Reference no: EM132196028

Final Project

For your final project, you will choose a subject, find three expressions of that subject in three different Humanities disciplines, describe the three different presentations, and offer an analysis of each of your choices.

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to apply the concepts and skills you have learned during the semester for how to analyze works within the Humanities.

Skills

This assignment will help you practice the following skills that will be useful to you in your professional and personal life beyond school.

1. Research, select, and describe appropriate examples

2. Organize materials around a specific theme

3. Use concepts and skills learned in class to develop analytical skills

4. Use appropriate and proper grammar, organization, and academic-style formatting in order to communicate

Knowledge

This assignment will help you become familiar with the following important content knowledge in the Humanities.

1. Available online resources which contain examples of works in the Humanities

2. Methods of analysis and interpretation within the Humanities

Part 1: Selection of Topic.

This part of the final project is your choice of topic.

Choose one of the following subjects or propose one of your own.

• A particular emotion or state of mind such as anger, jealousy, fear, gratitude, confusion, etc.

• A specific fairy tale, myth, fable, or classic story

• A religious or spiritual lesson or belief such as humility, hope, enlightenment, faith in reincarnation, the Trinity etc.

• A political or social theme such as social justice and injustice, social inequality, social progress, political conflict, etc.

• Representations of gender, race, ethnicity, or class.

• A specific fictional character or public personality

• Natural forces or elements of the natural world, like weather, animals, landscapes, etc.

Explain two reasons for your choice in a short paragraph of 4-5 sentences. Be sure to include the significance of your choice to your own thinking about the world and/or its cultural significance.

Part 2: Development of your Topic.

This part of the final project is a summary of your ongoing work on the final paper; it should include three paragraphs, one covering each selected work. You should also make sure to re-state what your subject is.

Identify how the subject you chose in Part 1 appears in three different works, each from a different Humanities discipline (visual art, music, dance, poetry, prose, theater, film, religion).

For instance, you could choose a poem, a painting and a scene from a film, all of which express and represent the theme of anger. Or, to be even more specific, if you choose the emotion of "love," the final paper could analyze and discuss love as it is expressed in Shakespeare's Sonnet 147 (literature), Boticelli's Birth of Venus (visual art), and in the ballet Swan Lake (dance).

Write one short paragraph (3-5 sentences) about each of your selections in which you:

1. Choose reliable and appropriate examples (a good-quality image, recording, video, etc.).

2. Identify and cite the source, including the artist, creator etc as well as where you found the example.

3. Explain why you find the example relevant for this assignment and mention one tool from the class materials and discussions you might be able to use to talk about it.

Part 3: Paper.

This part of the final project is the paper that presents your description and analysis of your selected works.

This part of the final project is the paper that presents your description and analysis of your selected works.

In a 750-1200 word essay:

• Explain the subject you chose and why it's worth exploring in the Humanities

• Describe each of your selected examples, including 1) information about its creator; 2) its historical or cultural context (how it fits into a historical period's or a specific culture's attitudes, events etc. Think about what else was going on in the culture and history when the piece was created); and 3) link to the example or an embedded image with a citation in the paper where you write about each example.

• Use at least one specific interpretative tool from the course to explain each of your selected examples. You should use a different tool for each example, so you should use at least three different tools in your paper.

• Assess the effectiveness or impact of each representation. In other words, how well did the representation present the subject? How effective was it? What impact did this representation have? What specific elements of the representation lead you to your conclusions?

• Provide a correctly formatted paper, complete and proper citations for any references you consult, using MLA or APA format
Documentation Style: The paper is to be formatted and documented in the MLA or APA. For general assistance, see the links below to the UMUC Library.