MEDAILLE COLLEGE
AGASSIZ CIRCLE
BUFFALO, NEW YORK 14214

COURSE SYLLABUS

Course Number and Title HUM 300 The Arts in Society

Section  01 CRN 20181 Tuesday, Thursday, 11:10 - 12:35 PM room H204

Semester Spring 2012
Number of Credits 3
Prerequisite ENG 110 or ENG 111

Instructor Douglas Anderson

Office 85 Humboldt, second floor at the end of the hall
Hours Monday, Wednesday 11:30-12:30 Tuesday Thursday 12:30 - 2:00,  3:45 - 4:15
email anytime at hum300s12 at gmail.com

Catalog Description of Course

This course explores the role of the arts in society. Students will examine various arts within the humanities -- the literary, visual, and performing arts -- and analyze their functions and interrelationships within historical, political, and cultural contexts.

Student Objectives

After completing this course, you will be better able to communicate with reflection, sensitivity, and intelligence about the arts in non-U.S. cultures because of your increased awareness of cultural diversity. Specifically, you will be better able to:

identify major literary, visual, and performing artistic traditions and movements in world history

define and apply major critical-theoretical approaches to the arts: object, historical record, social document, occasion for meditation or revolution

identify and explain formal and thematic elements of the arts in historical/political/cultural/technological context

articulate interrelationships between various forms of art

interpret (observe, analyze, explain) artistic products orally and in writing

compare and contrast worldviews of the art of various cultures

Method of Evaluating Students

I try to engage each of you in an ongoing discussion of your learning. If you aren't getting enough feedback from me, ask for more. As you'll see, I'm big on formative feedback and Socratic questioning.

With your cooperation, this course can become a virtuous cycle of everyone doing the best they can instead of the too-often viscious cycle of how little you can get away with and still pass the course. Your writing and presentations will all be public, available to the whole class, and I have found that public exposure helps make the cycle more virtuous.

As with most humanities courses, the learning extends far beyond the classroom and involves changes that can't be adequately measured at the end of a three-month course, for example, "communicate with reflection, sensitivity, and intelligence". So your course grade will be based on things I can measure. Your attendance, especially when we are listening to and watching the art of other cultures. Your timely completion of assignments on the wiki. The quantity of your written contributions. Your three presentations. We will also have a couple of quizzes on the vocabulary of the arts.

I expect you to participate in our physical classrooms and our digital classroom. At a minimum, you should:

come to class
complete all the assignments on time
follow all the links on the syllabus page

You will have a dozen or so assignments. Some won't be graded, but on the table below, you'll see the ones that will count toward your final course grade.

Note: I'm assuming that you will do all of the project's assignments as specified on the assignments page. If you don't do them all, you can't pass the course. If you don't do them on time, your grade will be lower than it would otherwise.

Course Grade

Your course grade will be based on the following assignments. All the written work will be on the wiki. The assignments are explained in more detail on the assignments page.

In summary, if you come to all the classes and do all the assignments on time, you should get an A-. If you do them very well, perhaps an A. To the extent that you miss class or miss deadlines or partially complete assignments, you will get a B or lower. The bare minimum to pass would be doing all the assignments and attending most of the classes.

In order to prosper in organizations, you must be able to do many things other than write. These four also apply to meeting the course objectives listed above.

manage digital information
explore and discover
tolerate ambiguity
think big
assess yourself

Statement on Disabilities

Any student with a disability who believes he/she needs accommodation(s) in order to complete this course should contact the Office of Disability Services as soon as possible. The staff in the Office of Disability Services will determine what accommodations are appropriate and reasonable under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Office of Disability Services is located in the Main Building, Room M031, and can be reached by phone at (716) 880-2391.

Academic Integrity

Medaille's faculty and administration expect all students to complete their academic assignments with honesty and integrity. Students who engage in any form of academic dishonesty (e.g., plagiarism, cheating on a test, forging a signature or an entire college document) will be dealt with severely, with penalties ranging from an F on a given assignment to failing a course or even academic suspension. Students should consult their Student Handbook for full details on the college's policy and procedures for handling formal charges of academic dishonesty.

Campus Emergency Closure

In the event of a campus emergency closure, please log onto your BbVista course link at http://learning.medaille.edu to continue with your course requirements and to communicate with your instructor. You should access this course link early in the semester to familiarize yourself with it. Report any access or usage problems to the course instructor.