen to
guest musicians demonstrate different styles of playing and attend
a live concert. Examine folk, art and popular music from around the
world and discuss the wonderful and strange sounds that are
produced.
