Humanities (HUMN)
HUMN1051 INTRODUCTION TO ART & ARCHITECTURE
Art and Architecture reflect culture and technology, and represent significant career possibilities. Through readings, guest lectures, and field trips, students will explore outstanding examples in Boston, make critical reports, and develop skills for success in Architectural Technology at Wentworth. Prerequisite: ENGL1050 (3 credits)
HUMN3221 GLOBAL ADVENTURERS & EXPLORERS
This course explores great adventures past and present and the stories they tell, with a focus on mountaineers, climbers, and arctic voyagers on land and sea. Through discussion and analysis of film. media, and text, the course examines the human drives to reach summits, establish new passages and routes, an attain ever-greater feats of athleticism in harsh terrain. The course also investigates the art of adventure story telling through film and written word. Prerequisites: completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN3800 SPECIAL TOPICS IN HUMANITIES
Special topics in humanities to be determined by the faculty assigned. These courses present topics that are not covered by existing courses and are likely to change from semester to semester. Refer to the semester schedule for the courses offered that semester. Contact the faculty assigned for more information about the course topic. Prerequisite: Completion of an English Sequence (1 - 4 credits)
HUMN4000 OLMSTED'S VISION AND U.S. PARKS
This course begins with the ideals and legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the Emerald Necklace in Boston and Central Park in New York City and whose Brookline firm shaped outdoor spaces across the U.S., including numerous cities, campuses, and national parks. Reading and viewing establish the context for Olmsted’s influential vision through a range of media, especially historical archives, essays, poetry, short stories, paintings, photographs, and short films. His work acts as a springboard to themes and challenges that have become increasingly relevant in the U.S. in the twenty-first century, including access to green space as a social justice issue, what it means to say a park is public or national, and competing claims on conserved tracts of land, particularly in the American West. Students venture into Boston parks on multiple occasions and make at least one site visit to the Museum of Fine Arts. Prerequisite: completion of an English Sequence. (4 credits)
HUMN4011 AMERICAN CINEMA & CULTURE
HUMN4051 MEDIA CULTURE & COMMUNICATIONS
This course serves as an introduction to the theory and practice of Media, Culture and Communication Studies. Students will explore and critically examine, from a humanities perspective, our technologically mediated culture as it impacts society, and they will consider their own social, cultural, ethical, legal and philosophical roles and responsibilities as media content producers and consumers. Students will explore a variety of digital tools and techniques for analyzing texts, assessing problems, and communicating results. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4053 MCCS STUDIO
The increasing importance assumed by digital technologies in contemporary culture has given rise to new forms of critical and creative thinking, new ways to assess and organize humanistic knowledge, and new forms of communication. In this course, students interpret the cultural and social impact of the new information age, and create and apply new technologies to answer cultural, social, ethical and historical questions, both traditionally conceived and those enabled by even changing technologies. Students will work in small groups and apply various tools and strategies used by tech-savvy humanists to interpret history and culture within a collaborative, studio-based environment. Content of this course is variable by instructor and semester and may be repeated, with different content, for credit. Prerequisite: Completion of an English Sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4055 BOSTON VOYAGES BY BOOK & FOOT
This course will explore the history and culture of Boston through its literature, its citizens, its environment, and its civic and political events. It will examine the sites associated with the readings and sites featured in the texts along with the texts themselves. There will be visits to places of interest including but not limited to the Back Bay, the North and West Ends, and some of the city's smaller museums and green spaces. The investigation of these local sites will aid in making connections between Boston and the larger human community. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4100 APPROACHES TO AMERICAN STUDIES
This course offers an interdisciplinary approach to the history and culture of the United States within a global context. Students use a variety of methodological tools to explore the diversity of American culture, with attention to the roles of race, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic class. Forms of cultural production studies will vary and may include literature, film, music, painting, photography and advertising. Prerequisites: completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4121 RELIGION & CULTURE
Why are people religious? What does it mean to be religious? How do the world’s religions bind us together? How – and why – do they divide us? These are some of the essential questions this course will investigate. Through an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion and spirituality, this course will expose students to various religious schools of thought and cultural traditions so as to broaden their appreciation of the human condition. It will investigate the role of religion in shaping historical and contemporary culture, with a primary focus on the United States. It will treat major world religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism – and multiple forms of spirituality – feminist, nature, African-American, Native American, New Age – as they are manifest throughout history and in our lives today, in both public institutions and private devotional life. Prerequisite: Completion of an English Sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4200 ROMAN CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
