Reviews for Writing About the Humanities

The average rating for Writing About the Humanities based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-05-23 00:00:00 Titi Milo p.16 - Over time, with education and experience, our values often change. Through contact with other languages and cultures, we may come to understand the limiting perspective of our own. Some beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes about religion, family, marriage, sex, love, school, work, money, and other aspects of life are almost sure to change. As our lives and outlooks change, we may alter the way we view particular works. A film that we once admired for what it reveals about human behavior or one whose moral perspective impressed us may come to seem trivial or unimportant. On the other hand, we may find that a painting or a piece of music we once disliked later seems engaging and exciting. And just as individual tastes may change over time so do cultural tastes in music, literature, art. Culture evolves; moral beliefs, aesthetic ideals, and social attitudes change. Works of art themselves are intimately involved in such change. Works of art often, in fact, reflect or embody cultural changes, such as shifts in social attitudes, moral dispositions, and behavioral norms. In addition, works of art can also affect us and lead us to change our own perceptions, understanding, and perspective. p.17 - Writing Exercises: 1. List three or four books you've read or films you've seen at different times in your life. Then select one and write a few paragraphs explaining how you later encounter with the book of film differed from your first reading or viewing. 2. Think about a television show or type of show that you know. Discuss a few ways that the show's changes reflect the changing values of the times. 3. Identify a concert or theatrical production you attended that affected you or impressed you strongly. Consider why you were affected the way you were. Consider, also, whether your evaluation of the performance changed over time, and if so, why. p.28 - Writing (Drafting) - Writing a full draft, however rough, enables you to acquire an overview of what you want to say, what you want to include in your writing. The purpose of drafting is simply to write down your ideas and to see how they can be developed and supported. Your draft provides an occasion for you to identify your central idea or thesis and to provide evidence in its support. Writing from Different Critical Perspectives p.51 - It is important to recognize that all analysis and interpretation of art works is grounded in some type of critical approach or interpretive perspective. Being aware of the assumptions of various critical perspectives enables us to recognize their limitations and their uses. For example, the kinds of assumptions that govern a historically minded critical approach alert us to how historical conditions such as patronage or patriarchal power affect the creation and dissemination of works of art, music, and literature. p.52 - Different critical perspectives yield different kinds of understanding about works of art because they emphasize different aspects of their creation, production, and dissemination. Historical Perspectives p.54 - every artwork is a product of its world and time. Understanding the social background and the intellectual currents of that world and time illuminate works of art for later generations. p.55 - New Historicist Critical Questions: • When was the artwork created? How was it received by its audience? • What does the work's reception reveal about the standards of taste and value during the period when it was produced and disseminated? • What social attitudes and cultural practices related to the work were prevalent during the time of its composition? • How were power relations reflected in the work manifested in the social institutions prevalent during the time of its production and reception? p.56 - Biographical Critical Questions: • What events or experiences in the artist's, writer's, or composer's life does the work reflect? • In what ways and to what extent does the artist's experience affect the artist's work? Psychological Perspectives Psychological critics approach a work of art as the revelation of its creator's mind and personality. They view artworks as intimately linked with their creators' mental and emotional characteristics. p.58 - Psychological Critical Questions: • What connections can you make between your knowledge of an author's, artist's, or composer's life and the behavior and motivations of characters, figures, or motifs in his or her work? • How does your understanding of the character, figures, or motifs in an artist's work help you understand his or her mental world and imaginative life? Sociocultural Perspectives Sociocultural critics argue that artworks should not be isolated from the social and cultural contexts in which they have been created. Sociocultural critics emphasize how power relations are played out in society. Sociocultural critics focus on societal values and how those values are reflected and embedded. Marxist Perspectives examine literature for its reflection of how dominant elite and middle-class bourgeois values lead to the control and suppression of the working class. p.59 - Marxist criticism is concerned both with understanding the role of politics, money, and power in works of art and with redefining and reforming the way society distributes its resources among the classes. Fundamentally, the Marxist ideology looks toward a vision of a world where class conflict has disappeared along with social classes. A sociocultural approach to the study of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, for example, might focus on the changing conditions society was undergoing in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. Of particular importance would be the passing of an aristocratic way of life represented by the Ranevskaya family and its replacement by a new type of entrepreneurship seen in Yermolay Lopahin, a merchant, who buys the Ranevskaya's beloved cherry orchard with the intention of cutting it down and building houses on the property. The shift of power and money from one social class, the landed aristocracy, to another, a middle class rising to replace it, would become a central locus of interest for the sociocultural critic of Chekhov's play. Other of the play's themes, such as the characters' lack of fulfilment, their lost chances for love and happiness, and the lack of understanding and communication in the characters' relationships, would be less important than what they play reveals about social, economic, and cultural conditions at work in society at the time. Marxist Critical Questions: • What social, cultural, and economic forces and institutions are presented in the work? How are these forces portrayed? • What political elements, if any, appear in the work? How important are they? • To what extent are the characters or figures depicted in the work affected by social, cultural, political, or economic forces? Feminist Perspectives Feminist criticism, like Marxist and new historicist criticism, examines the social and cultural aspects of artworks, especially for what whose works reveal about the role, position, and influence of women. p.60 - Feminist critics see works of art as an arena to contest for power and control, and like other sociocultural critics, as agents for social transformation. They seek to redress the imbalance of attention and value traditionally accorded male artists, writers, and characters by attending to works by and about women. They have looked at how feminine consciousness has been portrayed in literature. They have investigated why so few women composed symphonies and have discovered previously neglected composers as well as novelists, poets, and painters. Feminist Critical Questions: • To what extent does the representation of women (and men) in the work reflect the place and time in which the work was written? • To what extent does the representation of women (and men) in the work conflict with the historical circumstances of the work's composition? • How are the relations between men and women presented in the work? What roles do men and women assume and perform, and with what consequences? Writing Essay Examinations p.151 - Identify - to name, indicate, or specify Explain - to give reasons for, to relate causes and effects, to identify a process Discuss - to write about Define - to provide a definition, to point out characteristic features, to identify limits, or to put something into a category or class Compare - to consider similarities and differences between two things Analyze - to break into parts" to better understand each element and the relationship of the parts to the whole Evaluate - to assess or make judgment about

Review # 2 was written on 2009-11-21 00:00:00 Mosalyn Parker None