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Overview of the Pilot Curriculum General Education Requirement
Current Pilot Curriculum General Requirement Course Descriptions
This course fulfills Category IV of the General Education Requirement.
Faculty:
| Ralph
Rosen Classical Studies, Faculty 291 LH/6304 rrosen@sas.upenn.edu 215-898-5137 |
Meeting Times:
| LEC | CLST 240 301 | M & W | 3:30-5:00 |
Course Description:
This course will examine the various forms of artistic expression (including literary, visual and musical media) which are deemed at certain historical moments to transgress the boundaries of taste, convention or religious scruple. The arts that clash most directly with prevailing mores force citizens to articulate not only the role of art in society, but also the nature of aesthetics, and the perennial tension between the cultivation of the self and social responsibility. Such arts can be particularly problematic for a democratic society such as our own, which traditionally values freedom of expression.
We will consider "scandalous" arts from antiquity to the present, and the criteria used to evaluate them, including notions of obscenity, blasphemy and pornography, and the role of artistic form and style. Ranging broadly and comparatively across genres--from ancient Greek comedy, "pornographic" vase-painting, or Roman love poetry to Joyce's Ulysses, Mapplethorpe's controversial photography or Eminem's bad-boy rapping in our own era--we will try to understand why societies so often feel compelled to repudiate some forms of art, while turning others into "classics."
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