LAT 105 Section 2

Arts and Humanities

Spring 2004

Class Meets MWF 10-10:50 AM in AC222

Instructor:  Shayne Weyker

Office: Faculty House 1

Office Hours: MW 12-1, and by appointment

Email:

Phone Number: (301)642-1855 call 1PM to 9PM

Current Class Schedule web address http://museable.home.comcast.net/lat105

Course description: We will examine how the arts and humanities tell us about human experience past and present as well as enrich our lives. We will review and discuss the significance of several important statements made throughout history by artists, dramatists, poets, and philosophers. We will also examine how artistic and philosophical creations have helped define and re-define the concepts of “Good” and “Beauty” for everyone.

Course Objectives:

By the end of this course I hope you will be able to do the following:

1)    Critically analyze a work, be it musical, visual or written, of any time period and express in writing what that work is trying to accomplish and what qualities cause the work to succeed or fail at that goal. This may involve knowing some terms specific to each art form and the historical context of the work.

2)    Understand both the nature of and the relationship between, the major historical developments in the evolution of various kinds of artistic works as well as philosophy.

3)    Know the names of important people as well as movements/periods in the arts and philosophy.

4)    Understand and express how works of art (as well as philosophy) may have been a response by the person creating it to the social, political, or artistic world of their time.

5)    Be able to identify implicit assumptions about facts and values (as well as persuasive techniques not based on reason) used in various kinds of art as well as other communication.

6)    Understand and express the differences between the different religious traditions and philosophies regarding questions of morality (good and evil, right and wrong).

Required Text:

The Art of Being Human by Janaro and Altshuler

The course grade is based on the following:

Quiz Average                                        10%

Short Essay Average                             30%

Mid-Term Exam                                     30%

Final Exam                                            30%

Quizzes: On several occasions there will be a short quiz given at the beginning of class. To be prepared for quizzes you should have read all of the assigned reading for the week before the Monday class for that week. Quizzes may include questions about the current and prior week. Though some quizzes will be on Wednesday, most quizzes will be on Monday.

The average of these scores will be your quiz score.

Quizzes missed for unexcused reasons cannot be taken later.

Each student’s lowest quiz grade will be dropped.

Short Essays: You will write seven short essays on a subject related to the content of the course for that week.

You will email the essays to

by the deadline given.

In each essay you will analyze (using critical thinking) some argument made in the textbook that week or analyze and respond to an artistic work of your choice.

However, it must be of the type we are discussing that week (painting, plays, film, music, philosophy, etc.).

For longer works (books, plays, feature films) you may focus on a specific part of that work.

I will grade on proper grammar and spelling as well as content (though content is weighted more heavily). I suggest composing your essays in a word processor with grammar and spell checking enabled and fixing as many errors as you can. Beware of the homonym-based errors that spell-checkers miss. Then paste your text into the mail message when the essay is complete.

Essays must be at least 500 words long (you can use the command Tools > Word Count in MS-Word to check), but essays may be a bit longer if you feel the need to write more to complete your thoughts. If you are responding to a visual work that is not in the textbook, you should include a copy of the image in your email or a link to a page on the web where the image can be seen.

I may read some or all of selected student essays in class as examples of good or bad work in order to help students do better on the next essay. If I do so, I will not mention the author’s name.

Exams The Mid-Term and Final Exam will be a combination of one or more of the following: multiple choice, matching, fill in the blank, and essay questions. A review sheet will be provided a week before the mid-term and final exams. The final exam will focus primarily on the latter half of the course, but may include some material from the first half of the course.

The FINAL EXAM will be held Friday May 7, from 8 AM to 10 AM 

Course Schedule:

Week 1: Jan 12, 14, 16 Introduction Critical Thinking Reason vs. Intuition   Week 2: No class Monday (MLK Birthday), Jan 21, 23 Myth (Ch 3)   Week 3: Jan 26, 28, 29 Literature (Ch 4)   Short Essay #1 Due Jan 30.   Week 4: Feb 2, 4, 6 Art (Ch 5) Viewing of additional art on the Internet may also be assigned. Short Essay #2 Due February 7th.   Week 5: Feb 9, 11, 13 Music (Ch 6)     Week 6: Feb 16, 18, 20 Theater (Ch 7) Musical Theater (Ch 8)   Week 7: Feb 23, 25, 27 Film (Ch 9) Short Essay #3, Due February 28 Viewing of a film may be required.   Week 8: March 1, 3, 5 MID-TERM EXAM is March 5th Television (Ch 10)   Week 9:  SPRING BREAK

Week 10: March 15, 17, 19 Religion (Ch 11)   Week 11: March 22, 24, 26 (26th is Last day to drop with “W” grade)   Morality and Ethics (Ch 12) Short Essay #4, Due March 27th   Week 12: March 29, 31, April 2 Happiness (Ch 13)   Week 13: April 5, 7, 9 Ways of understanding life and death (Ch 14) Short Essay #5, Due April 10th   Week 14: April 12, 14, 16 Controversy (Ch 15) Short Essay #6, Due April 17th   Week 15: April 19, 21, 23 Freedom (Ch 16) Short Essay #7, Due April 24th   Week 16: April 26, 28, 30 Review   The FINAL EXAM will be held Friday May 7, from 8 AM to 10 AM