Monday

        •Introductions

Homework- No homework.

Tuesday

•Class expectations

• Introduction to the course: 

            -“Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.” -    John Muir 

• “Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.” - Jerry Garcia

Watch the following clip and discuss:

Understanding Context

How Context Shapes Content - Rodney Mullin

Clip Discussion:

• How does Mullen explain the relationship between context and content?
• What particular things factor into the creativity of the skateboarding community? 
• If we can make an effort to have a deep understanding of the context, how does this lead us towards a better understanding of the content?

Introduction to Room 237, Stanley Kubrick, and The Shining.

Watch Room 237

Homework- No homework.

Wednesday

Watch Room 237

Discuss Room 237!

• Why did you watch it?
• What did you find interesting?
• How do these people do that stuff!!???
• How does this apply to what we do in Humanities?

Homework- No homework. 

Thursday

Context and Content: Forensic Science and Humanities

• How does the camera guide our eye through the scene?
• What does our eye do? 
• What do we want to do after watching the scene?

Visual Analysis

Art:

How to look at art (demystifying art)

The Four Step Process - Pick apart a painting in four easy steps!

1.Description – This involves taking inventory of what is in the work: the forms, the shapes, colors, people, buildings, and so on, and the technical means employed-how the work was built up in its medium. The viewer should label these elements with words and phrases. Value judgments should be kept out of this category.

2.Formal Analysis- This involves looking at the way the elements are organized and seeking out the logic of their organization. How is the work structured and why is it structured that way? Avoid interpretation in this stage.

3.Interpretation- This involves analyzing the meaning of the work. What does it aim to communicate? What is its message if any? What themes does it deal with? Do not make value judgments here.

4.Judgment- This is a matter of appraising the aesthetic merit of a work relative to other comparable works. Is it mediocre, a masterpiece, strong in this way and weak in that? How does it stack up? Note that the aim is to assess quality, not personal preference for instance, it’s perfectly possible to like a work you know is mediocre, because it shows, for example, a familiar scene from your home town. In calling for judgment, do not include preferences, but appraise the quality of the work.

Tips for Analyzing a Visual Text 

•Go back to something that surprised you. Ask: Why did the artist do that? Just to be provocative? Was there a message? How does it fit into the whole work?

•Go back to something that interested you, a sense of motion in a painting depicting a still scene, an emotion powerfully expressed, anything. Ask: How did the artist get the effect? And why-how does it contribute to the whole work?

•Look for something that puzzles you about the work. Try to unravel the puzzle.

•Make mental changes. What if you changed a color, a material, removed an object? Use your thumb or hand to mask objects and to explore how this changes the work’s impact.

•Look for “reinforcement” across the work, ways that the artist handles things in one part to strengthen another part or an overall effect.

•Look for technical features of the work: the handling of color, form, line, composition, the way the layout of the work controls the motion of your eye around the work. Probe how the work functions as a mechanism to engage your vision and thinking.

Compare the work with another you know that relates in some way-by the same artist, or from the same period, or concerning the same topic. What are some similarities and contrasts? And why are they there; what do they imply?

Painting Analysis

Seurat - Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Brueghel - Landscape

Mondrian  -  Blocks

Friday

Film:

Tips for Film Analysis:

- Take an inventory of each shot. What do you see in the background? Look for something meaningful.

- Think about the shot. What is the camera doing? Why? Why does the director want you to see this scene from this angle, and in this manner?

- Special effects. What are they and what is the purpose?

- Script. What is being said? How are we to interpret this?

- Music. Why this particular song? Pay attention to the lyrics of the song. How do they connect to the film’s subject matter?

Scene Analysis Talkthrough of Apocalypse Now (Opening Scene)

Scene Analysis of Cape Fear (Opening Scene)

What details do you notice about the setting and Cady?  What do these details communicate to us?

What is the purpose of the scene?

Think about introductions and first impressions. 

How do we interpret this character? What can we assume about his story?

All Around Us!

Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

To The Virgins, To Make Much of Time - Robert Herrick

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
   The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
   And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
   When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
   Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
   And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
   You may forever tarry.

Homework- No homework, but this will be due on Tuesday (If you want to get ahead.)

Begin reading the historical background for Colonial America, and answer the following questions in paragraph format on a word document.

Chesapeake and Southern colonies

Learn

Early English settlements - Jamestown

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Jamestown - John Smith and Pocahontas

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Jamestown - the impact of tobacco

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Jamestown - life and labor in the Chesapeake

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Jamestown - Bacon's Rebellion

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The West Indies and the Southern colonies

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Lesson summary: Chesapeake and Southern colonies

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Slavery in the British colonies

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Slavery in the British colonies

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Lesson summary: Slavery in the British colonies

1. What was the reason for the development of the Chesapeake colonies? Was it religious? Financial? How do you think this will shape the society?

2. What were the reasons the English colonies transitioned from using indentured servants to using enslaved Africans as their primary source of labor?

3. Do you think slavery would have been as widely used in the British Empire if King Charles and King James had not benefitted financially from the Royal African Company? Why or why not?

4. Why do you think white colonists responded with such fear and paranoia to the possibility of a slave revolt, even in situations where there was no evidence of conspiracy?