Please take this time to familiarize yourself with this course.
This course is media intensive. The course covers not only the visual arts of India, but it will also explore musical forms and the classical Indian dance forms of Bharata Natyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Kutiyattam. and Manipuri. Therefore, be prepared for many image slide shows, music files, and video files. If you have a slow internet connection or an older computer, you will need quite a bit of patience.
Besides being rich in sights and sounds, you have many writing assignments. In fact, your grade for this course is primarily based on written essays. I require seven full essays during the semester and a final paper. You must submit your essays and paper as a Microsoft Word document. Do not use other wordprocessing programs. One of the things you are required to do in the first module is an Assignment that requires a Microsoft Word attachment. You will also need Adobe Acrobat Reader. The slide shows are Flash.
My objectives in this Introduction are to explore:I want to start with a short work by the American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. It is from a collection titled Huntsman, What Quarry? published in 1934 by Harper & Brothers, New York City.
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric.
In this poem, Millay tells us that facts uncovered by science are coming at us thick and fast. Our knowledge of facts is expanding so rapidly that it is impossible to keep track of them, let alone understand what they might mean. How do you construct meaning from all the great discoveries of science? In this age of science, however, we are trained and trained to uncover facts. The tragedy is that we are not educated enough to gather them up and weave them into a fabric of understanding. Implied in this poem is the differences among facts, knowledge, and wisdom. To paraphrase the American philosopher and educator John Dewey, science provides us with facts, the humanities provide us with the wisdom of how to make meaning from them. Those meanings are constructed by us. How many times have you heard some variation of the remark, "I just discovered it, I didn’t make it a lethal weapon"? Facts of science reveal only the biology of what it is to be human. Don’ t get me wrong, that is very important, but I am more than DNA. It is the humanities that expand and explore what the possibilities and the responsibilities of being human are. They provide the knowledge that leads to wisdom.
Traditionally any discipline of study examining the human creation of meaning is considered a humanistic discipline. The American philosopher William James proposed that you could insert any science at the end of the phrase "history of ----"; and it would be a humanity. History, according to James, is the product of humans constructing meaning and is, therefore, a humanistic inquiry even if it might be "The History of Molecular Biology."
However, notice that this course is offered by a program called Humanities in a department called Humanities, Arts, and Religion. It has a capital "H." NAU is one of the few universities that offer a major in Humanities. At the same time the university offers degrees in the humanities of English, philosophy, art history, religious studies, etc. The degree in Humanities is different. Humanities, with the capital"H," is an interdisciplinary field of study. What is the difference between a field and a discipline?
An academic discipline is a study of one area. The scholars within that discipline set standards for the validity of questions posed, the validity of answers proposed, and the validity of proof of claims. Humanities (with the capital) seeks out the interconnections of the answers presented in the disciplines of the humanities and of the sciences. It is interdisciplinary. Discipline trained scholars are often not too happy about interdisciplinary fields. They scold that you will be presented with a smattering of this and that, but not a profound, in depth, and concentrated study of anything. My department is made up of scholars from many different disciplines. We all get together and explore our interconnections. It is an exciting department. At the end of this semester you will not be able to trace the history of Indian music from its beginning to the present, you will not have accumulated a deep but narrow knowledge of Hinduism. But you will be able to understand how the dominant theories of Indian music are interrelated with dance, drama, the visual arts, and literature. You will be able to articulate how those theories spring from a religious world view of a most remarkable culture.
I believe that the Humanities classes offered at NAU are indeed that loom on which we learn to weave facts into a rich fabric of an appreciation for and of a celebration of diverse cultural traditions. This all sounds pretty warm and fuzzy. Trust me when I assure you that neither my colleagues nor my students have ever accused me of those traits. In fact, as you read how this semester is organized, you might well wonder where your own individual and personal construction of meaning comes into play. It doesn’t. It doesn’t until the end of the semester – until you have acquired knowledge, a dataase, that enables you to construct a critical and informed conclusion. I do not believe that there is critical thinking without facts to construct an argument.
Text books and readings
Four books are required for this course. They are listed in the order that they will be read.
(Be certain to get the third edition of Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India by Eck as it has significant differences from the earlier editions. I find little difference among the various editions of Craven's Indian Art.)
Each module consists of numerous readings as well as my "lectures" and commentaries on the numerous slide shows, video clips, and music selections available during the semester.
