Week One Lecture

Introduction to course and to the Humanities:

These mini-lectures will vary in size, but usually will not be over three or four pages. Each will contain a reminder of the assignment due that week, but you should work ahead if you are so inclined, and just copy-and-paste from your saved document to the posting area when the time comes.

Note that 20% of the grade is based on your two links to Humanities-related Websites and your four required (more if you like, or want to make sure of a good grade) responses to the Perception Keys sprinkled throughout the Martin & Jacobus book. (Although each PK response is only worth up to 10 points, additional comments, links, or responses will assure that my subjective grading of your responses will result in the maximum number of points—50 for PKs and links.) You can select from any of the PKs in the chapters assigned so far, so you should easily be able to find something you’ll feel comfortable writing on. To clarify, by the time PK#1 is due in Week 2, you may select from any of the 28(!) PKs in Chapters 1 through 3 assigned through that time. Some of them have 2 questions, while some have 7 or 8. You only need to respond to a couple of them—enough to say something meaningful on your chosen subject (in a half-page to two pages single-spaced). By the time PK#2 is due in Week 4, you will have another 17 PKs to choose from in Chapters 13 and 14, making 45 total, and you can write on any one of them. For PK #4, you can use the entire book. If you like, you can do all four required submissions from a single chapter, and you can even do two postings on a single PK with several questions. The point is to think about and respond to some of the questions raised.

The syllabus and the paragraph above both indicate that it would be well to post more than the required four Perception Key (PK) responses. To expand on that, I should say that posting comments on the postings of others (or expansions on your own) are not shown as earning any points directly, but because grading of the PKs is subjective, seeing that you post more than the bare minimum will encourage me to give you the maximum grades on your required responses. (It would easily be possible to get an ‘A’ without making any additional comments; however, it’s an opportunity for those who really want an ‘A’ to virtually assure themselves of one, unless they forget the term paper or ‘blow’ the final.)

A further word on the tests:

Each Quiz covers only the material since the previous one, so, e.g., Quiz 2 in Week 5 will cover only Lectures 4 & 5 and the material in Intellectuals emphasized in the Week 4 Lecture.). The Week 9 Lecture will also serve as a Study Guide for the Final Exam, covering Chapters 11 & 12; 20+ of the QuizTest questions; and some picture IDs (i.e., identifying the artist of the work selected from the 35+ listed in this Lecture 1).

And just for emphasis on the term paper: NO MERCY will be shown to Internet downloads, so do the work yourself. If you do the math, you can see that if you get a zero on the paper, you would have to get 175 of the remaining 200 points to pass the course with a "C," and that might not happen.

By way of expansion on the schedule given in the syllabus, let me just mention that in Week 3, which is on interdisciplinary relationships, I’ll give a brief outline of the major features of the world religions, and in Week 5, the second week on Intellectuals and their influence, I’ll go through a brief history of Western philosophy in the modern age. The reasons for this, of course, are that the arts reflect the spirit of the age—its philosophy or religion ("ultimate concern")—and also that philosophy and religion themselves are generally considered to be in the domain of the study of the humanities, as mentioned above.

The four online Quizzes, with between 10 and 15 questions each, should be taken after reading the Lessons, which will guide you through the books, and the assigned chapters. Be sure to print out the lessons and keep them close by when taking the quizzes. You should obviously get nearly all 50 points for this, but remember that 20 or so of the questions will show up again on the Final Exam, where the questions will be worth 2 points each, so refresh yourself on them as the course nears completion.

Also on the Final, in addition to questions on Chapters 11 and 12, which will not have been covered by Quiz, will be identification of the artists who produced various works. About 35-40 of the works pictured in The Humanities Through the Arts will be potential test subjects on the Final, and they are listed below. All you will have to do is identify the artist who produced each work. The 35+ works are shown as Figures 1-4, 1-5, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-5, 2-7 through 12, 2-16, 2-18, 3-4, 3-5, 4-1, 4-2, 4-4, 4-9, 4-11, 5-3, 5-5, 5-13, 5-15, 5-23, 5-25, 5-27, 5-28, 5-38, 6-10, 6-17, 10-6, 12-7, 12-12, 12-14, 12-22, 13-7, 13-10, 13-11, and 13-12 & 13.

The Martin & Jacobus book has a lot to say, but I will add some historical context or some additional information about specific individuals, their works, or their relationships to philosophy, religion, or the other disciplines of the humanities in the weekly lecture. Remember that Quiz questions may cover the lectures as well as the assigned reading.

Chapter 1 defines the humanities, but doesn’t really say that the disciplines generally included as "humanities" are: philosophy & religion; history; music & dance; literature & drama; and the visual arts of painting, sculpture, & architecture, as well as film & photography. By way of further introduction, read over Chapter 1 and browse through Chapters 2, 3, 13, and 14 as you wish, and the first Quiz will help you focus in on what is important (at least in my judgment) and therefore worth remembering for the Final and, hopefully, beyond. You will probably also want to look over the Perception Keys and what the authors say about some of them, to formulate an idea of your own response(s).

One important thing to understand about the arts is that they all either reflect or critique the world-view or "spirit of the age" or culture that produced them. I like a couple of two-word definitions which are easy to remember and really quite meaningful: Culture, according to Henry Van Til, is "religion externalized," while one’s religion, according to the 20^th century liberal theologian Paul Tillich, is one’s "ultimate concern," or most basic and firmly held beliefs, sometimes called "first principles," or "presuppositions" (the basic, usually unexamined, "given" preconceptions through which we view all else).

And so the only other thing I want to do this week, as history is not really covered in our book, is to give you a chronology of the major periods or movements in the arts of the Western world. Unless noted, the visual arts, music, and literature all participate in these movements that, as noted above, are based on the ideas widely accepted by the societies of their times. (They are Western movements because, in general, non-Western cultures are pretty static and really do not change unless forced to by the West (Europe and the U.S.), as we will discuss in Week 3.)

A brief chronology of the modern (post-14th century) age is:

1400-1600+ Renaissance ("rebirth" of values of the ancient Classical world of Greece & Rome)Baroque period, more "emotional" than the previous restrained and structured classical style of the Renaissance

1700-1800+ Enlightenment period (Age of Reason) in philosophy and literature

1800-1830s Romantic period, again more emotional than the Enlightenment "age of reason"

1830s-1900+ Realism, coinciding with the rise of Democracy & the common man (with Impressionism & Post-Impressionism in the late 19^th century)

20^th century Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, etc., in the visual arts, all under the catch-all heading of "modernism," and later in the 20^th century, Postmodernism.

We shall look further at some of these movements in later weeks, and you may do your term paper on one of them, or on one of the important personalities of any period.

Discussion Question:

Be sure to post your own Introductory Bio this first week; that’s all the posting required for Week 1, just so I (and your classmates) know who’s who.