HSAM 101R The Mortal and Divine in Art:Catholic Inspiration Across the Ages
This course examines more than a millennium of art in service to the Church and in celebration of the human spirit in Rome, the Eternal City. Taking a thematic rather than chronological approach, we will explore the intersection of faith and the arts through the concepts of birth, love, death, and rebirth. You will study masterworks in the visual arts that relate to these themes; in so doing, you will gain the ability to assess and analyze art in a variety of media. To enable you to examine and experience artworks firsthand in a variety of settings, this course will extend beyond the classroom into the sacred spaces, historic sites, museums and art galleries, and of Rome; hence some scheduled field trips outside of regular class time will be mandatory.
The themes that will be sounded in this course are the most essential experiences in mortal and divine life. They are timeless in their significance, yet their manifestation in the arts over the ages has been remarkably varied. This course will seek to address some of the ways in which the arts have reflected and transformed the unique exigencies and the cultural circumstances surrounding their creation, while also helping you gain visual and verbal literacy in interpreting historic art objects that reflect and amplify human understandings of the temporal and the transcendent. Ultimately, the primary goal of this course is to challenge you to integrate your own understanding of these eternal themes in your intellectual and spiritual formation. In this process, you will become more literate citizens of your culture, whose complicated contours derive from a rich Christian inheritance in dynamic interaction with secular society. Fulfills Explorations in Fine Arts course requirement.
Prerequisite
Open only to students in the University Honors Program