Department of Language, Literature and Culture

The ideas presented in LLC courses will influence your development as an artist and are the intellectual substance to which you will give visual form. Intense discourse about the human experience helps you uncover guiding philosophical principles that apply to your life as a citizen of the world and as an artist committed to visual expression. Through readings, writing, and dialogue, you will explore the power of language and master its use as an expressive tool. You will hone your research and analytical skills, challenge your own assumptions, and expand your intellectual horizons.

The Foundation year course Critical Inquiry will expand your writing and analytical abilities. You will explore a wide variety of “readings”—fiction, poetry, nonfiction, film, and even cultural artifacts—and respond to them through writings, presentations, and other projects of your own devising, which will help you to build your own distinctive voice, deepen your understanding of the critical/theoretical framework of your own artwork, and of the theoretical assumptions that shape your responses to the work of others. This course will help you grasp the nature, origins, and consequences of your values and how they inform your art, your criticism, and your life.

Following the Foundation year, you will continue to develop and refine written communication and analytical thinking skills through a sequence of progressively rigorous courses, which will provide outstanding preparation for further study in graduate or professional school. LL&C requirements are grouped into three areas: Intellectual History, Math/Science, and Theory

The Intellectual History requirement may be met with courses from a variety of humanities disciplines—literature, art history, history, philosophy, sociology—from broad surveys to courses focused on a specific theme. All Intellectual History (IH) courses include the study of important texts and artifacts and emphasize that ideas exist not in isolation, but within specific social and political contexts. Math/Science(M/S) courses can be selected from topical offerings in a specific field, historical surveys, and classes that include field and lab work. Theory (Th) classes build on the work you’ve done in Critical Inquiry and Intellectual History. This junior-year requirement adds depth and weight to the study of the theoretical concepts and assumptions that underlie our study and responses to contemporary art and culture. LL&C Electives allow you to expand your study of literature and pursue topics and subjects of special interest in greater depth.