Course scope and sequence
To begin the semester, I have chosen a very simple and traditional art history text for a number of reasons. First, it helps you become familiar with the vast sweep of Indian history. You will be examining a culture already complex by the third millennium B.C. (contemporaneous with Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt), and you will follow threads of this culture into the present era. Art history provides visual tags and a fairly simple commentary for this immense span of time. Art history also provides a religious and political context for the study of Indian humanities. It has proven a secure approach for building the foundation of religious concepts, vocabulary, and geography that is needed in an interdisciplinary study.
While reading the art history text, you will also read Diana Eck’s book Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. Eck is a remarkable religious studies scholar. Her doctoral dissertation was on the holy city of Banaras (also called Kashi or Varanasi). In our text, she explores the centrality of sight in Indian culture. Darsan literally means seeing. This work explores how Indians perceive a work of art and how different this is from Euro-American perceptions. It makes us all explore how different cultures weave different meanings from those facts showering down on us.
The next text you will read is Susan Schwartz’s Rasa: Performing the Divine in India. Rasa may be translated as taste or flavor, as in cooking. But Rasa is also the Indian philosophy of aesthetics. It was first developed to explain the effects of Sanskrit drama. As Schwartz points out, "The gift of the Indian for incorporating performance into many aspects of life is a defining quality both of South Asia and in the vast South Asian diaspora" (p. 1). The class will take significant detours while reading this text into musical and dance performance. Darsan and Rasa are from a triad of texts on Indian religion and the arts. The third, which you do not need to purchase but might find interesting, is Mantra: Hearing the Divine in India and America by H. G. Coward and D. J. Goa.
Finally, you will end up reading and writing a final paper on A River Sutra by Gita Mehta. I’ve used this novel for a number of years. This is the only text I have ever assigned that students have also purchased to give as gifts. You might want to start reading it now. However, you will have to do a close reading of it towards the end of the semester.
You should have noticed by this time that the course is image intense. You will also have understood that Indian art is a vital component of Indian religion. There is no way to separate religion from Indian humanities. So here are some words of advice. First, if either you or your computer is image challenged, this may not be the class for you. But more importantly, one of the behaviors that absolutely will not be tolerated during this class is any attempt what-so-ever to denigrate or challenge Indian religions. If you cannot accept another culture’s religious beliefs as valid and real for that culture, this is definitely not your class.
This is not a do-it-yourself, work-at-your-own-speed course. The semester is organized into fifteen learning modules. Each module is available for ten days. after which you will not be able to access that module again. You will not be able to take the quizzes or submit the essay for that module after it closes. New modules will be released most Friday afternoons by 4:00 P.M. Mountain Standard Time. You will have nine days to complete each module. The modules will generally close at 4:00 P.M. Mountain Standard Time on Sundays so that you have two weekends to complete the work. (Remember that Arizona does not recognize Daylight Savings Time.) Toward the end of the semester, to accomodate the Thanksgiving vacation, this schedule will vary. It is important to keep on top of the class schedule and remember the opening and closing dates for the modules.
Each module begins with an introduction that includes a reading assignment from the texts. When you have finished reading, you will have a ten point quiz on the material. These are objective multiple-choice quizzes. These are open book, open notes. You can take each quiz only once and there is a ten minute time limit for completion. Before taking the quiz, you will want to read the textbook carefully, take notes. and review. There are additional on-line materials with each module with a separate objective multiple-choice quiz with a ten minute time limit for completion. (If you have an official letter from Disability Support Services requesting time-and-a-half for exams, it is your responsibility to provide me with a copy immediately.)
All but two of the modules conclude with a forty point essay assignment on the all the material covered. The essay requires that you analyze and synthesize the text book and all the other materials. It is important that you include as much of the material covered as possible in the essay. You will have ten days to complete the module, and I suggest that you spend quality time composing the essay as it has the greatest weight. The syllabus details Time Extensions. Basically, they are seldom approved.
Fourteen modules contain two ten point quizzes (one covering the text and one covering the lectures). Two modules do not have essay components, the first and the last. There are twenty-eight quizzes and thirteen modules with essays. Thirteen is an unlucky number for Americans (not Europeans or Indians), so out of those thirteen essays you pick seven to write. You will want to take all twenty-eight quizzes, but you choose the six essays not to write. Three essays must be submitted by Module Seven that closes on October 12. From the first six essays you must submit three. You may submit all six if you want, but no more than four essays will be accepted after October 12. No, you cannot do more than seven essays to get more points – just seven. Every semester things happen. Often we have no control over those things. Therefore, be prudent in your decisions as to when not to submit an essay. Always remember that something worse might happen later on and you will not be able to submit an essay. Since you may miss six essays, essay make-ups are not allowed.