An introduction to how the Romans developed technological, institutional, and cultural solutions to meet the social and political demands of their empire, and to how Roman architectural, informational, engineering, and social accomplishments continue to be manipulated and reinterpreted because of their foundational influence on American culture. Prerequisites: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4221 AMERICAN CINEMA AND AMERICAN CULTURE
This course will examine selected critical American films as reflections of and products of American culture. The impact of certain particularly American themes on these films will be explored, both in an historical and artistic context. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4225 TELEVISION STUDIES
This course examines television from a cultural, historical, technological, commercial, and critical perspective, especially as the medium has developed from broadcasting to narrow casting. The primary outcome of this course is for students to progress from a consumer to a critical interaction with television. Prerequisite: completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4230 STANDUP COMEDY IN AMERICA
In this course students will study the development of standup comedy in the twentieth-century America, specifically examining the intersections between standup performance and race, ethnicity, sex, class, and gender, among other subjects. Throughout the course students will study historical backdrops against which standup comedy was written and performed and analyze the influence of the standup tradition on American discourse and identity. Prerequisite: Completion of an English Sequence (4 credits) fall
HUMN4233 DECONSTRUCTING THE 20TH CENTURY
In the second half of the 20th century, something shifted in the American culture. This shift marked the post-WWII progression from modernity to post-modernity, which was widely reflected by changes in society, culture, and art. This course offers an accessible survey of the cultural, critical, technological, economic, and aesthetic foundations of postmodernism. We will particularly examine the postmodern challenge to traditional ideas of progress, authority, authenticity, knowledge, power, and language with its playful mixing of forms and high and low culture. We will progress through the course with a central question that asks if a positive pragmatic potential can be detected within the postmodern sensibility. Prerequisite: completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4241 EXPLORING THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
Regardless of profession, being able to gather, analyze, and visualize high quality data to gain insight into an issue and successfully articulate your findings to key decision-makers makes you a more valuable asset. This course takes a holistic approach to data-driven decision-making by introducing the theory, practice, and ethics of effective project and audience definition; data collection and survey design; data scraping, blending and cleaning; and data analysis and visualization using a variety of software applications. You will leave this course with improved abilities to collect, analyze, and visualize data –and in a way that has integrity and validity and that successfully engages your audience. Prerequisite: Completion of an English Sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4243 CONTEMPORARY ART & THEORY
This course examines some of the major theoretical positions and developments informing contemporary (post-WWII) art. The aim of the course is to develop an understanding of contemporary visual culture in relation to social history and human experience, and a basic understanding of aesthetic theory, philosophy and criticism and its importance to contemporary art practices. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4245 TRANSCENDENTAL VISIONS
This course examines American Transcendentalism, the literary movement that emerged over the nineteenth century in protest to the intellectual, cultural, and national status quo. We will examine the canonical authors of the period, including Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, to establish the period’s continuities. Additionally, we will examine writers like Blackhawk, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Wilson, and Rebecca Harding Davis to tease out its contradictions. Along the way, we will interact with modern day culture to consider how this early American narrative tradition holds contextual meaning as well as contemporary resonance. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4260 MODERNISM IN THE ARTS
This course examines the development of Modernism as a creative explosion of revolutionary ideas and forms that responded to the tumultuous events of the first half of the 20th century in Europe and the United States. While visual art will be the central focus, Modernism will be seen through a wider lens that incorporates music, literature, poetry, theater and dance as contributing forms of the “new modern.” Indeed, the constant exchange of ideas between painters, writers, poets, composers, choreographers and playwrights can be seen as the soul of Modernism. Prerequisite; Completion of an English Sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4263 ART & SOCIETY IN THE INDUSTRIAL AGE
This course will primarily explore 19th century art in Europe with a look at the United States, from the perspective of their evolving modernity. The significance of the Industrial Revolution and the ensuing political upheavals of both continents will be closely studied through the visual imagery of artistic production. Further, the impact of emerging art theory will be analyzed by reading primary sources in the way of the artists' personal manifestos alongside contemporary critiques of the day. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4265 THE AMERICAN DREAM
