Humanities (HUMS)
HUMS-101
Montage: Introduction to the Humanities
3 Credits
Lecture: 3 hours per week
Offering: Fall and Spring Only, All Years
This course explores how the humanities, through many varied types of creative works, comment on human experiences and raise questions of value and meaning. Students will learn an approach to understanding a wide variety of works in visual art, music, literature, and philosophy, based on questions applicable to all genres. The course is highly interactive, with frequent class discussion and informal written responses to works being explored. This course provides a good foundation for further humanities study in courses focusing on one particular field, such as literature, philosophy, or the arts. It is an ideal course for students who intend to focus on areas other than the humanities but wish to broaden their education.
HUMS-200
Interdisciplinary Seminar
3 Credits
Lecture: 3 hours per week
Offering: Fall and Spring Only, All Years
This course integrates a range of disciplines, including social sciences, the arts, history, literature, philosophy, and natural sciences, to explore issues related to community, sustainability and/or humanity's role in maintaining public and environmental health in the 21st century. Utilizing experiential learning, writing across the curriculum, reading, research, and special projects, students use problem-solving skills to explore these issues. This course is the same as INTR-200.
Pre/Corequisites: ENGL-101
HUMS-205 Visual Texts and Culture
3 Credits
Lecture: 3 hours per week
Offering: Fall Only, All Years
This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of visual culture. Borrowing from literary, cultural, and critical theory, this course investigates visual texts (images) and how they construct, subvert, reinforce or otherwise participate in the exchange of cultural meaning. The students will develop specific visual, written, and verbal skills for observing, analyzing, and describing visual artifacts in mediums including film, fashion, art, television, photography, the Internet, and other visual sources.
Prerequisites: ENGL-101
Recommended Prerequisites: HUMS-101
HUMS-295 Themes in Humanities
3 Credits
Lecture: 3 hours per week
Offering: Spring Only, All Years
This course is an integrated humanities course designed to examine historical, philosophical, and aesthetic themes in the humanities. The emphasis is on ways that artist, musicians, film makers, and writers have responded to such themes. Each semester the theme will focus on one significant contemporary issue, such as trends in the arts, architecture, the environment, technology, human rights, and regional conflicts.
Prerequisites: ENGL-101
Recommended Prerequisites: HUMS-101