Arts One has two cohorts, each with their own theme and teaching team, and students choose one for the year. For 2015-2016, one cohort will focus on the theme of “Hero, Anti-Hero”; it will be similar to the description and reading list found here, from 2014-2015.
The other cohort will be on the theme of “Seeing and Knowing.”
Image by Christina Hendricks
The reading list is still being drafted, but here’s a description of the theme:
It is common to speak of knowledge in the language of sight, such as with terms and phrases like “insight,” “mental vision,” or “the eyes of the mind.” From Plato through the Enlightenment to the present, sight is likened to mental awakening, even if Plato’s actual point is to suggest that the full nature of reality cannot be grasped via any of the ordinary senses. But seeing and knowing are often treated as separate activities, with visual images used to clarify the distinct and superior objective of grasping insights ultimately conveyed through the written or spoken word. This course is premised on the idea that visual literacy is a process of knowing in its own right and explores the visual image not simply as a way to bring messages to life, but a mode to convey and explain reality. It asks how and why visual representations convey meaning and/or understanding, and how they intersect with more conventional notions of literacy. What happens to this distinction, for example, when a graphic novel or a concrete poem operate simultaneously as writing and image/object? This course engages the field of the visual through critical readings of texts in a variety of media and disciplines, with an eye to assessing how meaning is represented, expressed, and altered by images.
Watch the “themes” tab in the menu above for more specific information, coming soon!
