COR 220: Aesthetics: Art and Literature in the West

Over the next weeks we will be working hard on course design for the 2^nd year courses. Our plan is to have course proposals ready for the Curriculum Committee by the end of the semester.

Right now, we want to set out a few ideas about one of these courses and to solicit ideas for texts and classroom activities. COR 220 is a course about aesthetics, art and literature in the Western tradition. So, we want to draw attention to what is unique about the Western approach to art and literature, and to connect the development of these traditions to other social, historical and intellectual developments in the West.

This course is still very much in design – and we are still probably in the “trying to do too much” phase – but right now our goal is to design a course that encompasses exposure to literature and the arts, consideration of critical methods and approaches, and artistic/literary creation as well. This trio of exposure, critical reflection, and creation – we feel – is a strong feature of the way the Division introduces literature and art in COR 110. We want to develop this here as well.

Taking that approach gives us some ideas about the kinds of readings and coursework we need to develop:

Exposure: Probably the most important thing is to have students reading challenging works of fiction, drama and poetry while they are being exposed to other arts such as painting, music, and architecture. Although this is not going to be a course in Art History, it would be nice if selections could provide some sense of the development of art and literature in the West and feature some widely known titles.

Reflection: this course will be the central vehicle for showing students different critical methods. In some ways, this element of the course will be what holds the diversity of arts and literature together. We want students to see the similarities between thinking about literary and artistic expression. We want to make them think carefully about holistic, qualitative and aesthetic expression. We plan to create cohorts between sections of this class and the other COR class (COR 210: Scientific Revolutions) in order to bring out the tension between quantitative vs. qualitative and expressive vs. predictive thinking. Aesthetics provides many readings on the “What is Art?” question, but we would also like to find pieces where writers and artists discuss their own activities.

Creation: The exposure and reflection really come together when students are asked to develop some artistic or literary work of their own. We would like to make this a more focused and sustained exposure to literary or artistic work, but our ability to provide this is going to be limited by practical considerations. In any case, getting students to write poetry or fiction, to participate in drama or other art forms, is going to be an important part of this class.

These are big goals, and obviously this single second-year class cannot be an entire bachelor’s degree. The central idea is to get students to a place where they appreciate the complexity and importance of art and literature, and where they see these are avenues where humans contemplate the most important ideas. We will be returning to arts and literature throughout the Core and particularly to world literature and art traditions from other cultures in the third year, but this is the class where students learn how to appreciate this content when they encounter it in other contexts later on.

Locating reading for this class is difficult because it is not a traditional course in Aesthetics, Literary Criticism or Art History. As before, at least some of the readings must be common to all sections. So, it would be a huge help to hear your ideas for good readings.