An examination of that which is unique in the American experience as expressed in literature. This course will provide the student with a profile of the American character as portrayed in the national literature. The focus will be upon political, religious, and economic roots which illuminate the past and make the present more comprehensible. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4275 AMERICAN ART: FROM COLONIES TO CULTURE WARS
This course is a survey of American art from the pre-colonial period to the present. American art production will be evaluated for both its aesthetic value and as a historical document. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4320 TOYS ARE U.S.: AMERICA AT PLAY
This course will investigate the history, theory, and design of “play” in America – how we have thought about the role of fun, imagination, and amusement as serious and worthwhile pursuits. Philosophers and historians, sociologists and cultural theorists, health professionals and educators, legislators and corporations have all engaged a vigorous debate about the nature of “play” - its benefits and its dangers – in cultural and human development. Alongside these ideas and their evolution, we will consider how artists, designers, engineers, and marketers have shaped and “sold” them to us. We will examine toys and games as the material embodiment of our attitudes about work and play, and as the site for exploring the social implications of design and material culture. Prerequisite: Completion of an English Sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4325 FROZEN! THE CLIMATE CRISIS OF 1816
This course engages with climate science and sustainability by looking back to the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history., the eruption of Mt. Tambora in April of 1815. The course examines the ensuing worldwide climate disaster from many perspectives: literature, history, art, music, mathematics, chemistry, physics and architecture. By connecting that crisis of global cooling with our own crisis of planetary warming, students come to understand that climate is not just a data set; climate is also a discourse with a cultural history that can be revealed through humanistic inquiry. Prerequisite: completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4330 CLIMATE CHANGE & THE HUMANITIES
This course responds to the wicked problem of climate change by leveraging the power of the humanities, especially literature and the visual arts. Students will use those media as a springboard to practical knowledge about the climate-challenged processes of the natural world. They will also engage with a range of cultural production (short stories, novels, poems, essays, paintings, photographs, films, and advertisements) to understand the key ideas and values that have shaped our society’s relationship to “nature.” The class will explore the ways in which the climate crisis is a crisis of the imagination and will actively seek points of intersection with STEM and design fields. Materials will cluster around topics currently receiving urgent attention, which could include (but are not limited to) wilderness, deforestation, water and drought, melting ice, and biodiversity. Prerequisite: Completion of an English Sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4343 RENAISSANCE TO ROMANTICISM
An examination of the impact of globalization on a broad range of art communities in an effort to understand how expanded international connections have yielded re-definitions of cultural and national identity. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4345 HISTORY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC
This course covers the history of American folk music from the work songs and spirituals of the 17th and 18th centuries to the folk revival of the 1960's. Numerous musical genres and traditions will be covered including gospel, minstrelsy, blues, ragtime, country, and bluegrass within various social, cultural, and political contexts. Matters of race, class, and gender will be given particular emphasis. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4355 BOSTON VOYAGES BY BOOK & FOOT
This course will explore the history and culture of Boston through its literature, its citizens, its environment, and its civic and political events. It will examine the sites associated with the readings and sites featured in the texts along with the texts themselves. There will be visits to places of interest including but not limited to the Back Bay, the North and West Ends, and some of the city's smaller museums and green spaces. The investigation of these local sites will aid in making connections between Boston and the larger human community. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits) fall, spring, summer
HUMN4373 SHAKESPEARE ON FILM
This course will examine several of Shakespeare's plays as literature and then how these plays have been brought to film, both in their historic and artistic contexts. In the course of this examination, the nature of film, the nature of artistic interpretation, the significance of audience response and the significance of authorial intent will be considered. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4401 CLASSICAL WORLD ON FILM
An introduction to the depiction and meaning of the classical world in films with a focus on critical cinematic analysis. The course explores how interpretations of the classical world have changed over the last century and how technology and mass communication have affected such developments through the medium of film. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)
HUMN4501 9/11 LITERATURE AND FILM
An exploration of how fiction and non-documentary film have addressed September 11, with particular emphasis on how works in these genres have portrayed the events of the day, the impact of the day on the United States and the world, and the mindset of the terrorists. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)