The Art, Text, Media area concentration analyzes the role of the arts in the historical formation of a global world. We examine the myriad ways artists play a crucial role in constructing and critiquing ideas of a global human experience. We look at the arts as a powerful arbitrator of world ideologies and ask why art becomes one of the central mediators of the key issues of our times. Art, Text, Media treats artistic works as distinctive products of a specific time, place, and artistic genre, while we simultaneously investigate the arts as points of cultural contact, transmission, and interaction across civilizations. We approach the arts as a means of global conversation. We offer courses that introduce students to modern and contemporary critical theories in the Global Humanities, as well as courses that teach innovative and original methods of researching the field. Our courses take a comparative approach to a range of current cultural topics that have traditionally been considered beyond the scope of the arts. And they study the arts in relation to the ever-changing era of Globalization. In all our courses, students will study multiple media of artistic production from around the world—including literature, photography, fashion, visual arts, film, architecture, design, and music. For the thesis project of the senior year, students have the opportunity to produce a substantive body of scholarly writing, or they may produce an original creative work or an original translation with an accompanying scholarly introduction.
*Formerly known as Arts and Literatures