Each quiz is worth ten points and each essay is worth forty points. So this adds up to five hundred sixty points. At the end of the semester, a final grand paper is due on the novel, A River Sutra. The paper has a value of one hundred twenty-five points. There are an additional three assignments: two discussion postings (one in this first module and one in the last module). There is an assignment, a self-introduction (in this first module). You are to send it to me as a Microsoft Word attachment. These three mini-assignments are each worth five points. So, there are seven hundred points possible for the semester. A final letter grade is determined by the percentage of points accumulated.
90%-100%=A
80%-89%=B, etc.
It should be remembered that a grade of A reflects outstanding work. Outstanding work is not just meeting the criteria, but exceeding the creiteria in a truly outstanding manner. I expect all university students to meet the criteria. In that case, the grade will be C. C is not failure; it is average. A grade of D is low passing and a grade of B is above average, but not outstanding. Unfortunately, in this era of grade inflation, many students expect to receive A's or B's for C work.
If you have taken other on-line courses, you might be wondering where the Discussion and Chat Room requirements are. The Discussion section is to be utilized as you find beneficial to your own personal style of learning. I know that many people really enjoy posting to the Discussion, others hate it. I want you to use the Discussion section as a learning tool. If you click on the Discussion icon, you notice that I have set up specific topic areas with possible subjects for discussion and one Open Topic Area. Use the specific topics to post good questions or provide answers. Some of you will find this exchange helpful in constructing your essays. Also, if you come across a good resource for one of the topic areas, whether on the Web, TV, or book or magazine, share that resource with the rest of us. Topics which I have not created, post under the Open Topic Area. However, limit your topics to the subject of this course, not personal or miscellaneous musings. I will review the Discussion area about once a week. If there are areas I can add to, I will. If I find something that is out of order, I will remove it. I will not assign points. However, do remember that one of the indicators I have that you are “attending” to this course is your participation in the Discussions. At the end of the semester, this will play a role in assigning borderline grades.
The Chat Room is divided into two sections. There is the Common Room for you to use at your convenience. There is the Virtual Office Hours Room. I will keep virtual office hours by appointment only. If you want to "chat" with me, first e-mail me and set a time. Also, if you would like to arrange a study group and want me to attend, this would be the ideal place to hold it. However, just as with Discussions, you are responsible for arranging these sessions. Keep in mind all Chat Room discussions are logged. There are electronic transcripts of all chats that are available for my examination. There is no privacy when on Web Vista. Just as with the Discussion Area, your use of the Chat Room is an indicator of your “attendance" but no points are assigned to its use. I consider the Discussion and Chat Room areas to be your domains. I hope you will consider them as group study times or those times after a lecture when students discuss what has been presented as they exit the classroom. These are very important times for many people. Take advantage of them.
4. There is a ten point quiz over this section of the module.
5. There is a forty point essay seven of which are required..
A. There are 14 modules with 28 quizzes.
B. There are 13 essays. You choose 7 essays to write at 40 points each. Three essays must be submitted by Module Seven that closes on October 12. Your first 7 essays submitted will be recorded. Even if you turn in all 13 essays, only the first 7 that you submit will be entered.
C. There are 3 mini -assignments each worth 5 points (a discussion post on your beginning images of India, a self-introduction sent to me as a Word attachment, and a final discussion post at the end of the semester).
D. There is a paper due at the end of the semester. That paper is worth 125 points.
Each module presents you with an essay question. That question requires you to bring together the materials in the text and the lecture sections. Please become familiar with the department’s policies on intellectual integrity. I am cognizant of the capabilities of most university students. If I receive an essay which is suddenly different from others you have written either in content or in style, I will first do a search of the internet and of the texts that are commonly available on the essay subject. If there is outright evidence of plagiarism or of paraphrasing without attribution, you will receive zero points for that essay. Please don’t allow this to happen. I have had to fail students in the past because of their lack of integrity and honesty.
Here are some points to remember when constructing your essay.
If you have questions on this Introduction please email me. John.Acker@nau.edu