Cluster Two: Arts and Humanities (9 credits)

PHOTO - Art Students

Cluster Two Coordinator: Margaret Mulrooney


Description:

Cluster 2 shows students what it means to live lives enriched by reflection, imagination, and creativity.  It does so by offering each individual a multidisciplinary experience within the arts and humanities, those areas of endeavor that humans have long valued for their intrinsic worth and that invite a deeper appreciation of the human experience.

The broadly stated goals for Cluster Two are:

These goals were adopted by the General Education Council in April 2007


Requirements:

Cluster Two consists of nine credits (3 courses) covering three broad areas:

Students planning to participate in one of JMU's Study Abroad Programs may fulfill some or all of their Cluster Two requirements depending upon the program in which they participate. For additional details, go to:
http://www.jmu.edu/gened/abroad.html
Choose one class from each of the three areas below:

Cluster Two Course Descriptions

Learning Objectives:

After completing Group 1. Human Questions and Contexts students will be able to:

1.  Question their own and others’ opinions about and responses to the world. 
2.  Apply the methods of the discipline(s) studied to material from the humanities.       
3.  Identify and evaluate arguments using appropriate concepts and techniques and to formulate logical arguments on the same basis.
4.  Demonstrate an understanding of broader cultural, historical, or conceptual contexts of particular issues, ideas, objects, or events - past and present.
5.  Experience appropriate humanities events (such as exhibits, films, performances or public lectures)

After completing Group 2. Visual and Performing Arts students will be able to:

  1. Explain how artistic works and culture are interrelated.
  2. Recognize that the arts are accessible and relevant to their lives.
  3. Demonstrate disciplinary literacy (vocabulary, concepts, creative processes) in a major art form.
  4. Produce an informed response to the form, content, and aesthetic qualities of artistic works.
  5. Experience arts events.
  6. Acknowledge relationships among the arts.

After completing Group 3. Literature students will be able to:

  1. Generate increasingly nuanced questions (interpretations, ideas) about literature and explain why those questions matter.
  2. Use appropriate vocabulary and tactics to analyze specific literary expressions of culture and the relationship between the reader, the author, and text.
  3. Define ways that texts serve as arguments and identify rhetorical and formal elements that inform these arguments.
  4. Recognize appropriate contexts (such as genres, political perspectives, textual juxtapositions) and understand that readers may interpret literature from a variety of perspectives.
  5. Articulate a variety of examples of the ways in which literature gives us access to the human experience that reveals what differentiates it from, and connects it to, the other disciplines that make up the arc of human learning.

These objectives were adopted by the General Education Council in April 2007