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Time: 16 hours
Level: Introductory
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 Introduction Resource- In this unit we turn to the nature of the arts and humanities themselves, and look at the main processes involved in studying them.
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- 1.1 Analysis, interpretation and evaluation Resource
- When you study a painting, for example, you take it apart to see how it ‘works’ as a painting. You analyse it ‘as it is in itself’, because this gives you many clues to what it might mean. But that analysis...
- 1.2 Different arts and humanities subjects Resource
- If studying the arts and humanities helps us understand our culture so that we can live together more meaningfully, then why do we study particular subjects or ‘disciplines’ in our universities? You may...
- 1.3 Studying the arts and humanities Resource
- Having seen why and how distinctions are made between different arts and humanities subjects, does that mean we cannot think of these subjects ‘as a whole’? The general label ‘arts and humanities’ suggests...
| | | | | 2 Becoming familiar with the text
- 2.1 Reading Resource
- Before you begin your interrogation of a text, though, you have to get to know it in a general way. In a sense, you can ‘see’ visual texts (such as paintings, sculptures and buildings) all at once; there...
- 2.2 Listening and viewing Resource
- If you are studying music, a foreign language, plays-in-performance, film or the media, you have to do a lot of listening and viewing. Again, you need to be aware that there are different ways of doing...
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- 3.1 Why analyse? Resource
- Whatever kind of text you study, one of your main tasks is to try to understand it ‘as it is in itself’. That means analysing it. You have to examine it in detail so that you can see what it is made up...
- 3.2 Carrying out an analysis Resource
- Here, then, is the two-verse poem we will focus on in the next few sections of the unit. As you see, I have left out the ends of the lines in the second verse. So it presents you with a kind of ‘puzzle’....
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- 4.1 Knowledge about context and author Resource
- After you had read the poem a few times, you no doubt pieced together that the ‘I’ of line 5 in the first verse, the speaker, is rowing in a boat at night. We probably realise that with the word ‘prow’....
- 4.2 Meaning and ‘form’ Resource
- The question remains, what is this poem ‘about’? Or, rather, we should ask, ‘what kind of poem is it?’ Poems (paintings, ideas, music, buildings, historical documents) are not all ‘one kind of thing’....
- 4.3 Analysis and interpretation Resource
- We have got to the point of recognising that this is a lyric poem, and of thinking that it is probably about a lovers’ meeting. But you cannot reach firmer conclusions about a text's meanings until you...
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- 5.1 The values represented by the text Resource
- As we have seen, you are fully immersed in the text while you try to discover how it works and what it is about. But in order to make some judgements of it you have to shift your stance a bit. You have...
- 5.2 The value of the text Resource
- We now turn to a critical assessment of the poem as a poem; the question is, is it a ‘good’ poem? To that we should add ‘of its kind’. As we saw, we must judge it as a lyric poem – it would be inappropriate...
- 5.3 A ‘circle’ of understanding Resource
- It may seem as if analysing, interpreting and evaluating a text are ‘stages’ we go through, one after the other. But it's nothing like as mechanical as that. You do not analyse a text into separate parts,...
| | | | | 6 Commmunicating your ideas
- 6.1 Making a convincing case Resource
- If you were talking to a friend about a picture hanging on your living-room wall, you might say: ‘I really like that portrait because the man looks so lifelike’. That is, you'd make some kind of judgement...
- 6.2 Different kinds of ‘evidence’ Resource
- The terms you use and the ways in which you support your argument depend on the subject you are studying and what kind of text you are talking or writing about.
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- 7 Beliefs and theories Resource
- ‘Authorities’ – critics, historians, philosophers and so forth – of course argue from their interpretations of what a work of art, an event or an idea means. And their judgements are based on certain beliefs...
| | | | | 8 Making your own enquiries
- 8.1 Project work Resource
- Many courses in the arts and humanities now include a substantial project work component, which involves research even if it is of a limited and guided kind. This is an opportunity for you study a topic...
- 8.2 Formulating a question Resource
- When you make your own enquiries you draw on your existing knowledge of a discipline or subject area and decide on a specific question to explore; a question that is relevant to some aspect of the subject...
- 8.3 Planning your enquiry Resource
- I am grateful to Tony Coulson, Liaison Librarian (Arts) at The Open University, for his help with this section; also to Magnus John, Information Services Manager, International Centre for Distance Learning....
- 8.4 Carrying out research Resource
- During this stage you get down to the business of analysing and interpreting the meanings of all your primary and secondary source material (documents, reports, newspaper accounts, books and articles),...
- 8.5 Writing a project report Resource
- Finally, you write up your project report. It is important to recognise that this will go through several drafts. You can't just sit down and write a report on this sort of scale quickly or easily. You...
- 8.6 Research skills Resource
- This kind of work teaches some very valuable skills:
| | | | | References and Acknowledgements | | |
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