CHUMS 1150 FYS: The Arts and Social Justice
The First-Year Seminar (FYS) seeks to elevate the intellectual curiosity of first-year students and to help them integrate into the academic community of the University. This section of the First Year seminar focuses on the role that the arts have played in promoting social justice. For many artists—writers, painters, composers, filmmakers—art has provided a means for examining and questioning society. Many of the great shifts in Western society were influenced by works of literature, visual art, and music whose impact stands as testimony to the capacity of the arts to affect societal beliefs and values. In this course, we will study a variety of works that have contributed to the expansion of social equality and political freedom. We will also read a number of major theorists who have explored the role that the arts can and have played in shaping culture and society.