Arts and Ideas in the Humanities (Major)

Courses & Requirements

Many courses—in art history, dance, literature, music, and visual arts—focus on specific historical moments or contexts, ranging from ancient times to the 21st century. To understand art at its deepest level, one must reflect on its material origins and have some experience in its production: the Arts & Ideas curriculum provides training in the actual practice of these art forms. Students thus gain an understanding of global cultural production from three key perspectives: thoughtful analytic engagement; historical depth; and studio discovery.

Through intensive discussion, writing, and studio practice, students become more sophisticated analysts, critical historians, and well-informed producers of culture.

Faculty members who teach courses that students can integrate into an Arts and Ideas plan of study include:

• Elissa Bell Bayraktar (literature and visual culture, 18th-20th c.; French) 
• Catherine Brown (medieval European literature & philosophy, media studies, Spanish language and literature, mindfulness)
• Mark Burde (medieval literature and culture, with a focus on parody and satire)
• Susan Crowell (Ceramics)
  
• Herbert Eagle (Russian and East European cinema, film theory, poetry, and controversial prose written under communism)
• Katri Ervamaa (Foundations of music, chamber music, cello)
• Karein Goertz (Holocaust Literature, Cities and Modernism, Representations of Berlin, Literature of Walking, Literary Translation)
  
• Jennifer Goltz-Taylor (voice performance; analysis of race/gender/meaning in popular music and musical theater; music in the humanities)
• Elizabeth Goodenough (Children's literature and visual culture)
• Deb Gordon-Gurfinkel (Engaged Learning, the expressive arts and community engagement)
• Michael Gould (drumset, contemporary percussion performance and pedagogy)
• Xiaodong Hottmann-Wei (Chinese musical instruments)
  
• Mark Kirschenmann (musical composition and improvisation, trumpet)
• Ashley Lucas (theatre for social change and Prison Creative Arts Project)
• Margaret Mansfield (art history, book history, material culture, and early modern globalization)
  
• Toby Millman (Drawing and Printmaking)
• Renée Ragin Randall (world literature, Global South, trauma studies, critical theory)
  
• Rebecca Schwartz (dance-music relationships; physical motion and 19th- and 20th-century culture)
• Jon Wells (slavery and antebellum American history)
  
• Raymond Wetzel (Furniture and sculpture)
• Isaac Wingfield (Photography) 
  
• Michael Zhai (translation, poetry, Chinese literature, history and philosophy, European classical music)

Guest faculty join the RC faculty from time to time, bringing their unique expertise to enrich our students.