IB World Arts and Cultures
2014-2015
Ms. Leighton Lancaster
615-298-8400 ext. 1149
Leighton.lancaster@mnps.org
Course Description:
IB World Cultures SL is a transdisciplinary history, art history, and social studies course in which students explore how
and why cultural objects and phenomena reflect cultural identity and how interactions between cultures influence
conceptions of cultural identity. Through the methodologies of historical investigation, art history, ethno-musicology,
anthropology, and sociology, students engage directly with works of art and cultural phenomena at the class level, and
carry out individual research and case studies of cultural phenomena in the region in which the school is based. Students
are expected to write extensively, observe, generalize about, categorize and compare cultural phenomena, and make oral
presentations to explain how and why works of art and cultural phenomena generate meaning. IB assessments include
timed examinations, written essays, and an individual study of 1500-2500 words produced during the course. This course
is a dual enrollment course through which students may earn up to 6 hours of college credit.
Course Aims, Objectives and Processes:
A. To encounter a range of art objects or other cultural phenomena.
B. To use case study methodology to investigate an art object or other cultural phenomenon and the culture that produced it
through a three-stage process of investigation:
1. Looking, thinking, asking questions
2. Research, more thinking, more questions
3. Discoveries about the nature of cultural identity
C. To understand that different societies have different ways of seeing and experiencing art objects or other cultural
phenomena.
D. To research into the literature and body of knowledge of the particular art object or other cultural phenomenon.
E. To ask questions about aspects of cultural identity reflected by art objects or other cultural phenomena.
F. To discover the nature of cultural identity arising from the investigation process.
G. To develop critical and intercultural insights into the nature of cultural identities.
H. To understand that interactions between cultures influence conceptions of cultural identity.*
I. To develop awareness in the student that human attitudes and opinions are widely diverse and that a study of cultural
identities requires an appreciation of such diversity.
J. To encourage the development of a new visual literacy that will motivate the student to become a more discerning observer.
K. To provide an opportunity for students to identify and describe, using appropriate vocabulary, various visual art forms in
assigned written and oral presentations.
L. To aid in the development of critical thinking skills by having students observe, describe, identify, compare, contrast,
distinguish, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and make judgments about art objects or other cultural phenomena.
M. To encourage students to seek art experiences that can be found in person and in museums, galleries, libraries, cultural
institutions, on-line, and in the community.
N. To build an understanding of the media, techniques and processes used to create art objects or other cultural phenomena.
O. To provide an opportunity for students to use knowledge of the functions of art objects or other cultural phenomena.
P. To evaluate art objects or other cultural phenomena within their historical context examining issues such as politics,
religion, patronage, gender, function, ethnicity and style.
Q. To advance students’ knowledge of the history of art and to foster recognition of specific styles and representative artists
from the history of art by identifying historical, social, and cultural influences and traditions that have generated artistic
accomplishment throughout the ages, and which continue to shape contemporary art in the twenty-first century.
R. To promote an understanding of the academic importance of the arts and their relationship to all curricula and disciplines,
and to draw on insights from disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, art history, economics, historical geography,
history of science, political science and social history in order to investigate how art objects or other cultural phenomena
reveal aspects of cultural identity.
S. To develop an understanding of recurrent cultural themes and subject matter, thus gaining respect for the arts as unifying
and commonly shared elements of humanity.
T. To develop students’ critical awareness of their own cultures and understanding of other cultures and their claims. This
promotes inter-personal, inter-cultural and international understanding and dialogue, and an appreciation of diversity. It
also encourages an international perspective on historical and current affairs.
U. To study interactions between cultures and explore the ways such interactions influence conceptions of cultural identity.
V. To cultivate life-long arts patrons.
Course Outline and Pacing Guide for Fall Semester
Week 1:
Weeks 2 – 4:
Weeks 5-7:
Week 8:
Review of IBWAC Investigation Process: Is it Art?
Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei leading to Paper Two
European Avant-garde: Student exploration of revolutions in art forms 1880 – 1939
Regional Studies: