Humanities Course Overview - 2013-14
The Humanities course considers some of the most important and enduring questions facing human beings, and
will look at how such questions are posed, and sometimes answered, in literature, music, and the visual arts. The course
takes a broadly chronological approach, focusing on particularly rich and formative moments in culture and the arts,
and/or on periods when the interrelationship between literature, music, and visual art were especially significant.
Following the foundational unit, study begins with the Medieval period and continues up to the present. In addition to
analyzing works of art, students will have multiple opportunities to do creative and expressive work, culminating in an
end-of-year creative project.
Foundations
Medieval
Renaissance
Baroque
Classicism
Romanticism
Realism to 20th
Century
“isms”
Central Works
Literature—Myth of the Cave, Iliad
excerpts
Music—Haydn’s Creation, Gaian
Visions, The Rite of Spring
Visual Art—works by Gauguin, Klee,
cave art
Literature—Dante’s Commedia
(exceprts)
Music—Gregorian chant, instrumental
dances
Visual Art --Gothic Cathedrals
Literature—Hamlet, part I
Music—Madrigals, Masses, Motets
Visual Art--works by Giotto, Masaccio,
Leonardo, Raphael
Literature—Hamlet, part II
Music—Bach and Handel
Visual Art--works by Rembrandt,
Rubens, Velazquez, Vermeer
Literature—Antigone and Oedipus
Music—Mozart’s symphony and Don
Giovanni
Visual Art--Jacques-Louis David as
exemplar of Neo-Classicism; a quick
overview of the classical Greek temple
Literature—Romantic poetry
Music—Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner
Visual Art--works by Goya, Gericault,
Constable, Friedrich, Turner, Cole,
Delacroix
Literature—A Doll’s House,
Metamorphosis
Music—Debussy, Schoenberg
Visual Art--Courbet's Studio of the
Painter, Impression and the science of
perception, Picasso and the invention
of Cubism, M (film by Fritz Lang) and
the art of film montage, Picasso's
Guernica
Learning Experiences
Writing a creation myth
Level 5 enrichment on the Iliad
Working with sounds to create a
composition
Art Hands-on - watercolor composition "In
the Spirit of Paul Klee"
Composing in the style of Gregorian chant
Teaching Dante to the class
Take-home test
Seminar discussion
Art Hands-on - sketching to explore
Romanesque vs. Gothic forms
Close reading notes and short essays
Art Hands-on - multi-figure perspective
composition with collage elements
Writing a spoken fugue
Seminar discussion
Art Hands-on - exploring "painterly" visual
style
Hands-on argument (in the voice of a
character)
Close reading analysis
Art Hands-on - (photographic) tableaux
vivants exploring rhetorical gestures and
body language
Teaching poet to class
Short compositions
Imitating a poet
Composing a theme and variations.
Art Hands-on - pastoral landscape
adapting an existing composition
Short pieces
Socratic seminars
Major work on creative culminating project
(its own unit)
Essential Questions










How do stories shape and define us?
What makes us human?
In what ways do the arts sometimes reinforce and sometimes challenge cultural norms and values?
How and to what degree can we understand art works from the past and from cultures other than
our own?
How does perspective shape and alter truth?
In what ways are the concepts of order and chaos important in the arts?
Are we a part of nature or apart from nature?
To what degree can, or should, we try to build our futures on the foundations of the past?
What does it mean to belong?
What does it mean to be "well-educated," and how have ideas about this changed over time?
End-of-Year Student Outcomes
By the end of the course, a student who has engaged in the Humanities curriculum should know and
be able to:

Examine an unfamiliar work of art and develop a full response to it, including accurate
inferences about its characteristics and probable historical period

Compose essays or presentations that compare and contrast two pieces, developing support,
accurate inferences, and a clear perspective on both pieces.

Create hands-on projects using elements inspired by artists, composers, and writers while
developing one’s artistic and creative skills and sensibilities

Negotiate a complex interdisciplinary course with initiative and independence

Analyze some of the ways in which social-historical context helps to shape art as well as the
ways in which the arts influence (shape) the social-historical context

Demonstrate creative and critical thinking skills and the ability to express ideas clearly and
effectively, both orally and in writing

Initiate and participate in a wide range of collaborative discussion with diverse partners, building
on others’ ideas and expressing their own ideas clearly and effectively

Present information, findings and creative work using supportive evidence and conveying a
clear and distinct perspective

Evaluate works of literature, visual art, and music through research, observation, and analysis,
in conjunction with creative hands-on work; communicate insights about the works in clear and effective
writing.

Make well-reasoned, well-supported and imaginative connections between specific pieces from
the course content and “big ideas” (essential questions, key concepts, themes and enduring
understandings) of the course, conveying a clear perspective

Devise, create, present and defend a culminating project involving 2 or 3 arts that evolves from
the ideas of the course