About the Course

Understanding human existence and the world is broader than scientific comprehension.  In every culture and moment of history, expression of the human experience is based as much in literal and verbal discourses as it is in the arts.  Visual arts, music, dance, drama, poetry, and literature have provided imagery to document, explore and understand life.  The symbolic and multiple possible meanings conveyed through both viewing and creating art offers enormous space in which imagination and creativity can be cultivated for knowledge.  A guiding question throughout this course is, “How do the creative arts increase our ability to know more about the world, others, and ourselves?”  Beginning with the roots of art expression in ritual settings offers an approach to seeing art as innate to the human experience, particularly in bringing order, making meaning and transforming the ordinary.  This same urge to create allows us to appreciate the arts for expressing emotion, sharing thoughts, and reflecting on attitudes.  As such, the arts serve as a vehicle for enhancing an empathic and intimate understanding of others and oneself.   Engaging in creative arts offers unlimited access to unique, non-verbal, and sometimes unconscious content of human experience, thereby promoting world, other and self-understanding.